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 16 Page 17 Page 18Readers Respond  L E T T E R S T O T H E E D I T O R Kingdom Politics On William H. Willimon’s “Alien Citizens”: This article walks a thin line between witness and quietism. Church is God’s answer to politics, but it must also confront the world with the life of Christ. We cannot curl up in our congregations and stick to our knitting until we magically get it right. We have to take our Christianity out into the streets and bang it against the world until the parts that don’t look like Jesus break and fall off. Our witness will often fail, will doubtless be mocked and pitied, just as the author recounts, but as someone once said, it is not our job to win, it is our job to be faithful. Winning is God’s job, and he will do it in his own time. Until then a truly faithful church will certainly attend to build- ing its members in faith, but the works that will give life to that faith will involve radical, force- ful confrontation with “the powers that be.” Brian Dolge If this had been the ecclesial vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others in the black church, there never would have been a civil rights movement. It’s precisely because we have a generation of preachers who “eschew commentary on current events” in light of the gospel message that the church makes no noticeable difference today in the life of the world. . . . There are insights from Dietrich Bon- hoeffer’s monumental Ethics, published posthumously, that run counter to the framework set forth by Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas. Bonhoeffer was executed because of his part in plans to act directly on the state to stop the perpetration of evil – even as we must do, where called for, contra the claims of Willimon that we act by being some sort of model community. As Bonhoeffer noted, “the first demand which is made of those who belong to God’s church is not that they should be something in themselves, not that they should, for example, set up some religious organization or that they should lead lives of piety, but that they shall be witnesses to Jesus Christ before the world. It is for this task that the Holy Spirit equips those to whom he gives himself.” Willimon’s lofty and poetic prose sounds rapt, until you get to the end and realize you actually have nothing that “sticks” – like trying to pin Jell-O to the wall. Susanne Johnson, Dallas, TX Willimon’s article is not political in a sense that he wants you to be against Trump. Rather, he is calling for the church and especially the preachers to start being faithful to God first in the church through preaching the gospel and discipleship. It is through preaching and through the church that true Christ-followers are formed, such as those from Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston. The problem is not primarily Trump or the government system; it is the current church’s failure to be faithful to God. God wants people to be saved, and that means preaching the real Word of God, not our personal agendas, self-help, or poor theology. Willimon once again reminds us not to get distracted but to focus, focus, focus on Jesus Christ. When we truly follow Jesus, the Holy Spirit will transform us individually and as a church, and through the Holy Spirit’s work in us, through us, and to others, the world will see who our Almighty God truly is. I just wonder how many Christians in America Untitled, Boris Ivanovich Kopylov Image from WikiArt (public domain)