Reddit reviews Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals
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Red Letter Christianity by Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo, Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne, The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy and The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day
Everyone interested in this subject should read Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne.
I would go as far to buy it for anyone, if needed.
TL;DR God's Politics by Jim Wallis is a decent starting place for frustrated American Christians in the modern era if nothing else. It's a little dated now, but it's still relevant. In general, any good Christian political theology will a) define the difference between the Church and the State and b) articulate how those two entities will relate to each other, especially in the life of the individual believer. You should step back from applying your faith to US politics until you can articulate your general Christian view of how believers around the world are to engage with States around the world. Once you have your broad principles of Christian political theology established, only then turn your gaze to US politics to apply what you believe.
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If I may be so direct, I think your core problem may be that you need a clearer political theology, not that you need to abandon politics altogether. As a pastor who's now lived all over the USA, I've noticed that many—if not the large majority—of professed Christians in America hear “faith and politics” and immediately assume you're talking about the religious right, the Moral Majority, etc. But the modern religious right is a rather new invention, one that didn't exist until the 1970s and 80s and emerged out of a targeted effort by Jerry Falwell, his fundamentalist allies, and Reagan's campaign team to link conservative politics and conservative theology. While today the politics of Falwell and friends is seen as normative for Christian politics, in reality there are nearly 2000 years history of Christian political thought, one in which you have everything from Prohibition organizers to pacifists rejecting politics altogether to Nazi theologians in the 1930s to medieval monarchists to Christian anarchists to the Civil Rights movement. In the words of Inigo Montoya, “Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”
First, let's talk scriptures. You've got Romans 13:1-7, Matthew 22:15-22/Mark 12:13-17/Luke 20:20-26, Jeremiah 29:1-14, Isaiah 10:1-4, lots of case studies in Christian relationships to the State in Acts and the New Testament letters, and possible fodder from the Old Testament depending upon how you see the historic relationship between God and Israel via the law/covenant (i.e. setting the basic legal/economic framework for Israel), the monarchies (i.e. case studies in God's reactions to state actions), and the prophets (i.e. God's repeated calls for justice) speaking to God's present-day desires for any non-ancient-Israelite State. I've missed a few passages and themes, but those scriptures are the ones you're most likely to see in any Christian political theology and so should read on your own before going any further. You have to consider a lot of personal ethics stuff from scripture too. By what rule and on what scriptural grounds do we determine which Christian ethics—if any—apply to our political life and which—if any—do not. Does Amos' call for justice and the Old Testament decree of Jubilee speak to how we vote? If our State wants to go to war, how do we as Christians decide whether we support that war or not: do we reject all war, create a just war formula by which to evaluate wars, or give blanket endorsement to all that the State does? In general, how do we decide which parts of scripture speak only to our personal ethics, which to only our politics, and which to both?
Here is where Christian tradition comes in. u/jmj1970 cites Martin Luther's Two Kingdoms Doctrine, which essentially declares that some realms of human life belong to the State and some to the Church but that God ordains both kingdoms to our benefit. This idea is an old one, stretching back to St. Augustine in the 300s, and it's a good starting place for anyone new to Christian political theology. There are a few variations on this theme you might also consider. For instance, Abraham Kuyper advocated the notion of sphere sovereignty in the late 1800s, which expands the ideas of Two Kingdoms to set aside protected spheres of life not only for the State and Church but also for concepts like the family, economic life, etc. to ensure no one entity has totalitarian control of the human person. In general, most Christian theologies of politics will describe how the Church and State are distinct... and then go on to describe the nature of that relationship.
This is where you really get diversity in Christian political theology. To split this section into two broad categories, you have the Christian idealists and the Christian realists. Among the idealists and on a more pacifistic note, you've got John Howard Yoder and acolytes of his like Shane Claiborne—speaking out of the Mennonite pacifist tradition—who argue that the Church is wholly separate from but called to act prophetically towards the State, favoring personal pacifism, prophetic political acts, and the rejection anything that would appear to 'baptize' the State with the Church's endorsement or validation. Christian liberation theology and liberation theologians like James Cone and Gustavo Gutiérrez are similar in that they see Christ's life and work as one of standing in solidarity with the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed. You've also got Christian anarchists like Leo Tolstoy in this branch. Finally, there are Christian groups who so radically reject politics they don't participate in politics at all, as well as others who claim that your faith has no bearing on your politics whatsoever, so don't even worry about any of these questions and vote however you like. These schools of thought can variously be seen as the “Christian political idealists”. In contrast, you have Reinhold Niebuhr and the school of [Christian realism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_realism_(international_relations). In this vein you can also find thinkers like Augustine (skip to section VII) and Aquinas, who typically will present the State as a necessary evil and give contexts, constraints, and justifications for how that necessary evil can be wielded. Most Christian theories of Just War fall into this camp. Finally, while I am not endorsing their views nor suggesting all Christian realists think this way, Hitler's German Christians, those who used Christianity to endorse slavery and apartheid or colonialism and the genocide of indigenous peoples, and others also fall into this camp in that they approve of necessary evils but take that approval to an extreme. Unfortunately for you, I fall into the Christian political idealist camp, so my understanding of Christian political realists is more limited and my view is that there is usually more similarity among the realists than among the more idealists. Mea culpa.
All this to say... don't let modern American politics cloud you into thinking that the modern religious right is the only form Christian politics has ever taken and that anything else is revolutionary or radically new. Conservative theology doesn't necessitate conservative politics. I myself am generally conservative in my theological beliefs but radically progressive in my politics, but until my conversion I was actually politically conservative and theologically liberal (i.e. my faith flipped my politics in contrast to what most might expect). While most Christian political thinkers will advocate some kind of distinction and separation between Church and State, the nature of that division varies widely from theologian to theologian and has done so for nearly 2000 years. To get you started on exploring this spectrum of Christian political, I would recommend God's Politics by Jim Wallis, followed by Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society alongside Shane Claiborne's Jesus for President (admittedly not a scholarly work like Niebuhr's but still an accessible introduction).
> Christ never got involved in politics. And "Christians" (or people claiming to be) today are destroying our reputation by doing so. It is time Christians listen to their own advice and read the bible.
I feel that this illustrates a great misconception within the Christian community regarding what does and does not constitute legitimate political activity. Insofar as Christ interacted with and even brought criticism to loci of socioeconomic power in his milieu, insofar as Christ sought to not only instruct but influence the behavior of others (either individually or as a group), he was most certainly involved in politics. What Christ was not involved in was political gerrymandering or ladder climbing, and it is this specific variety of political activity where Christians today often part ways with Jesus's approach. Indeed, Christ repeatedly emphasized that his Kingdom was "not of this world," that he would not introduce the Kingdom of God vis-a-vis an overthrow of Roman authority as so many expected the Messiah to accomplish--often to the chagrin of his closest followers.
Christians need to recover a better, broader sense of legitimate political action. Not only is fixation upon leveraging the highest echelons of political power different than Christ's approach, it's much less interesting and much less effective at promoting lasting change than the spectrum of other political activity available to us. We get distracted by the misbelief that we can alter people's hearts and minds by legislatively shifting society in a more "Christian" direction. We forget that we are called to be salt (a preserving agent) and light (a clarifying, hope-inducing) agent to our world by following the even more revolutionary path Christ himself tred.
I believe that as followers of Messiah, we are most certainly called to political action--just not the sort of political action for which we are unfortunately known. Great examples of contemporary theological reflection on this point include the following, to name a few:
For more ideas check out his book Jesus For President
It's written for an American audience but is definitely relevant in other parts of the world.