The news breaks like a fissure in the earth. Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk has been murdered. The shock is immediate, followed by a tidal wave of grief, anger, and accusation. Before the day is out, the lines are drawn. Cable news channels have their narratives, social media is a battlefield of hashtags and hot takes, and the country retreats into its familiar, fortified camps. Blame is assigned, motives are assumed, and the tragedy becomes another weapon in a relentless culture war.
In moments like these, the pull of the partisan fray is almost irresistible. It’s easy to feel that our most urgent task is to pick a side, to raise a banner, to join the chorus of outrage. But for those of us who follow Jesus, this moment forces a deeper, more unsettling question: What is our primary identity? Are we first and foremost Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or progressives? Or is our ultimate allegiance to a different kingdom, and a different King?
In a world reeling from political violence and suffocating in division, how are we, as Christians, called to think, speak, and act? This isn’t a post about who to vote for or which party has it right. It’s an invitation to step back from the noise. It’s a chance to grieve the tragic loss of a human life and to seek a more durable, biblically-grounded wisdom for how we engage in public life. The goal isn’t to win an argument, but to find a path of peace and nonviolence that reflects a different, more hopeful way of being human.
Citizens of Two Cities: Finding Our Place in a Divided World
To find our bearings, we need to start with a very old idea, one that has guided Christians for centuries. The great theologian Augustine, writing as the Roman Empire crumbled around him, spoke of two cities: the City of Man and the City of God. As Christians, we live in both. We are citizens of our earthly nations, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails. But our ultimate citizenship, our truest passport, is from the kingdom of heaven. This dual citizenship is the key to navigating the tension we all feel.
This concept was later developed into what’s known as the “Two Kingdoms” doctrine. It’s a powerful way to understand how God rules over the world. The idea isn’t that there’s a “sacred” realm where God is present and a “secular” realm where He is absent. Rather, it teaches that God rules over the entire world, but He does so in two distinct ways.
The Earthly Kingdom
The first is what we might call the “earthly” or “common” kingdom. This is the realm of government, law, institutions, and civil authority. God rules this kingdom through what theologians call “common grace.” He works through people of all beliefs—and no belief—to preserve order, restrain evil, and promote a measure of justice and flourishing for everyone. The purpose of this kingdom is temporary and provisional; it’s about maintaining the world and caring for our neighbors until Christ returns. When a police officer stops a crime, a firefighter saves a family, or a city council approves a clean water initiative, that is God at work in His earthly kingdom, preserving His creation.
The Spiritual Kingdom
The second is the “spiritual” or “redemptive” kingdom. This is the realm of the Church. Here, God rules not by the sword of the state, but by the power of the Gospel and through “saving grace.” The purpose of this kingdom is eternal. Its mission is to proclaim the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ, to gather a redeemed people from every nation, and to serve as a living witness to the age to come.
Understanding this distinction is incredibly freeing. It means a Christian can serve honorably as a politician, a soldier, or a community organizer, seeing that work as a God-given vocation to love their neighbor and contribute to the common good of the earthly kingdom. At the same time, it keeps us from confusing the two. We don’t expect the government to do the Church’s job, like bringing people to faith through coercion. And we don’t try to make the Church do the government’s job, like wielding political power to enforce our will.
This framework shifts our entire perspective. The question is no longer a frantic, “How do we get God into politics?” but a more discerning, “How do we faithfully participate in the way God is already at work in the political sphere for the good of all?” This understanding provides a vital guardrail against two great temptations. On one side, it prevents us from withdrawing from the world in despair, because we know God is actively preserving it. On the other, it prevents us from making an idol of politics, because we know that no political party or human leader can ever bring about the redemptive kingdom of God.
Three Paths of Engagement: The Fortress, The Throne, or The Embassy?
Once we understand our dual citizenship, the question becomes practical: How do we live it out? Throughout history, Christians have adopted different postures toward the culture around them. We can think of them as three main paths: building a fortress, seizing a throne, or serving as an embassy.
Path 1: The Fortress (Christ Against Culture)
The first path is to build a fortress. This is a posture of withdrawal and separation. From this perspective, the wider culture is seen as hopelessly corrupt, a toxic wasteland that threatens to contaminate our faith. The primary goal, then, is to protect the purity of the Christian community by avoiding the world as much as possible. This approach is often driven by a deep sense of anxiety, anger, or fear about the direction of society. We see this impulse in monastic communities of the past and in some fundamentalist and Anabaptist groups today who create strong boundaries between themselves and the outside world.
