Washington Gladden(1836-1918) is an interesting guy.Up above is a link to a Wiki page of his. He grew up on his uncle's farm in Owego, NY. He was a Congregation pastor in Columbus, Ohio who at the age of 60 entered Politics. As a politician, in spite of zero experience, he did a lot of good (e.g. speaking out against segregation), but I do not want to get into that here.
What I want to make note of is the following. During Gladden's day, there was a lot of municipal corruption going on. In this regard, he made two important observations:
1) Responsible citizens did not enter into Politics in his day, because they thought it bad form to get involved in local politics. And "so long as anything resembling this is true, we shall of course, have bad government in our cities."
2) City authorities were not so much corrupt as they were simply incompetent, and this to some degree prevailed at the level of state government as well. Major primary decisions were placed in the hands of incompetent people.
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So it seems that on the one hand, responsible citizens did not enter Politics because it did not look good. (Why?) On the other hand, less than responsible people - incompetents - ran the show. I would say that however that some people were simply corrupt, not just incompetent.
Anyway, what I want to say is this... we know that people of dubious character are entering Politics by the droves. As a result people of upright character might stay away from Politics. Yet still, one corrective however is that people of upright character still enter Politics (and other areas of life), rather than refrain. Moreover people of faith should also enter, and their faith should inform their practice even if they get slandered or kicked out or experience failure ... And finally, they should do this even if they are at the age of 60. Perhaps that is the best time!
One other thing... in Wiki, he is listed as a Social Gospel advocate. He did write a book (among many), titled Applied Christianity: Moral Aspects of Social Questions. In my study thus far however, I do not see any indication that his was a Social Gospel divorced from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was conservative in his beliefs to the best of my knowledge.
