Politics Is Downstream from Culture? Exploring the Other Side of the Coin

Click here to read the full article at RENEW.org: https://renew.org/politics-is-downstream-from-culture/  This an audio version of a written Article from RENEW.org Check out other great articles on RENEW.org here: https://renew.org/articles/ First, a hearty amen to Daniel and Bobby’s recent and excellent article, “The Birth of Our King and Our Country’s Political Focus.” They are exactly right: politics has a way of spoiling even the most wonderful time of the year. I was reminded of that last weekend when I took my family to the so-called “Holiday Market” in Washington, D.C. Not a single reference to Christ. No Christmas hymns. No nativity scenes. No visual or verbal trace of the story that once gave these markets their reason for existing. What we encountered instead was a generic winter festival—a curated hodgepodge of lights, crafts, and seasonal cheer scrubbed clean of any particular meaning. Aggressive secular cultural appropriation at its finest. But tucked inside that absence was something more revealing still. In the booths where a traditional Christmas market would sell small nativity sets, First Noel greeting cards, or ornaments, there were instead anti-ICE posters and postcards lampooning various right-wing political figures. Political hostility had not merely entered the space; it had taken the place of the Holy Family. What once occupied the symbolic altar had been replaced—not with nothing, but with ideology. Call it solstitial commerce if you like: a winter market still hungry for transcendence, but now stocked with grievance rather than referencing the One on whose shoulders true government rests. That scene captured precisely the kind of political idolatry Daniel and Bobby were warning about—not politics as civic engagement, but politics as ultimate meaning. It was in that vein that Daniel asked me to develop—not a counterproposal, but an expansion of a comment I made in response to the article.   Listen for more... Join RENEW.org's Newsletter: https://renew.org/resources/newsletter-sign-up/ Join RENEW.org at one of our upcoming events: https://renew.org/resources/events/ Get our Premium podcast feed featuring all the breakout sessions from the RENEW gathering early.  https://reallifetheologypodcast.supercast.com/  Be sure to like, subscribe and follow on social media!  You can find us on: Instagram: @the.renew.network  Facebook: Renew.org  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RENEWnetwork Twitter: @therenewnetwork TikTok: the.renew.network  Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/RENEW