HOW SHOULD FAITH INFORM OUR POLITICS?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

—John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

I don’t know about you, but I can run on emotional energy alone.

As I said in a recent Pilgrim Note—Should Faith Inform Our Politics?,

I care about people. I care about my country. I care about our culture. And I don’t experience those concerns as something separate from my faith.

Because I care, I can tend to operate from feelings alone.

Someone has a problem—I listen well and help if I am able. And then I’m on my way without having invested much of myself.

I watch the news and hear about another mass shooting. I get angry. I talk to a friend and vent my anger about the state of affairs. And again, I’m on my way without much of myself expended—maybe a tear shed or a complaint logged on a social media platform.

I find that my spiritual life—alongside my lived experience—is driest when I live out of my feelings…my thoughts…my discernment, or lack thereof.

When it comes to political thought formation and political action, I can operate in much the same mode. As I look back on my life, I can see periods when my political thought was being formed largely by how I personally felt about the world.

Was I operating my life in a vacuum? No. I used to religiously listen to Rush Limbaugh on a daily basis. The things that angered him would anger me. The people he made fun of would become the people I mocked in private conversations.

And strangely, this influenced my spiritual life, even if I was unaware that it was doing so. I somehow concluded that God must see the world through the same eyes I did.

But is that the way it works? Is that how God sees the world—through the eyes of a popular talk show host? Did God really want me to be influenced in this way?

I see now how that reasoning can lead to dangerous consequences. One man’s anger feeds another’s, and pretty soon millions of people are feeding off one another.

It sounds like I was in community, but was I? I didn’t discuss these thoughts too much with people from my church other than those who agreed with me. We were getting our news from the same sources, being formed intellectually by the same influences, and arguing our politics from much the same starting point. 

But most seriously, I wasn’t discussing those things with the one who mattered the most—God.

You see, I am convinced now that I wasn’t starting in the place I needed to start. My politics were coming from within myself, flowing out of my thoughts and my feelings.

Christianity Should First Form the Person

Things became different for me when I began asking God to help me see the world more as he sees it. And increasingly, I found myself coming back to one word: love.

Thankfully, Jesus gives us a profoundly simple orientation. When asked about the greatest commandment, he brought the Law back to two things: Love God. Love your neighbor.

Simple to say, anyway; living it faithfully in the complexity of our common life is anything but simple.

I believe God wants me to see the world on that level. And marvelously, out of that, I can start to form a personal theology—really an orthopraxy—steeped in love of God and neighbor, truthfulness, humility, justice, mercy, peacemaking, care for the vulnerable, service rather than domination, and even love of enemy.

Those things do not automatically produce a party platform; instead, they form the person who can then faithfully participate in the political process.

How Did This Paradigm Shift Happen for Me?

The shift happened for me unexpectedly, subtly.

I’ve been blessed to have been influenced by dear friends over the years, like Dave and Judy Buckert, who serve God through Catalysts International, a ministry of CCBT (Centers of Church Based Training).

I’ve worked alongside the Buckerts in the past as they lovingly minister to people of varying ethnicities along the Southern U.S. border—actually on both sides of the border. Throughout the ebbs and flows of the immigration issue, one thing has remained constant for the Buckerts: political posturing takes a backseat to God’s command to love neighbor.

I don’t remember exact words I’ve heard Dave speak from the pulpit, but he and Judy are living examples of the adage: don’t pay attention to what I say, pay attention to what I do. I remember their message to follow Jesus’ example of loving the sojourner—and I’ve seen their message backed up with their hands and their feet. 

Immigration is just one issue where I began to give primacy to God’s command to put love first—over and above how I feel about things. My outlook on other issues follows suit.

I remember I used to think of Bible passages that seemed to fit particular situations. As a pastor in Tucson some 20 years ago, for example, I would be visited at the church by a homeless person. My practice at the time—something a fellow seminarian had influenced me with 20 years before that—would take my thought process to 2 Thessalonians 3:10, where Paul says, “If anyone is not willing to work, neither let him eat.”

