Lutheran Christians in the United States live in an "open society"—that is, the kind of nation whose citizens have some meaningful control over their political destinies.  Accordingly, Christian citizens of the United States have, in the words of The LCMS' Commission on Theology and Church Relations, "maximum opportunities for service."  Such opportunities for service may be broken down into two categories: those that confront individual Christians as citizens and those which they undertake as members of the church.

As individual citizens, Christians:

• share in the responsibility (cf. Jeremiah 29:7) of government;
  
  
• seek political office, pay taxes, and exercise their right to vote as ways of manifesting their conviction that government is the servant of God;
  
  
• participate in the life and work of voluntary associations, such as service clubs, political parties, civic improvement organizations, in the awareness that they contribute to the presentation of an open society;
  
  
• help to shape the content and activity of the "marketplace."

As members of a church body, Christians:

• engage in public prayer for government;
  
  
• contribute to the strengthening of the two foundation principles of an open society: respect for the individual citizen as a person and the limitation of political power by means of various checks and balances.  

(Source:  Christian Citizenship, A Report of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, 1968)

As citizens bearing these responsibilities for our good and the good of others in an open society, it is important for us to be informed about and alert to the issues the concern our world and our culture.  It is the aim of the Public Policy ministry of LCMS World Relief and Human Care to provide in-depth topics from non-partisan but fearlessly Christian perspective.

We do this primarily through MercyNotes, our public policy newsletter.