For my interview with Busted Halo, an online magazine for spiritual seekers in their 20s and 30s, click here. Here is one of the exchanges:
BH: This seems to be a theme in your life: the struggle between political differences and how they extend into the spiritual realm. You’ve been advocating in your book and in your recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times that Christians fast from politics for the next two years. You’re calling on people to continue to vote but instead of getting caught up in political campaigning they need to place the energy usually reserved for politics and use it for prayer, learning, service to the poor etc. Do you think taming those political instincts is possible? Is two years even enough time?
DK: (laughter) Gosh, that’s a hard question. I chose 2 years not because I felt like I had some divine revelation but because it seemed a natural period of time, considering releasing the book in ’06 and then in ’08 there’s the presidential election which is going to be the most crazy insane election that there is.
But also, frankly, because I believe in the counterintuitive nature of God. And so, the God who says ‘Blow your trumpets to take down a city,’ a God who says ‘die that you may live’ may well be the God who says, ‘Fast from politics and I will bring you your desires. I will give you what you want.’ Maybe it is the act of humility, the spiritual act of humility that a fast involves that can bring about the kind of change that we need and we all long for frankly. It was best encapsulated in that little story that I told about a guy who came up to me after I spoke at a church and said, ‘Hey, hey. Tell President Bush to fix the Supreme Court.’ And I was like, ‘Maybe, maybe we need to fix ourselves.’
posted December 4, 2006 at 12:39 am
Again excellent point. I think perhaps a permanent fast from politics is what’s needed for the christian coalition.I came from a devout christian background, 7 generations in which every generation had ordained ministers in there ranks, sometimes more than one.So religiousity is indeed a part of my make-up. I do not transfer that part of my make-up to the part that votes however. As the Bible says ~ Render Unto Ceasar the things that are of Ceasar~I vote based on performance and the best vision of the candidates based on issues of governance. Not on their religion.We’d be in much better governance right now, had the Christian Right taken a sabbatical during the last presidential election.