Democrat Kirsten Powers Says Party's Politics was Her
Religion Before Her Conversion
December
2, 2013|11:10 am
Former Democratic strategist Kirsten
Powers, who worked in the Clinton administration, told Fox News on Sunday that
she saw "Democratic politics" as her religion until she converted
from atheism to Christianity a few years ago.
"I think my whole life had
centered on Democratic politics," Powers said in an interview on Fox News.
"I was very much in that bubble. I worked in the Clinton administration so
I had all these friends from there, and then in Democratic politics in New
York, so that's what we sort of bonded over - that was our religion, to a
certain extent."
However, her conversion was also not
easy, she indicated.
"It was a real culture shock for
me, and still sometimes is, honestly," she told host Howard Kurtz.
"It was a world that was completely new to me. It was a world where most
of the people I came in contact with were conservative. If I had a dollar for
every time somebody said, 'I don't understand: how can you be a Democrat and be
a Christian?' I'd be a millionaire."
She added: "I think what they
meant by that was an orthodox Christian. If I had been somebody who was sort of
'Well, yes, I believe in God,' and wasn't too serious about it. But the fact
that I was sort of this orthodox Christian - I felt a little bit
like a fish out of water. I didn't feel very comfortable there. It was many
years until I started meeting other people who were like me: very
progressive-minded politically but also very conservative theologically."
Powers, a columnist with various
newspapers, said Christians need to guard their image in the media. "The
media is not the most Christian-friendly place in the world for the most part.
At the same time, a lot of these Christians bring it on themselves," she suggested.
Powers worked in the Clinton
administration for six years and rarely saw any open expressions of
religiosity. Then she moved to New York to work in Democratic politics.
In a first-person account of her
conversion, she wrote last month: "My world became aggressively secular.
Everyone I knew was politically left-leaning, and my group of friends was
overwhelmingly atheist."
She began to change as she dated a
Christian man, with whom she visited the Upper East Side service of Redeemer
Presbyterian Church in New York and heard Pastor Tim Keller speak.
While her boyfriend later broke up with
Powers, circumstances gradually led her to put her faith in Jesus around 2006.