This article was originally published on my previous blog on July 26, 2020.
Politics and religion are two of the most personal and controversial aspects of American life. As ministry leaders, we know that while we may be called to engage our congregants on both fronts, we often lack the permission to do so.
We are humbled by the tremendous amount of trust extended to us to help someone navigate sexual addiction, marital conflict, and childhood hurts; but we sense that we do not have the same permission to discuss his politics as we do his porn.
And why should we? Holding a position in ministry doesn’t guarantee that we have been informed by a diversity of news sources, that we have thoroughly investigated the issues that matter to them, or that it’s their flourishing and not the approval of others that we crave. And even if we could satisfy those requirements, it seems unwise to venture into such conversations.
There are landmines everywhere.
Speak disproportionately against one party and you’ve become biased. Speak excessively and you’ve become distracted. Speak forcefully and you’ve become divisive. Why not avoid these accusations altogether? Why engage at all?
The answer is simple, really.
We engage in order to make disciples.
THE LEADERSHIP OPPORTUNITY BEFORE US
We are about to enter into a season of heightened political polarization. Lines in the sand will be drawn. Relationships will be severed. And in some cases, your congregants will become disillusioned with the church, wondering how they can continue to unite their voices in song with whom they are divided about everything else.
The temptation in this moment is to disengage. It is to be reactive and not proactive during the election season. To take up the position of putting out fires but not fanning the right ones into flame. We think that if we simply don’t address politics or dissuade people from talking about politics, then our task of making disciples will be easier. But this is because we have not yet discovered how this political season, instead of stifling discipleship, can actually become the grounds for it.
What else is our work than to help orient a person’s loves? That they would love God supremely and their neighbor as themselves? And what else but this political season can draw out what they love most, when out of the overflow of their hearts their mouths will speak? What else will reveal how they see others? How they speak and listen? How they define both power and winning? And what else but this political season will finally expose the groups that provide their deepest sense of identity and belonging?
Make no mistake about it. The people we shepherd are currently being discipled on the rules of engagement. But perhaps not by us. Our passivity has created a vacuum of leadership that pundits and social media feeds will gladly supply. They will daily take up our task and become the sole mentors on how to engage if we remain silent. Therefore, the following is a list of ways that we can pick up the mantle to disciple our congregants on the rules of engagement this election season.
This is not some bland middle path that extinguishes passionate discussion and calls for us all to simply get along. Rather, it is a way for people to feel and speak strongly about their political convictions, but in ways that are subversive and carry the aroma of Christ.
RULE #1: HOW TO SEE OTHERS
It is impossible to navigate this world without mentally organizing people into categories. We instinctively recognize categories of friends, family, colleagues, neighbors, and even enemies, adjusting ourselves and our conversations accordingly. Every friend-zoned person knows this brutal reality and the punishing power of categories.
But sometimes our categories lack complexity; and as a result, we fail to see people the way that Jesus sees them. In fact, on one occasion in the Gospels, a religious teacher noticed that Jesus looked beyond a category that he had created and saw it as evidence of Jesus’ lack of discernment.
“When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is — that she is a sinner.” (Luke 7:39)
The religious teacher had a category for this woman — she was a sinner. And that was all that he needed to know. His category didn’t care for context and had little room for complexity. She was a certain kind of woman and that should have been sufficient for Jesus to turn away from her.
Except Jesus didn’t.
He did not deny the truth about her past, but saw beyond the mistakes of her past. The religious teacher saw a kind of person. Jesus saw her. And yet, it was Jesus, the One with knowledge of her sins in full, that ended up loving her more than the religious teacher who only knew her sins in part.
Democrats and Republicans. Liberals and Conservatives. They are more than political affiliations. They are kinds of people to us. We discover that a person is a Democrat and assume that he must not care about the unborn, is a closet anarchist, and hates religious liberty. We discover that a person is a Republican and assume that she must hate immigrants, would never march at a rally against police brutality, and have little concern for the poor. But these caricatures lack complexity and care nothing for context. We assume to know the kind of persons they are because of their political party.