Path 2: The Throne (Christ the Transformer of Culture)
The second path is to seize the throne. This is a posture of domination and transformation. It views the Christian mission as actively conquering and remaking every aspect of society—government, law, education, the arts—and bringing it all under the explicit rule of Christ. The goal is not just to influence culture, but to redeem it and rebuild it according to a biblical blueprint.
The most robust example of this approach is a movement known as Christian Reconstructionism. Its core beliefs are:
- Theonomy: The conviction that modern nations are morally obligated to adopt and enforce the civil laws of the Old Testament.
- The Dominion Mandate: An interpretation of God’s command in Genesis to “have dominion over the earth” as a mandate for Christians to take control of all societal institutions.
- Biblical Law: In its most controversial forms, this includes advocating for the reinstatement of Old Testament penal sanctions, including the death penalty for offenses such as idolatry, blasphemy, and open homosexuality.
It is important to note that most proponents of this view advocate for a gradual, bottom-up transformation through widespread conversion and cultural renewal, not through violent revolution. However, the end goal is a society governed by biblical law.
Path 3: The Embassy (Faithful Presence)
There is a third path, one that is distinct from both retreat and domination. It is the path of the embassy. This is the posture of faithful presence. It understands that as Christians, we are citizens of heaven living as ambassadors in a foreign land. Our role is not to flee the culture or to conquer it, but to be a faithful, constant, and redemptive presence within it.
This approach is rooted in several key ideas:
- It means living out our faith actively and consistently in every sphere of life—in our families, our neighborhoods, and our workplaces.
- It is not about a grand strategy to “change the world,” but about being a blessing and an authentic influence in the specific, limited place God has put us. As the writer Wendell Berry wisely said, “one can live fully in [the world] only by living responsibly in some small part of it.” We are called to love the world particularly, not just in the abstract.
- It calls us to be “salt of the earth” and “light of the world.” Salt is a preservative; it works quietly from within to prevent decay. Light doesn’t scream at the darkness; it simply shines, illuminating a better way.
- It echoes God’s command to the exiles in Babylon through the prophet Jeremiah: “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
These three paths are not just different strategies; they flow from fundamentally different spiritual postures. The Fortress is often built on a foundation of fear. The Throne is often driven by a desire for control. The Embassy, however, is motivated by a call to self-sacrificial love. It is a direct, practical application of our dual citizenship—living as residents of the earthly city while bearing witness to the values of our heavenly home.
| Model (Metaphor) | Guiding Question | View of Culture | Primary Posture | Theological Framework | Potential Danger |
| The Fortress | How do we stay pure from the world? | Irreparably corrupt and threatening. | Separation / Withdrawal | Christ Against Culture | Irrelevance, Gnosticism |
| The Throne | How do we take dominion over the world? | A fallen territory to be conquered and rebuilt. | Transformation / Domination | Christ the Transformer of Culture (Reconstructionism) | Triumphalism, Coercion, Idolatry of Power |
| The Embassy | How do we bear witness to the world? | A foreign land where we are ambassadors. | Presence / Influence | Faithful Presence / Christ and Culture in Paradox | Compromise, Ineffectiveness |
The Pulpit and the Polis: When the Pastor Speaks on Politics
This brings us to one of the most contentious questions in the American church today: Should a pastor address an event like the murder of Charlie Kirk from the pulpit? The pews are deeply divided on this, and for good reason. The debate often reveals a more fundamental disagreement about what the Church is actually for.
The Prophetic Perspective: Speaking is Necessary
One side argues that speaking out is a prophetic necessity. The logic is compelling:
- The Gospel is not a private message about escaping to heaven; it is the proclamation of Christ’s lordship over all of life—including our social, economic, and political lives.
- The Bible is filled with prophets who confronted kings and called out systemic injustice. From Nathan rebuking King David to John the Baptist confronting Herod, speaking truth to power is a biblical mandate.
- On clear moral issues, silence is not neutrality; it is complicity. As the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed for resisting the Nazis, famously warned, “Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” To avoid political issues is itself a political statement.
The Unity Perspective: Speaking is Dangerous
The other side argues that direct political speech from the pulpit is dangerous. This view also has deep wisdom:
- A pastor’s primary calling is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a message that transcends and unites people across partisan divides.
