How can you be a witness in politics? How would you even survive in the political world as a Christian? Should Christians even be involved in politics? Recently, we published a great interview with Dan Anderson from Lachlan Macquarie Institute around this topic, Faith, Evangelism & Politics. Dan is the CEO of LMI in Canberra, Australia. Being in, or aspiring to be involved in the political arena can be a challenge for believers.
This is what Dan had to say when Tina Waldrom asked him what LMI do and how you even survive in politics as a Christian.
“So, the work we do at the Lachlan Macquarie Institute is trying to help Christians to develop the character and some of the knowledge and some of the skills that you’re going to need to survive in politics. Our goal is to be the best place to train and we say quite explicitly to be biblically faithful, culturally intelligent, and positively engaged for the common good.
So, a range of different things, but being faithful to the gospel, biblical faithful is right at the heart of that. And then having a character and the skills to implement that in Politics. Now, that doesn’t mean that we tell people how to vote. I actually think it is important that there are Christian lobbying groups out there and it’s good to have them across the spectrum.
As Christians, there are lots of different ways in which the good things in the world engage our attention, and there are good ways to bring those to the attention of the people around us and to lobby for that in politics. And we need Christians across the political spectrum on the left and the right. But there’s a kind of task that happens before you get to that, which is thinking through the spiritual challenges of being in politics? How am I going to nourish my faith and stay close to the Lord in that? What are the intellectual challenges? What distinctive thoughts about politics do I have as a Christian? and then some practical challenges? Pragmatically, what does it mean? How do I join a party and how do I get started on a career in this strange workplace?
So we try to give people a little bit of a leg up in those areas, thinking through spiritually, how are you going to nourish your faith, how you going to keep being engaged in the church and connected with other Christians? How are you going to share your faith in that context? Intellectually, what does the Bible have to say about politics? And then, pragmatically, how do I get involved?”
This was a very insightful interview and Dan’s expertise, wisdom and knowledge was greatly appreciated.
Watch a short video with Dan Anderson and Tina Waldrom
You can listen to the full interview with Dan Anderson below.
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