Faith is not accepting the world as it is but insisting on building the world God wants.

There are some Christians who totally disengage from politics and set their minds on heaven so much that their faith is so heavenly minded that it is no earthly good.

One thing that's clear in the Scriptures is that the nations do not lead people to peace; rather, people lead the nations to peace.

So if the world hates us, we take courage that it hated Jesus first. If you're wondering whether you'll be safe, just look at what they did to Jesus and those who followed him. There are safer ways to live than by being a Christian.

The question for me is not are we political, but how are we political? We need to be politically engaged, but peculiar in how we engage.

I moved to Philadelphia to go to school at Eastern partly because I wanted to study the Bible and I also went to study sociology. I like how Karl Barth said we have to read the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other so that our faith doesn't just become a ticket into heaven and a license to ignore the world around us.

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