You would think that having partial knowledge of a person would lead us to regard them with the same humility as the One who has complete knowledge of them. But that simply isn’t the case. As Zack Eswine observes in Sensing Jesus,
“The problem is that even though God knows what we do not, and this to an extent that dwarfs us, he remains humble toward us. Tempted to omniscience, we fool ourselves on both counts. What we do know does not compare to God. And the way we relate with what we know often little resembles the humility of God.”
This is the discipleship opportunity of pastors and ministry leaders in this political season:
Teach our congregants to see those with differing political affiliations as more than kinds of people.
Teach them to admit the partial knowledge we have of those who vote differently than us — partial knowledge of their motivations, intentions, and desires.
Teach them to be willing to see others in all their complexity and with the humility of Jesus Christ.
RULE #2: HOW TO WIN
Arguing about politics can be addictive. And I mean that literally.
In his book, The Righteous Mind, Dr. Jonathan Haidt cites a study that reveals how extreme partisanship can be addictive.
There was a study conducted in 2004 where fMRI scans were used to observe highly partisan Democrats and Republicans while they read statements about their own candidates.
Statement 1 was a neutral quote from their candidate.
Statement 2 contradicted the candidate’s first statement.
Statement 3 resolved the contradiction and tension.
Haidt notes,
“…Westen engineered situations in which partisans would temporarily feel threatened by their candidates’ apparent hypocrisy. At the same time, they’d feel no threat — and perhaps even pleasure — when it was the other party’s guy who seemed to have been caught…The threatening information (their own candidate’s hypocrisy) immediately activated a network of emotion-related brain areas — areas associated with negative emotion and responses to punishment…Once Westen released them from the threat, the ventral striatum started humming — that’s one of the brain’s major reward centers.
All animal brains are designed to create flashes of pleasure when the animal does something important for its survival, and small pulses of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the ventral striatum (and a few other places) are where these good feelings are manufactured. Westen found that partisans escaping from handcuffs (by thinking about the final slide, which restored their confidence in their candidate) got a little hit of that dopamine.
And if this is true, then it would explain why extreme partisans are so stubborn, closed-minded, and committed to beliefs that often seem bizarre or paranoid…Extreme partisanship may be literally addictive.”
In an ideal world, our reward in every conversation about politics would be greater empathy, understanding, and amicable disagreement. But the science seems to indicate that the most ardent Republicans and Democrats are motivated by a different kind of reward — the reward found in survival, withstanding our rival’s best argument and leaving the dust of the arena with greater conviction about our party than when we entered.
But to argue well, we must redefine the win. We discuss to illuminate not dominate. To understand just as much as we want to be understood. When we enter a conversation with the sole purpose of identifying which of us is the greatest, Jesus would interrupt us and say, “Not so with you.” (Luke 22:24–27)
Additionally, we must reexamine whether our current methods make such wins achievable. If our current methods include snark and sarcasm, memes and mischaracterizations, straw men and self-righteousness, we can hardly expect to win in any meaningful way.
There is a reason for this.
We cannot underestimate the role of emotions in a debate. The emotions lead while our reasoning follows. To use an example by Haidt from one of his other books, The Happiness Hypothesis, we are like those who are struck by a beautiful work of art. And when asked what was so compelling about it, we proceed to come up with reasons that we were not conscious of at the time when we stopped— “It was the symmetry, the colors, the creativity that made me stop” — explanations we created after our initial impression, and despite how true it may be, ultimately serve to justify and rationalize our initial emotional response.
If this is true, if the emotions lead and our reasoning follows in a political discussion, then you can see how posting something online with pride, condescension, and mockery will incite someone’s negative emotions and fortify his defensiveness instead of disarming him enough to have an open dialogue with you.
Additionally, this means that the most effective political conversations will happen between people with whom you have an emotional connection and trust, where what is at stake for both of you is not your identity, cleverness, or dominance; but instead, is greater understanding and appreciation for the other person’s perspective.
This is the discipleship opportunity of pastors and ministry leaders in this political season:
Teach them to identify what they love about their current political conversations. If our work is to disciple their loves, then we must have the courage to help them see their disordered love for a kind of greatness that is antithetical to the ways of Jesus Christ.
