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In the already-but-not-yet paradox between Christ's resurrection and his second coming, the church is the "already"—the peculiar place in the world that has started to look like the New Jerusalem. Of course, the church is far from perfect, but when the church really does begin to live in the light of Christ's forgiveness, it's not too much to say that the church is a reflection of the peace and love of the triune God—even a bit of heaven on earth.

What exactly does that look like? For one thing, the church lives by forgiveness, not retribution. And because of God's forgiving grace, the church is a place of reconciliation and peace—not peace as the world gives, but the true and lasting peace among people who have confessed their sins to God and each other, know that they are forgiven by God, and forgive each other as Christ has forgiven them.

Behind it all, of course, is God's love—we love each other because God first loved us. Out of love, we Christians tend the sick, visit the lonely, care for the poor, look out for the weak and the oppressed, and remember the forgotten. In a world that all too often assumes that success can come only at the expense of others, Christians show that there is plenty of God's abundant life for everybody. In a world full of dog-eat-dog competition for wealth, status, and power, Christians live instead by generosity, friendship, and self-giving service. Instead of defining ourselves by race, gender, nationality, or class, Christians know that we are all one in Christ. Instead of seeking lasting peace and safety through violence and war, Christians know that true peace can only come from God. And instead of placing our hope in the progress of humanity, or despairing that justice will ever be done, Christians find their hope in the crucified and risen Christ, who defeated the powers of sin once for all and rose again to new and abundant life everlasting.

We often forget that this way of Christ-shaped life is politics—the new way of living together made possible by the Cross. Politics isn't just what happens in Washington, whom we vote for, or what the cable news and newspaper pundits endlessly chatter about. That's politics too, but the first and most authentic politics is the everyday gospel politics of the church.

When we forget that, our gospel becomes too small. It means that we have ceded the word politics to the world, and have started to live as though the world's way of life together is the only way. We spend all of our time in the city of man, and forget that our first citizenship is in the church, the first fruits of the city of God. When that happens, we should not be surprised when we lose sight of the New Jerusalem and start looking like the world around us, trapped in the habits, ideas, and allegiances of Babylon.

Evangelicals have ended up in exactly that trap more often than we would like to admit. A brief glance at the media coverage of evangelicals reveals precious little awareness that we are considered anything more than one more special-interest group in the welter of American politics. Unfortunately, this is true on both sides of the aisle. If leaders like Jerry Falwell were once viewed by many Americans as no more than Republicans with funny God accents, it's also true that "progressive" evangelicals like Tony Campolo are today viewed just as surely as Democrats with a Jesus habit. The crux of the problem can be seen in the ease with which political commentators refer to an evangelical Right and Left—suggesting that people on both sides are, at the end of the day, just Republicans and Democrats who happen to be evangelical Christians, too. Even if this is a mistaken caricature, the fact that this mistake can be made suggests that on all sides, we have become trapped in the patterns of thinking and partisanship of Babylon.

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November 2008, Vol. 52, No. 11