On the Eve of This Election (and post-Election Too)

Some Words for the Church

Photo by Amaury LaPorte

With nerves wracking, some fearing the worst, Americans of all stripes are facing another contentious election. Whether you’re reading this pre or post the election results (I’m writing this pre), I propose a few suggestions for Christians everywhere as we enter a time filled with strife and derision, resulting from this most divisive of election seasons. I wrote these same admonitions four years ago. I’m writing and revising them again. They are as pertinent as ever.

First, Let us pray for the preservation of our society.

I’ve been through a lot of elections, and this election seems to be about more than policy differences, immigration, economics, health insurance. This is about the preservation of society, specifically a democratic society. I have no hopes and no dreams that this election can help this nation make leaps and bounds toward justice. But preserving society from authoritarianism, excessive crony capitalism, a demise of civility, excess derogatory racism, and incendiary divisiveness is what I am hoping for in this election. This nation needs a turn. Let’s pray for the preservation of our society.

Second. The endemic racism of this country will not be solved via an election.

Despite the more and more excessive racialized rhetoric of Donald Trump, we are still seeing massive support for the ex-president. We know we have an immigration problem in the U.S., but the racializing of immigrants by Donald Trump is morally decadent. And yet self-identifying Christians still vote for him. And so we see just how deep racism runs, or at least is ignored, as a cultural sin infecting our cultures.

In the case of white persons, racism plays on deep fears of white persons. For many white people, they fear losing their money that they “worked hard for”, their security, their freedom to choose schools and a way of life they are comfortable with, and so on. I’ve heard these words spoken and spoken often in white contexts where white persons feel safe to speak. Donald Trump may not be their favorite character, but he is a tonic that feeds into these fears. And so Trump is the revealer of these underlying racialized impulses. And no matter who gets elected, including Kamala, this racism will not be solved in a democratic election.

For the past decade, I’ve been reading about the 1930’s Germany that led to Hitler. It is stunning how subtle the racism of ‘Volk’ supremacy ran in that culture. It played on the resentment of Germans to the perceived injury of their German culture by outside forces (of Versailles treaty, etc.). It was so strong they could overlook a seriously flawed leader who nonetheless fed into their fears. This ugly kind of “resentment racism” simmers beneath the surfaces of American culture. It once brought a German nation to ruins. Will it destroy this nation?

Like Bonhoeffer, we must realize these various racisms will not be solved in an election. In the way that Bonhoeffer tried to do at Finklewalde, it will take communities formed in every town and city, living in a different way such that God can work to reconcile and overcome racism. It will take thousands of these little churches of presence and peacemaking, where Jesus is Lord over racism, to make space for lament, repentance, reconciliation, and life in the Spirit. Bonhoeffer started Finklewalde too late to change his nation. Today, let us all hear the call to be these church communities before it’s too late, that Jesus, by his power, might break the hold of all the racisms that bind our cities, towns and villages.

Third. Will the churches respond to the great failures of the church in America during these years?

There’s this great interview by Ezra Klein over at the NT Times with Jon Stewart (found HERE). Towards the middle of the interview, they start riffing on the splintering of the media, how the media over the last thirty years divided people into ideologized groups, and now it seems there are no social spaces for talking, discussing, dialoguing, discerning (my words not theirs’). I ask, who better to hold open these spaces than the local church?

But instead, these past 10 years, in the midst of this ideologization, the local church has, by and large, been a failure. There has been no space for actual presence with one another as we journey through the struggles of living in this country. Instead, the churches have become enclaves of one side or the other, ginning up the angst and anger of one side toward the other.

And so we’re seeing masses of Christians under the age of 40 leave the church, shaking their heads at the church’s alignment with Donald Trump, or the churches on the other side, despite their rhetoric, unable to engage the deep-seated racism in this country. How will we Christians and leaders respond to this great rebuke? Will we reflect on who we have become in the midst of these politically divisive times? Will we choose to do dig in and do the slow careful work of cultivating God’s politics in the neighborhood? (title of my next post)

Concluding Remark

Given where we are in this culture, I believe the church is the way forward. But its failures have been revealed. This is the minus, but this is the plus, of where we are at in this moment. Will we seek a new faithfulness to the one who has died to take in the sin and violence of the world, to offer us a center with God, a new politics to the world? Will a new church respond to this great rebuke and be faithful to this Lord, living under the power released in the resurrected Christ, and awaken? Will we root deeper into our cities and towns and give witness to the new humanity made possible in Christ? Out of the rubble of this election, out of this divided, violent, sin-struck country, can a new church emerge for God to use to change the world? Comments??