Justin Giboney, Micheal Wear, and Chris Butler are among the leaders of The AND Campaign, an organization dedicated to bringing together faith (&) politics, biblical values (&) social justice, truth (&) love. (The ampersand in parentheses is their symbol.) The three of them have put together some of their ideas about public life in Compassion (&) Conviction: The AND Campaign's Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement. The goal of the book, and presumably the organization, is to develop "a gospel-centered framework to help Christians reflect the compassion and conviction of Jesus Christ in the public square."
As they see it, one role of politics is to "provide[] a forum for advocating for our neighbor's well-being and pursuing justice," and that Christians "should participate in politics primarily to help others and to represent our Lord and Savior in the public square." They advocate leaning on the teachings of scripture rather than conservative or progressive (or other) political ideology to dictate one's political and social perspective. If a Christian finds himself always agreeing with one or the other political position, he is "intellectually lazy and easily manipulated" and "not being faithful."
Christians in the public square should "be a source of moral clarity and biblical illumination in our world." They might not always agree, but should set an example of civility: "Incivility among Christians in the public square is a genuine threat to the witness of the church." We can disagree without "expressing contempt for one another."
As unifying and non-partisan as Compassion (&) Conviction tries to be, the content of the book conveys a position that says, "True Christian faith will lean hard toward socially liberal political positions." To the authors, public policy that favors minorities, immigrants, and the poor is the obvious and default position. They never acknowledge that the Christian "preferential option for the poor" and the call to look out for one's neighbor, when enforced through legal structures, has the backing of the force of the state.
When Christian virtue is enforced by the state, it is no longer virtue. If I see my neighbor hungry, as a Christian I can and should seek to aid him. But when I use the structure of the state to feed my hungry neighbor, I force one neighbor, with the threat of violence, to feed my other neighbor. This fundamental truth about government throws cold water on the warm, fuzzy public ethic of these authors and others. I agree that I am to love my neighbor, assist widows and orphans, etc., but when I try to enforce those obligations with the force of law rather than the calling of the heart, I am out of bounds and in violation of a free conscience.
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