I would like to recommend David Kuo’s book Tempting Faith : An Inside Story of Political Seduction, which I finished a week or so ago. Kuo is an evangelical Christian who has been involved in national politics off and on since the late 80’s. He has worked for Bill Bennett, John Achcroft and president George W. Bush. From 2001-2003, he worked as a special assistant to the president in the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Kuo writes about his experiences as a Christian in politics, truly attempting to change the world, and how he often found himself putting politics first and God second (at best.)

During his time working for the White House, he realized that politicians - even those in a supposedly Christian administration - are, for the most part, only using Christians primarily for their own needs (i.e. votes) without having much interest in following through on promises they’ve made to people of faith. This isn’t terribly surprising to me. Hey, they’re politicians, that’s what they do. Of course, I guess I’m pretty cynical, doubting that any politician has many (if any) pure motives, especially if they’ve been in the game very long.

This book received a lot of press last year upon it’s release, with many conservatives and evangelicals questioning Kuo’s motives for writing the book. However, it seems that Kuo is genuinely dismayed by his experiences there, and I don’t see the book as an attempt at reprisal at Bush or anyone else in the White House. In fact, he states that he still believes Bush to be a sincere man of faith.

It’s a great read, and I wanted to share a couple of quotes from the afterward regarding Christians in politics.

Since the mid-1970s and with ever increasing passion, Christians like me have looked to politics to save America. We thought the right president, the right Congress, and the right judge or justice would stop abortions, strengthen marriage, create a safer country for children, and ensure that our religious faith was respected. Our motiviations were good ones. We wanted to save lives, homes, and our country. We saw ourselves as heirs to the Christian political tradition that fought against slavery and for a woman’s right to vote. We had every right to be in the political fight.

Now, however, it’s is time to take stock both politically and spiritually. Has our political focus produced the desired results? By 2008, we will have had a good, conservative Republican in the Oval Office for twenty of the past twenty-eight years. Republicans have had outright control of both houses of Congress for most of the last twelve years. Republican presidents have appointed the vast majority of American judges and seven of the nine Supreme Court justices. In short, we’ve had alost everything we wanted politically. But things are hardly better. Social statistics are largely unchanged. Divorces are rampant and more and more children are growing up in a home with just one parent. Nearly a million and a half abortions are performed every year. There are more children in poverty today than there were twenty years ago. A greater percentage of Americans lack health care than ever before. Education achievement is hardly soaring. Millions of Americans live in what seems like utterly intractable poverty.

We have had great electoral success and marginal political success.

Then there is the spiritual side of things. As one prominent pastor has written, “What we’ve done is turn a mission field into a battlefield.” What he means is that by so passionately pursuing politics, Christians have alienated everyone on the other side, many of them good people with genuine policy differences. People of goodwill of all faiths can disagree about tax cuts, health care policies, or the war in Iraq. Yet these disagreements can prevent relationships, fellowship, and the chance to share Jesus. In countless discussions I’ve had with people across the country and around the neighborhood, the name “Jesus” doesn’t bring to mind the things he said he wanted associated with his followers - love for one another; love for the poor, sick, and imprisoned; self-denial; and devotion to God. It is associated with antiabortion activities, opposition of gay rights, the Republican Party, and tax cuts. Can anything that dilutes the name of Jesus be worth it for Christians like me?

This is already long, so I’ll post a second quote later.