Help them redefine the win. Illumination not domination. Clarity not being seen as clever. Understanding and not simply being understood.
Help them examine whether their current methods make winning possible. Do they incite negative emotions on a platform among people with whom they have no relationship? Or, do they engage people with whom they have an emotional connection and trust?
Do they speak passionately in ways that disarm and create meaningful dialogue? Are their words seasoned with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ?
RULE #3: HOW TO EXPERIENCE UNITY AND POWER
There is a deceptive brilliance to political mantras these days. Statements like “Lock her up!” tap into the very thing that unifies people in our current political climate: disdain for the other side.
Indeed, what unites people today is not primarily common values and ideals. Of course, that plays a role. However, what appears to be more compelling is shared contempt for the other side.
In her book, Braving the Wilderness, Dr. Brene Brown writes,
“…the research participants described a diminishing sense of shared humanity. Over and over, participants talked about their concern that the only thing that binds us together now is shared fear and disdain, not common humanity, shared trust, respect, or love.
When a collective comes together at the expense of others — for example, to bond over the devaluation or debasing of another person or group of people, or to bond despite this — it does not heal the spiritual crisis of disconnection. In fact it does quite the opposite by feeding it.”
The unifying principle matters.
There is nothing particularly virtuous about unity in and of itself. We don’t appreciate people for simply standing together. When people unite under a ruthless dictator, we never say, “Well, you have to appreciate their unity.” We do not say things like that because we intuitively know that what unifies us matters.
This leads us to some self reflection. Has our political engagement unified people to stand with us for all the wrong reasons? If we mocked the opposing party, belittled them, and misrepresented their positions, did we realize that the people who liked our posts, shared them, and congratulated us may have stood with us, not because of what we valued, but because of whom we devalued?
The people with whom we experience the greatest unity tend to give us the greatest sense of belonging. And the challenge that pastors and ministry leaders face in this political season is that people will feel more at home in their political party than they do in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.
And this is to be expected because Jesus challenges our assumptions about greatness, power, and triumph. He subverted all the versions of power that surrounded him then and continues to exist today:
The Power of the Chief Priests: The power to bring accusations against Jesus.
The Power of Pilate: The power to condemn and execute Jesus.
The Power of the Crowd: The power to demand Jesus’ freedom but instead demand his crucifixion. (Don’t underestimate this power. Pilate, with all of his authority, capitulated to the crowd and wanted to satisfy them).
The Power of Brute Force: The power of violence that pummeled Jesus to the point that he was not recognizable as a human being (Isaiah 52:14)
The Power of Mockers: The power of those who do not share Jesus’ pain but stand in a position to mock him.
The Power of the Empire: The institutional powers that would even allow this kind of injustice.
And then you have Jesus. A person who appears to have no power at all.
Every breath becoming more and more faint. And yet, the Roman soldier saw the way that Jesus died and said, “Truly this was the Son of God.” (Mark 15:39)
We don’t know what ultimately happened after his confession, but the Roman soldier may be a glimmer of hope for those of us who have been mentored to think about power and politics in only one way.
He likely knew one kind of power — The power of dominance. The power to assert yourself against your enemies. The power of conquest. The power of using pain, fear, and humiliation to make your rivals cower under your will.
And yet he looks at Jesus dying in vulnerability, poverty, and nakedness, trusting in God to vindicate him, and says Jesus’s power is divine.
To have known only one form of power their whole lives. To be immersed in one narrative of triumph. But then, for them to see Jesus’ self-giving love and recognize that this is the power above all powers — this is why we engage.
This is the discipleship opportunity of pastors and ministry leaders in this political season:
Teach our churches how to be watchful for the unifying principle in their statements and affiliations — is it shared values or devaluing?
Lead people to examine where they experience the greatest sense of unity and therefore belonging — among the Left and Right or the Redeemed?
Continue to teach the church about Jesus’ subversive Kingdom so that they would rather identify with Jesus in his suffering than a political candidate in his victory.
There is a tremendous opportunity before us. There will be and ought to be passionate discussion about politics that affect the world. But we ought to engage in ways that surprise and create curiosity about Jesus and His Kingdom —in the way that we see others, in the way that we win, and the way that we experience unity and power.