Politically apathetic? Over His dead body.

I am surprised by the number of you Christian friends on Facebook who register your political views as 'Apathetic'.

Some may put this down to collective Christendom guilt or, more scarily, a belief that things are mostly OK - we're actually enjoying the plunder of Christendom.

Largely, though, I suspect it's a reflection of a reductionist definition of politics more than anything else. If we reduce politics to the formal tinkering of parliamentary and local democracy in the UK, apathy is quite a reasonable response.

But this is no definition at all. When Tony Benn resigned as an MP he said he was quitting Parliament in order to "spend more time involved in politics". Politics, in short, is the distribution and use of power in society.

Christians view power firstly in terms of the power of Christ's self-sacrifice, the power of self-giving love: power under rather than power over. The resurrection is a claim that this sacrifice will be powerful to the point of victory.

So if we want change, we want to influence society, and we want to see this power exerted - the mustard seed, yeast-in-dough Kingdom coming on earth. Whether we like it or not, we're the conduits of this power, we are [deep breath] politicians.

John Howard Yoder's seminal work The Politics of Jesus argues that Christianity is a political position. I largely agree. Christians may disagree on certain means, such as the role or existence of the state, the key political unit (nation, individual, community), taxation, material resources, or governance structures. Arguably, however, the end-game priorities of Christian conservatives and anarchists would be similar. These priorities are the outworking of this self-giving power: personhood of all humans, need for commuity belonging, dignity of all creation, embrace of the other, dignity of work, suspicion of coercion, nonviolent resistance to evil, a belief in relational leadership, and radical individual freedom - c.f. Eden.

This is why, when I talk to Tory Christians (who get everywhere) there is significant common ground. The above list could be incorporated into any party's manifesto, or into an anti-systemic thesis.

But here's the rub: never have we seen a government that embraces what Christians should view as the only valid power, self-giving power. The political discourse is still defined by my national interest, my sectarian interest, my economic interest, and most pathetically my party interest. In this contest the powerful-over win.

We should resist this vigorously, because we believe another sort of power is better, and another sort of power will prevail. And that, I'm afraid, leaves no room for political apathy.