Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16society more just and more God-fearing. In the process, they have also discovered firsthand how messy and heartbreaking politics can be. As a young seminary professor committed to stopping both abortion and poverty, I was not only torn between the competing demands of the right and left but also dismayed by seeing how political power can corrupt even the best of intentions. One day I happened to be in a small gathering of activists who had invited John Howard Yoder to speak. We peppered him with questions: What does it mean to bear witness to Christ’s kingdom? What role does the state play in God’s economy? What is our political responsibility? What does it mean to bring about social change nonviolently? Yoder listened patiently, then said something I’ve never forgotten: “The church does not have a politic, it is a politic.” Yoder’s words shocked me into reading the New Testament all over again. And there it was! Jesus wasn’t just against violence, injustice, and immorality – he freed people from these very things. He wasn’t just against disproportionate and ill-gotten wealth. He was against Mammon itself. He didn’t come to sprinkle kingdom values on society. No, his was a society in which God’s kingdom broke in (Luke 11:20, 17:21) and where a brand new order emerged (1 Pet. 2:9–12). Jesus, Yoder taught me, knew full well how this world operated, and that is why he didn’t directly confront the Roman state or its policies. He had an entirely different agenda and thus wasn’t interested in making Rome, or Israel for that matter, great or even better. These realms were under the grip of principali- ties and powers that governed by constraint, Brigitta Racz, Yellow Façade Images © Tubidu Graphics