Seth, and by “I don’t want politics in the church” they mean “I don’t want to hear anything in church that challenges my privileged position in society.” The “no politics in church” rule is almost exclusively a white Christian trope. Paul declaring “Jesus is Lord” in a Roman-empire dominated social context was sharply political as it meant “And Caesar is not.” When Jesus responded to warnings about Herod’s hostility with, “Go tell that fox…” it was sharp critique of a “political leader.” I do concur that we are to avoid partisanism (identificaiton with a political party as a form of group identity-loyalty) and that our references to things that pertain to the political sphere (which, especially minorities is profoundly personal, like “am I allowed to get married , vote?) should be steeped in the language of thought forms of our spirituality. Scapegoat theory as a lens for reading Scripture, understanding the gospel, etc. has been very helpful in this regard. Anyway, I so appreciate your thoughts as someone in a context that I was describing from the outside, as I was hoping not be too far off base :)