In the realm of contemporary American politics, many researchers and media often focus on evangelical Christians who are conservative Protestants aligning with the Republican Party. However, not all American Christians are actively committed to party politics and support the Republican Party. This article sheds light on the diversity of American Christians’ engagement with political authority, exemplified by the progressive evangelical Christian Jim Wallis’s prophetic politics and Catholic theologian William Cavanaugh’s political theology.

Historically, tension has persisted between political and Christian authority. In the Middle Ages, there were two universal authorities: the Pope and the emperor. Pope Gelasius placed Christian authority(i.e., Church authority)above imperial authority. Modern states, however, challenged these universal authorities and monopolized people’s loyalties. In the United States, evangelical leaders recognized the importance of Christian authority and the church, yet they loved political authority. During the Cold War, they encouraged politicians to embrace Christianity and supported devout politicians to make America a Christian nation.

Jim Wallis criticized religious leaders. As an evangelical Christian, he censured “secular fundamentalists” for trying to purge faith from politics. Simultaneously, he scrutinized the Religious Right and the Bush administration, condemning their prideful belief in “God is on our side” and their adoption of a dualistic, good-evil approach which he termed “bad theology.” Like the Old Testament prophets, Wallis distanced himself from political authority. Drawing inspiration from Martin Luther King, he called upon political authorities and religious conservatives to follow the dictum, “we are on God’s side.”

While Wallis and the religious Right differed in their distance from the current administration, they still shared the assumption that the United States needed pious Christians. In contrast, Cavanaugh believes the state is insufficient for achieving peace because it has borders, features violence, and limits religion to the private sphere or the realm of the soul. So, Cavanaugh proposes the church as an alternative to the state and envisions Christians worldwide uniting through the Eucharist.

Although the focus tends to be on conservative evangelical leaders, there is an approach to contemporary American Christianity that confronts various political authorities, exemplified by Wallis and the discourse of “political theology.”