The Church and Politics

I've been a bit short on blogging time but hope to be able to get to something of substance later this evening. In the meantime I ran across a topic of interest on another more populated blog and I thought I would pass it along here. Phil Johnson of The Spurgeon Archive fame posted some interesting thoughts on what may happen when the Church mixes and mingles in the political arena and how that may affect its overall witness. I rarely read the comments over there because there are so many, but I would be interested in anyone's thoughts on the post. I will also be opining along these lines in the near future, though I may be hitting at it from a different and, perhaps, odd (unique?) angle.

Just to give you a small taste and perhaps kindle your fire a little let me tease this future line of posts by saying that I am adamantly FOR the separation of Church and State. I know that specific terminology is not used in the Bill of Rights, but I wish it had been. Evangelicals often frighten me in their inability to grasp this very important and Christian concept. The marriage of Church and State was a marriage made in hell. Though probably all of our founders were theists and many of them Christians, and though their theology cannot help but to have seeped into their writings, they set out purposely to set up a system of government that was a-theological in its institutions--not favoring one theological creed over another. My gripe, however, is not so much the Church's foray into politics (though I tend to agree with Phil) but the government's intrusion into things that properly belong in the private sector, specifically to the Church. I think as a layman I am perfectly suited to opine on this subject.