- Political preaching risks alienating congregants, turning the sanctuary into just another battlefield in the culture war, and blurring the line between discipleship to Jesus and allegiance to a political party.
- The church should be one of the few remaining places in our polarized society where people with different political convictions can come together in unity to worship God.
- Ironically, by avoiding the appearance of partisanship, a pastor can actually strengthen their ability to speak prophetically on the core moral issues that truly matter.
A Path to Wisdom: “Straight Lines” and “Jagged Lines”
So how do we find a faithful way forward? One helpful tool is to distinguish between “straight line” and “jagged line” issues.
- Straight Line Issues: These are matters where there is a clear, direct, and unambiguous line from a biblical principle to a moral conclusion. For example, Scripture says, “You shall not murder.” This is a straight line to the conclusion that abortion, the taking of an unborn human life, is a grave moral evil. Scripture says all people are made in God’s image. This is a straight line to the conclusion that racism is a sin that defames God. On these issues, pastors have a duty to speak with clarity and conviction.
- Jagged Line Issues: These are matters of policy and political prudence where Christians, starting from the same biblical principles, can reasonably and in good conscience arrive at different solutions. For example, Christians agree on the principle of caring for the poor (a straight line), but they may disagree on whether the best policy solution is a higher minimum wage, tax credits, or private charity (a jagged line). Other examples include specific healthcare policies, tax reform, or complex immigration strategies. On these issues, a pastor should teach the relevant biblical principles but be extremely cautious about binding the consciences of their people to one specific policy, which is a matter of the earthly kingdom’s prudential judgment.
Let’s apply this to the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk. A pastor has a “straight line” duty to condemn murder and political violence as evil. They have a biblical mandate to call the congregation to grieve, to pray for the victim’s family and for our nation, and to recommit to Jesus’s command to love our neighbors and even our enemies. However, to use the pulpit to assign collective blame to an entire political party or to advocate for a specific piece of gun control legislation would be to cross into “jagged line” territory, where faithful Christians can disagree. This framework helps pastors stay faithful to the whole counsel of God without becoming mere chaplains for a political party.
A Biblical Compass for the Culture Wars
With these frameworks in place, how might we think biblically about some of the most divisive issues of our day? The goal here isn’t to provide a voter’s guide, but to model a way of thinking that grounds our convictions in timeless theological principles rather than fleeting partisan talking points. The Christian position on these issues flows from a coherent and comprehensive vision of what it means to be human and to flourish in God’s world.
The Sanctity of Life (Abortion)
The Christian case against abortion is not primarily a political argument, but a theological one. It is grounded in the foundational truth of Genesis 1:27: that every human being is created in the Imago Dei—the image of God. This divine image bestows an inherent dignity and immeasurable worth on every person, from the moment of conception until natural death. As the psalmist declares, we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). This conviction is why the earliest Christians distinguished themselves from the surrounding pagan culture by their staunch rejection of both abortion and infanticide. The pro-life ethic, therefore, is a moral imperative to defend, protect, and value all human life, including the preborn, the elderly, the disabled, and the marginalized.
The Stranger at the Gate (Immigration)
The issue of immigration presents a powerful tension between two clear biblical mandates. On one hand, the Old Testament is relentless in its command to care for the immigrant and the sojourner. “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). This is a moral duty of hospitality and compassion. On the other hand, the New Testament affirms that God establishes nations and their boundaries (Acts 17:26) and that the government’s God-given role is to maintain order and uphold the rule of law (Romans 13:1-4).
The Two Kingdoms doctrine helps us navigate this tension. The Church, as an institution of the redemptive kingdom, has a primary duty of mercy, compassion, and hospitality to the stranger in our midst. The state, as an institution of the earthly kingdom, has a primary duty of maintaining secure borders and an orderly, just legal process. A faithful Christian can and should advocate for both: a nation with a compassionate heart and a nation with just and orderly laws. We are not forced to choose between the two.
Marriage and Identity (Same-Sex Marriage & Gender)
The Christian vision for marriage and sexuality is also rooted in the creation account. God’s creation of humanity as “male and female” (Genesis 1:27) is presented not as an accident, but as a purposeful, complementary design. This binary is foundational to the institution of marriage, which the Bible defines from the beginning as the union of one man and one woman: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Jesus himself powerfully reaffirms this creation model when questioned about divorce (Matthew 19:4-6). For this reason, Scripture consistently identifies sexual activity outside of this covenant—both heterosexual and homosexual—as falling outside of God’s good design.
