Curtis Chang, Co-founder of The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics

Do political conversations leave you feeling like a 'combatant', a 'cynic' or just 'exhausted'? Are you a 'disappeared one' or do you have 'disappeared ones' that were a part of your life? Curtis Chang provides a roadmap to become a 'disciple' – Hopeful and humble.

 

In today’s episode, we welcome Curtis Chang, who's been on this program previously, to discuss The After Party, a timely, much-needed new project he launched with Dr. Russell Moore, David French and Nancy French. We dove deep into the concept of Christian politics, conspiracy theories, and the impact of societal divides on personal relationships. Curtis shared his thoughts around the need for a new approach to politics in the church, as well as a method for Christians to engage in political conversations without damaging relationships.

 

We explored Scripture, such as the differing political identities between Matthew the Tax Collector and Simon the Zealot, and examined how they managed to come together for a greater cause. (And for what it's worth, Tax Collectors and Zealots of the 1st Century make today's Republicans and Democrats look like besties!) Curtis explained a four-quadrant model that categorized Christians in politics as Combatants, Exhausted, Cynics, or Disciples. The goal of the program they created, The After Party, he said, is to move people towards the Disciple quadrant where both hope and humility are high. Corey also opens up about some personal experiences with harsh political divides and recounted how meaningful face-to-face reconciliations had been. Curtis encouraged listeners to take The After Party course and put humane relationship and engagement back into the church’s approach to politics.

 

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Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

 

Please support our sponsor Meza Wealth Management:

www.mezawealth.com

 

Be sure to check out another great podcast, Beyond Politics. They've become friends of ours and are doing really important work.

 

And you can find Corey on all the socials @coreysnathan such as

www.threads.net/@coreysnathan.

 

redeemingbabel.org/the-after-party/

 

redeemingbabel.org/about/

 

And here's Curtis's excellent podcast, Good Faith:

redeemingbabel.org/podcast/