“Participating in the Kingdom While We Are Reaching for It”: Prefigurative Faith and the “Living Out” of Religion and Politics

Abstract How do people understand the connection between religion and politics in their daily lives? To answer this question, I use the lens of prefigurative faith. Referring to efforts to create desired futures through behavior in the present, prefigurative faith is well suited to examine faith communities who focus on righteous behavior and personal relationships they believe will achieve larger goals. Through examining data on how progressive religious groups collectively envision futures, I show how they prefigure the Church by modeling what they believe the Church should be, as well as prefigure the world by trying to foment social change via their lived behavior. This challenges often-referenced understandings of religion as lacking a vision for structural change, instead suggesting a distinction between faith-based action that is sociopolitically individualistic and action that focuses on personal behavior but, nonetheless, views it as part of a larger strategy for social transformation.