Romans 14:22 (NIV)

So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God.

This verse comes at the end of a section on not condemning your fellow Christians for doing things that the Scriptures are silent on. In particular, Paul is talking about eating meat from animals that have been sacrificed to pagan Gods. Not really a great concern in America today (though it might be elsewhere in the world). Since the Bible is silent, Paul says it would be up to the individual conscience. This is all well and good, but it presents the 21st century American Christian with something of a problem.

Unlike Paul's place and time, America is a democratically run nation. The vote of the people as well as the speeches or wriings of those people can be influential. This is very different from the system of government Paul and his readers were familiar with - by Paul's day the Athenian system of democracy had been dead for centuries. The Roman Empire was in full swing. The voice of the individual was neglected. Here and now, that same voice has a power it didn't then.

This said, Christians today may well be asked their opinions (backed by votes and donations to PACs. DO they still have PACs?) on a variety of topics that the Bible doesn't speak on or speaks on only tangentially - Bond issues or steriod use or whether to allow a Wal-Mart into the neighborhood. Paul's advice would seem to suggest that we shouldn't take an active part in resolving these issues - keep our opinions between ourselves and God. But that reading doesn't take into account the setting Paul was in when he wrote. We're not in the Roman Empire anymore. Good citizens speak their minds. It's the only way government works, we're told.