Featured Ministry For millions of homeless kids, basic needs like a hearty meal, warm bed, and safe shelter are true luxuries. Instead of knowing the joys of childhood, every day these kids face the life-or-death dangers of living on the streets.  Since 1972, Covenant House has been leading the effort to help homeless kids. And today, we are the largest privately-funded agency in the Americas that provides food, shelter, immediate crisis care, and an array of other important services to homeless, throwaway, and runaway kids. Find out how you can partner with the Covenant House ministry today. More Current Articles in Christ & Culture: • Getting Marriage Right  by David P. Gushee (Baker Book House, 2004) • The Redemption of Love  by Carrie A. Miles (Brazos, 2006) • February is National Marriage Month 2009.  by • Nukes in the News by

Reviewed by Bret Kinkaid

In Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity, Charles Marsh offers a scathing in-house critique of the broad evangelical support for President Bush and especially his decision to attack Iraq. Even more, Marsh criticizes the partisan captivity of the gospel. He repeatedly refers to the Faustian bargain conservative evangelicals have made by compromising their faith and exchanging the truth of God for political access and power. This transaction has, according to Marsh, blinded them to the suffering of innocent civilians in Iraq and to the damage their politically conservative loyalty has done to the Christian evangelical witness worldwide. He goes so far as to conclude that the evangelical empire has produced a world bereft of moral accountability, intellectual curiosity, trustworthiness, and honesty.

This articulate prophetic word, unfortunately, is not as charitably argued or well supported as many of the conclusions he develops in his earlier work, God's Long Summer. In addition to hyperbolic language like that just quoted, Marsh provides little evidence to support his accusation that a Faustian bargain has occurred. He largely assumes that conservative evangelicals have gained political access and power by willfully (his word) setting aside the truth about the policies and political behavior of the White House to make good on their part of the bargain--to remain loyal to the GOP and President Bush. However, Marsh finds that loyalty to Bush is the result of the widespread--but mistaken, according to Marsh--evangelical belief that Bush is one of them, an Orthodox evangelical who is the real deal in terms of his walk with Christ.

However, this reader believes that evangelicals support Bush because they believe he is connected to God, and not necessarily because they are more thrilled by power than truth, as Marsh claims. Isn't it likely, too, that they also favor many of Bush's policies--from faith-based initiatives to tax cuts to preemptive war for security and human rights purposes--because they believe these policies are right for Christian reasons? That is an honest question that needs to be addressed if one is going to offer a charitable (and completely credible) critique. That said, Marsh does offer enough evidence to argue persuasively the startling truth that after reading war sermons preached by prominent patriot preachers and visiting evangelical churches, he heard and read almost nothing about the innocent children and other civilians killed in Iraq. Deeply disturbing.

The ideas of the latter half of Marshs book are his most compelling. Drawing on the thought of several historic Christians, he offers ways to repent of wayward politics. He argues that evangelicals must return to being a peculiar people in a strange land, speak the truth with humility, avoid the messianic impulse, and listen to the rest of the international body of Christ. Quoting Dietrich Bonheoffer, who also found himself addressing a wayward church, Marsh exhorts, "What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward people."

Bret Kincaid is associate professor of political science at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pa, and the editor of ESA's online public policy community.