My current ugly dancing partner, the Republican Party, is not without her redeeming qualities. I am convinced that free market capitalism - when set within proper limits - is still the most effective way to raise the plight of the poor. Thus I am also convinced that the welfare state and all forms of socialism are detrimental not only to the poor but to a society as a whole. I am also a Republican because they are more supportive of classical moral standards, broadly speaking, than the Democrats, and because they actually give religious viewpoints a hearing in the political agora.

Yet this ugly girl has her ugly flaws. Recent corruption in the party is disheartening. The Bush Administration's tendency to spend like a drunk liberal is at odds with the traditional conservative emphasis on the limited power of the state. And then there is the issue of the war. Bush obviously felt he was doing the right thing in invading Iraq, but I am now very close to adding my voice to the chorus questioning whether the decision was wise. I support the finishing of the task there, but if I could have foreseen the cost of this war - thousands dead and billions of taxpayer dollars - and compared it to the results - the creation of democracy in a totalitarian nation - I am not sure I would have supported it, and I think I would have been doing so on traditional conservative grounds.

The fact is that there are many evangelicals, like myself, who take liberal criticisms about our alignment with the Republican party seriously. For example, there is the criticism that evangelicals supported a war of suspicious merit simply because it was started by a president that is willing to advance their agenda on other fronts. By supporting a war that seems to have little or no bearing on the advancement of the kingdom of God, have we compromised the message of the Gospel for political gain? This criticism seems to hold some weight. There are certainly some conservative Christians who are too quick to make a one-to-one correspondence between the goals of GOD and those of the GOP.

The response to this problem by some evangelicals has been to abandon the Republican Party altogether. This is unfortunate. If the Republicans are a moderately ugly dance partner, the Democrats are a buck-toothed, hairy, dog-faced philistine that suffers from ideological myopia and a severe case of moral confusion. Some Christians mistakenly believe that since the Democrats put more emphasis on social justice and the plight of the poor that they actually have the right kind of thinking and planning to achieve righteous ends in those areas. The Republicans certainly don't focus on the poor, but I am convinced that balanced conservative economic policy is ultimately better for everyone, including those on the lower end of the economic ladder.

So because she is the lesser dog, I will remain with my dancing partner a little longer, even while lengthening the distance between us. I hope that all evangelicals will do the same, but not without serious reflection on the recent dynamics of this political/religious relationship. Evangelicals should quit being Republican yes-men and become steely-eyed political prophets, pointing out to both conservative and liberal politicians where their policies pervert justice and righteousness. And we should do so not only on moral matters but on matters of social justice as well. Neither would it hurt to take a good hard look at environmental policies to see where they are most influenced by business interests.

With all that being said, however, I am still suspicious of the whole political process for various reasons. There are some evangelical Christians who do ridiculously stupid things in the political arena in the name of Christ. They often fight unimportant battles that serve to hurt the Gospel more than help it. What is needed is a nuanced evangelical political philosophy that holds faithful to biblical emphases while maintaining its distance from any one political party. As Christians, after all, we are refugees from a distant country, passing through a hostile land on borrowed time. The affairs of the state, while not being ignored, should be the least of our worries. What I fear for many evangelicals is that they confuse the City of Man with the City of God.