Somehow Jesus's reputation has survived all the embarrassing things that Christians have done in his name.

What is the point in calling anything God if it does not also hold sway in every part of one's life--especially one's politics?

When it comes to the big issues like immigration, everyone has a role. The government has a role. The church has a role. Every Christian has a role.

The early Christians felt a deep collision with the empire in which they lived, and with politics as usual. They carelessly crossed party lines and built subversive friendships. And we should do that too.

Karl Barth said it well: "We have to read the Bible in one hand... and the newspaper in the other." Our faith should not cause us to escape this world but to engage it.

Rather than finding the devil "out there," we battle the devil within us. The revolution starts inside each of us.

Whenever folks say radical Christianity is "a phase" of youth, I tell them they need to meet our 80-year-old nun or my friend Tony Campolo.