A Fully Christian Society....
Religion and politics are an interesting thing. The Republicans claim to be representing the moral values of Christianity. While the Democratic leadership may not use the word "Christian", they would agree that they try to represent the biblical values of mercy, love, and taking care of those less fortunate.
I don't think either of them are right. I think that most politicians use religion to further their own ends. But what would a fully Christian society look like? I was reading C.S. Lewis a couple of nights ago, and stumbled on this passage from "Mere Christianity",
"The New Testament, without going into details gives us a pretty clear hint of what a fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps it gives us more than we can take. It tells that there are to be no passengers or parasites: if a man does no work, he ought not to eat. Everyone is to work with his own hands, and what is more, everyone's work is to produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to be no 'swank' or 'side', no putting on airs. To that extent a Christian society would be what we now call leftist. On the other hand, it is always insisting on obedience-obedience(and outward marks of respect) from all of us to properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents and(I am afraid this is going to be very unpopular) from wives to husbands. Thirdly, it is to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is the one of the Christian virtues; and the New Testament hates what it calls 'busybodies'.
If there were such a society in existence and you or I visited it, I think we should come away with a curious impression. We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic and, in that sense, 'advanced', but that its family life and its code of manners were rather old-fashioned-perhaps even ceremonious and aristocratic. Each of us would like some bits of it, but I am afraid very few of us would like the whole thing. That is just what one would expect if Christianity is the total plan for the human machine. We have all departed from the total plan in different ways, and each of us wants to make out that his own modification of the original plan is the plan itself. You will find this again and again about anything that is really Christian: everyone is attracted by bits if it and wants to pick out those bits and leave the rest. That is why we do not get much further: and that is why people who are fighting for quite opposite things can both say they are fighting for Christianity"
