THE involvement of church leaders in politics was inevitable and could not be avoided.
This according to former Methodist Church in Fiji and Rotuma president, Reverend Josateki Koroi.
Mr Koroi said the Bible was full of politics from cover to cover where politics was clearly defined as the art of living together.
He said he was saddened to see people attacking church leaders and demanding they need to stay out of politics.
"The book of law gives the standard of personal morality, social justice but they also present the code which regulates the life of the community. This is politics," he said.
Mr Koroi said even the Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed his gospel and died his death in a political context.
"This was the context of what we today would call a colonialism situation.
"The work of Christ in our time has become more and more political, not less."
Mr Koroi said Christians had always seen the enlightenment of the mind as part of their mission and people knew that the provision of education in schools, college and universities and of adequate scholarship was a political issue.
He said the provision of efficiently-equipped modern hospitals or research facilities to unsolved medical problems of a national health service depended on political actions.
"In any event we cannot evade political responsibility, the act of abstention from politics is itself a political act," he said.
"If we do not proclaim God's way in politics, then we are responsible for what happens."
Mr Koroi said no community could exist without politics.
However, he said it was for Christians to see they were better rather than worse.
"If politics had got in to the hands of the wrong people and had become a dirty business, it is the job of the Christians to clean it up. We do not live to ourselves and we must not be afraid of soiling our hands."
Mr Koroi said if politics was an unclean refuse or a muck heap, the Christian church should be a muckrake.