Part of our call within Christians Engaged is to help political activists spiritually navigate through what is sometimes the muck and mire of political activities and how to ever watch over our own hearts and spiritual lives as we engage as salt and light in our culture. To this end - I share my own heart cries concerning my latest trip to DC. I pray it is a blessing to you.

Most of us have heard this quote:

“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” 

It is from Lord Action, a British historian of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

I pondered this quote last week as I wandered around the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC.

I was very honored that my Member of Congress had given me his only available ticket.

The annual Prayer Breakfast is an exclusive gathering of ministers, dignitaries, elected officials and thought leaders gathered together by a group called “The Fellowship.”

After doubling up on homeschooling so we would have extra vacation days the week of Thanksgiving, I was ready to be done with any form of studying! Instead I sat down to work on this new project - Christians Engaged - and immediately put myself back into study mode. I decided that I wanted to know more about what the word ENGAGED meant.  If we were going to ask people to “engage” - what was it and what were we hoping to see occur? What would be our messaging? …

When I got into politics as an activist over 15 years ago and then as a career, my father, a former pastor, questioned whether I was doing the right thing. He didn’t want me to leave what he considered to be the “call on my life” to teach the Bible. He had this idea in his mind that Christians couldn’t really get involved with politics without corrupting themselves with the “evil”. He believed it was a corrupting game. I told him politely that I believed he was wrong.