The passions aroused during an election season often drive sub-Christian behaviors and speech-patterns from professing Jesus-followers.  It’s all too easy to allow the cultural climate and its political pressures to shape our identity and even the orientation of our churches.

A snippet from Richard Hays’s reflections on Galatians 2:

Whenever we allow the identity of our community to be fundamentally defined by any sort of national or cultural or even religious marker other than the gospel, we are repeating the error of the “false brothers.”  Paul insists that we must not allow the dominant culture to set the boundaries of “religion” or to define the character of our community.  Instead, Paul’s vision for the identity of the Christian community demands that we define ourselves exclusively in the light of the cross and resurrection (R. Hays, “Galatians,” p. 228).