Politics or pop culture?

Glenn Reynolds notes a wry update to an old Rumsfeld quote: "You fight an election with the politicians you have, not necessarily the politicians you want to have."

He goes on to make this observation:

...if you want to make things better, party politics is probably not your best focus. Politicians are weathervanes, and the winds they respond to come mostly from forces in the culture and the media. If you want to turn them around, work on that. Change the culture and the politics will follow. Leave the culture to Oprah, Olbermann, and worse, and you won't accomplish much through politics over the long run.

Indeed. I wonder how many Christians are politically engaged, trying to empower their worldview, while at the same time borrowing so heavily from the culture around them they're indistinguishable from their neighbors in most practical respects. This isn't to say we're supposed to cede the political field without a struggle. But if the political arena were the main event in the process of redemption, Christ would have acted much differently. Politicians trying to claim His mantle of blessing would do well to remember that. We all would.