Civility is fraught. Jokes are better.
A well-placed wisecrack can pull the mighty down from their thrones.
My history of writing on politics has mostly been anything but civil. Since 2003, I’ve left the Internet littered with snark, invective, polemic, and what is charmingly known as rabies theologorum. It’s a dubious record, often written in a profane vocabulary. It’s cost me a pulpit and more than a few friends.
Please, for the love of God, don’t rush out and look it up.
So on paper—or at least by the cold light of pixels on the screen—I should be the last person to write about civility. Yet civility, as it happens, is an important subject in these divided days of America. For Christians, the conversation quickly boils down to a couple of central questions: How much civility do Christians owe to other citizens in our democracy? And how do we emulate Jesus in the midst of a broken political system?
