Few issues garner as much heated debate as politics and religion, especially when the two are combined. Tackling those elephants in the room is Grudem who provides a Biblical framework for building answers to these lingering questions. This short booklet is an excerpt from Grudem’s much longer work, Politics, so it is not designed to be exhaustive Even so, this sample is a much-needed and thought-provoking examination of the Christian’s relationship with and responsibility to government.

The First Amendment was never intended to guarantee that government should be free from religion or religious influence. The only “freedom of religion” that was intended was freedom from government sponsorship of one particular religion or denomination. [KL 290-292]

It seems to me that the “do evangelism, not politics” view has a mistaken understanding of what is important to God, as if only spiritual (nonmaterial, other-worldly) things matter to him and not the actual circumstances of people’s physical life in this world. That is a philosophical view akin to Platonism, and it is similar to an ancient deviation from Christianity called Gnosticism—but it is not the view of the Bible. [KL 643-653]

Influencing government for good on the basis of the wisdom found in God’s own words is a theme that runs through the entire Bible. [KL 1142]

The mere fact that something is “controversial” does not excuse pastors from the responsibility to preach about it and (sometimes) the responsibility of a church to take a stand on it. [KL 1433-1434]

Every Christian citizen who lives in a democracy has at the very least a minimal obligation to be well-informed and to vote for candidates and policies that are most consistent with biblical principles. The opportunity to help select the kind of government we will have is a stewardship that God entrusts to citizens in a democracy, a stewardship that we should not neglect or fail to appreciate. [KL 1472-1475]

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Grudem tackles 20 of the most core concepts of the Christian faith – God, Christ, sin, and more -- and boils them down to their basic definitions and applications. This book, written with his son, is a more reader-friendly version of his massive Systematic Theology. Although this shortened version sometimes suffers from being too brief to explore some of the theological intricacies of certain doctrines, it remains a worthwhile introduction to basic tenets of the Christian faith.

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