I see now that I made assumptions about the person created in God’s image who was before me without knowing anything about them. I assumed they had an opportunity to work, and concluded they were lazy and unwilling to work, or…fill in the blank.

Yes, I was taking the Word of God into account, but was I actually listening to the voice of God? Or was I even searching for his voice?

God also began challenging my thinking through people I came to regard as prophetic voices. One was Shane Claiborne. I don’t remember a particular sentence of Shane’s that changed my mind. It was something more gradual than that. Through his writing and the daily devotional Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, I found myself returning again and again to the words of Jesus in Matthew 25.

“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these

…you did it to me.”

That began changing the question for me. Instead of beginning with, What does this person deserve? I found myself having to ask, Where is Christ in the person standing in front of me?

I didn’t wake up one morning with a new set of political positions. Something more fundamental was happening. The questions I brought to politics were changing because the person bringing the questions was changing.

A Different Posture

Looking back, I can see that something else was changing in me. I was becoming less certain.

Not less serious about my faith. Not less interested in Scripture. If anything, the questions mattered more. But I became less certain that I always understood God correctly.

And that changed the way I prayed. Instead of asking God to support what I already understood, I began asking God to correct me.

That sounds like a small change. It wasn't. Because there is a cost to becoming willing to change your mind.

My theological changes began before my political changes did. Some twenty years ago, my understanding of Scripture and the church began shifting. And as it did, some relationships changed too. I lost friendships. I lost some sense of community.

Years later, something similar happened as the political implications of those earlier changes began becoming clearer to me. And I still see some of that strain in relationships today.

I've come to wonder whether we have sometimes built the walls around our belief systems so high that agreement has become a condition of belonging. And if that's true, listening to God becomes more costly than we might imagine.

Because what happens if I really ask God to correct me—and he does? What happens if the people I love don't change with me? What happens if I no longer fit comfortably among the people who helped give me my identity?

Am I still willing to listen?

Years later, I remember listening to Bernie Sanders talk about income inequality, about systems that benefit some while leaving others behind, and about people being excluded. I had this unexpected reaction: Wait a minute. I agree with him, or at least with his assessment of some major problems plaguing America.

And then came the more startling realization: I've changed, haven't I?

Sanders hadn't changed me. Something had already been changing in me for years. My faith had changed. I had changed. And eventually, some of my politics changed. Hearing him simply helped me recognize where some of those changes had taken me.

Which brings me back to the question I started with: How should faith inform our politics?

I'm increasingly convinced that I've been asking that question too far downstream. Maybe the first question isn't, What does my faith tell me to believe about immigration, poverty, sexuality, guns, taxes, abortion, or any of the other issues that divide us?

Maybe the place to begin is more basic:

Who am I allowing God to form me to be before I approach those questions?

I don't think that gives us a formula for faithful citizenship. And it certainly doesn't give us a Christian party platform.

It gives us a place to start.

Before I ask God what position I should take, perhaps I need to become quiet enough to listen, humble enough to be corrected, and secure enough in God's love that changing my mind doesn't threaten who I am.

And then I need to look at the person across from me—not first as conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, immigrant or citizen, gay or straight, believer or unbeliever—but as my neighbor.

Maybe that's what John Donne was getting at when he wrote that none of us is an island. “I am involved in mankind.”

My neighbor and I are involved in one another.

That doesn't mean we'll agree. It doesn't mean my faith won't lead me to convictions I believe are important enough to advocate for publicly. And it doesn't mean there won't be difficult questions about how those convictions should—or shouldn't—be translated into public policy. I'll get to that.

But before I decide what faithful citizenship requires me to do, perhaps I need to ask what following Jesus is forming me to be.

Am I becoming more loving? More truthful? More merciful? More just? More willing to listen? More willing to be corrected? Can I disagree with someone without needing to make them my enemy?

I don't offer those questions as a formula for faithful citizenship.

I offer them as a place to start.

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