Similarly, the Christian worldview grounds our identity as male or female in God’s purposeful creation of our biological bodies. The body is not a prison to escape from or a meaningless slab of matter to be reshaped according to our subjective feelings. It is a good gift from our Creator, designed to be a “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19). The profound pain and disconnect experienced by those with gender dysphoria is a real and tragic manifestation of living in a fallen, broken world. The Christian response must be one of deep compassion and care, not condemnation. But the ultimate hope offered is not found in altering the body to match the mind, but in finding our true identity in Christ, who redeems us as whole people, body and soul. In all these sensitive conversations, the biblical command is to “speak the truth in love,” always affirming the dignity of every person as an image-bearer of God.
Freedom For All (Religious Freedom)
Finally, the Christian case for religious freedom is grounded in the very nature of faith. True faith, genuine worship, and a love for God cannot be coerced by the state; it must be a free and willing response of the human heart. When Jesus said to, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” (Mark 12:17), he was drawing a crucial line. The state has a claim on our taxes, but it has no claim on our conscience. The soul belongs to God alone. This is why Christians should champion religious freedom not as a partisan tool to protect our own interests, but as a fundamental human right for all people—including those of other faiths and those of no faith. It is a principle rooted in the conviction that God alone is Lord of the conscience.
The North Star in a World of Shifting Sands
Undergirding all these political and cultural debates is a deeper, more foundational conflict: a battle over the nature of truth itself. Our culture is increasingly saturated with moral relativism—the idea that there is no such thing as absolute, objective truth. Instead, “truth” is seen as something we create for ourselves. What’s “true for you” may not be “true for me,” and no one has the right to say otherwise.
The Christian faith offers a radically different vision. It insists that truth and morality are not a matter of personal preference or cultural consensus. They are grounded in the unchanging, holy, and good character of God Himself. God’s moral law, revealed in Scripture and written on the human heart through the conscience, is not an arbitrary set of rules designed to restrict our freedom. It is a reflection of reality, a roadmap for human flourishing given by the One who designed us.
This belief in objective truth is not just a theological fine point; it is the essential foundation for a just and free society. The book of Judges describes a time of social collapse with a chilling refrain: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). When a society abandons a shared standard of right and wrong, the only thing left is power. The loudest voice or the strongest arm wins. Without objective truth, we have no firm basis to condemn the atrocities of the Holocaust as truly evil, or to praise the work of Martin Luther King Jr. as truly good. We can only say that we have different preferences.
This is why Christians are called to engage in civic life. It is not primarily to seize power for ourselves, but to contend for a society grounded in truth, justice, and the common good—values that flow from God’s character and are for the flourishing of all people. Arguing for objective truth is not an act of arrogant dogmatism; it is an act of love that seeks to preserve the very possibility of a public square governed by reason and justice rather than by raw power.
What Now? Living as Citizens of a Better Kingdom
We began with the news of a political murder, a tragedy that threatens to pull us deeper into the vortex of anger and division. The theological frameworks we’ve explored—the Two Kingdoms, Faithful Presence, the nature of truth—are not simple solutions. They are a compass, designed to help us navigate a long and difficult journey.
In the end, the ultimate Christian response to political violence and cultural decay is not a better political strategy, but a different way of being human, modeled on the life of Jesus.
- We Reject Violence and Embrace Peace. The way of the cross is a way of nonviolence. Our response to evil must be unwavering: violence is never the answer. We are called to be active peacemakers in a world addicted to conflict.
- We Love Our Enemies. This is Jesus’s most radical and difficult command. It includes our political opponents. We must refuse to dehumanize those with whom we disagree. We must pray for them, seek to understand them, and treat them with the dignity they possess as fellow image-bearers of God.
- We Practice Intellectual Honesty. We must renounce the hypocrisy of decrying the stereotypes placed on us while eagerly applying them to others. We cannot claim to be for peace and then excuse violence when it serves our political tribe.
The most powerful political act for the Church is to be the Church. And for the individual Christian, our most powerful political influence may not be felt in Washington D.C., but in our own homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces. It is found in the quiet, daily, local practice of faithful presence—in being an honest employee, a loving parent, a trustworthy neighbor, a servant in our community.
This is how we live as citizens of heaven while seeking the peace of our earthly city. This is how we bear witness to a better kingdom, and a better King.
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