Nt Government Quotes

we wish to prosecute the thesis that in a world with a human propensity for evil, greed and injustice, liberal democracy stands as the least worst option for human governance. Liberal democracy is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a just society, but it can be an enabling condition for a just society.

The Christian vocation is neither pious longing for heaven nor scheming to make Jesus king by exerting force over unwilling subjects. Instead, Christians should be ready to speak truth to power, being concerned with the righteous exercise of government, seeing it bent towards the arc of justice and fulfilling the service that God expects of governing authorities

The dangers with post-liberal perspectives in the hands of governing authorities is that a government too insistent on promoting certain values can undermine liberty itself.49 Good government arises from the cultivation of debate, not ritual denunciations or intimidation. Tolerance properly understood means ‘the refusal to use coercive state power to impose one’s views on others, and therefore a commitment to moral competition through recruitment and persuasion alone’.

We need a political framework that exhibits ‘tolerance for dissent, a skepticism of government orthodoxy, and a willingness to endure strange and even offensive ways of life’.46 We need to find a way to live with one another in spite of our differences and together strive to ‘find and follow the way of peace, and discover how to build each other up’.47 Victory in liberal democracy is not vanquishing our opponents, but winning their respect, living in peace with them, and affirming their right to their opinion.

Jobs had tried to hire Rashid, then a computer science professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, but Rashid turned him down. He was reluctant to join the hurly-burly life of a corporation. His Mach research had been almost wholly funded by government grants; an agency of the Pentagon, his principal backer, saw Mach as crucial to unleashing the vast power of multiprocessor computers, inherently cheap machines that would someday replace pricey supercomputers as the backbone of the nation’s military and intelligence-gathering networks. Besides, Rashid was an academic purist. He seemed sincerely devoted to pursuing knowledge about software for its own sake. This was rare, even among academics, because software was such a remunerative field that the brightest researchers found themselves inexorably pulled into commerce: The money was too good. After

Keep out of things you don’t understand!” we are told. “Teach people how to pray and don’t meddle in public affairs!” But followers of Jesus have no choice. A central part of our vocation is, prayerfully and thoughtfully, to remind people with power, both official (government ministers) and unofficial (backstreet bullies), that there is a different way to be human. A true way. The Jesus way. This doesn’t mean “electing into office someone who shares our particular agenda”; that might or might not be appropriate. It means being prepared, whoever the current officials are, to do what Jesus did with Pontius Pilate: confront them with a different vision of kingdom, truth, and power.

central part of our vocation is, prayerfully and thoughtfully, to remind people with power, both official (government ministers) and unofficial (backstreet bullies), that there is a different way to be human. A true way. The Jesus way. This doesn’t mean “electing into office someone who shares our particular agenda”; that might or might not be appropriate. It means being prepared, whoever the current officials are, to do what Jesus did with Pontius Pilate: confront them with a different vision of kingdom, truth, and power.

There is a danger in Christians supposing that they simply have to be flaky, awkward, against the government all the time, continually doing things upside down and inside out. Some people of course seem to be born that way, and use the gospel imperative as an excuse for foisting their own cussedness or arrogance on everyone else.

The problem is that, if you take the route of the government as the guarantor of Christian religion, then that requires government to adjudicate in matters of religion, to solve theological disputes and to hold heresy trials. Will the government arrest heretics, license preachers, regulate seminaries and impose Sabbath observance? Martin Luther, at least in his early years, knew that ‘heresy is a spiritual matter which you cannot hack to pieces with iron, consume with fire, or drown in water’.33 Or, as the British philosopher John Locke put it, ‘What power can be given to the magistrate for the suppression of an idolatrous Church, which may not in time and place be made use of to the ruin of an orthodox one?’34 In a diverse and pluralistic society, governments would be wise neither to privilege one religion, nor to punish people over their religion. Religion is at its most free when government does not interfere with religion or try to adjudicate in matters of religion. Thus, a certain degree of secularity – by which we mean preventing theocracy, enabling the free exercise of religion, and permitting liberty of conscience in religion – is far better than Christian nationalism.