A Healthier Christian Politics

The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life will be published on January 23, 2024—only seven weeks from today! In October, I began a monthly series describing the development of this book. You can read Part One of this series here. Part Two is here. This post is the third installment in the series. I hope that this post gets you interested, even excited, for the book. One of the best ways you can make sure that others get the chance to hear about and read this book, is to show your interest in it now by preordering it. It would mean a great deal to me if you did.

As I described in Part Two, as I worked on Reclaiming Hope, and as I talked about and traveled for that book, I was gaining increasing clarity about the personal and spiritual nature of the systemic and practical political challenges facing our country, our churches, our families and our lives.

My friend, Gabe Lyons, is the person who provided the opportunity for me to share what I was learning in a talk at the conference his organization, now called THINQ, runs every year. In 2018, I would speak to a ballroom of over a thousand people sharing a new kind of message about our politics. When I walked on the stage, I did not know how the talk would be received. What I had to say did not affirm a partisan position, and it did not use Washington and politicians as a scapegoat for the problems we all share in creating, and for which we all share responsibility for solving. I walked off the stage to a standing ovation, which I did not realize until Gabe, who was backstage, told me to walk back out on the stage so I could see the audience.

I share that talk here. My thinking has deepened and broadened since this talk, but some of the core insights of the book are found, in early form, in these ten minutes.

Over the years, I’ve heard from a number of leaders, speakers and writers that this talk helped to shape and change them, which is just what you hope for when you give a talk like this. I hope The Spirit of Our Politics will influence you, and through you, your families, your church, your community, our politics. I think that is how change works. After all, the kind of people we are has much to do with the kind of politics and public life we have.