Got a short one for you all.
A few months ago, I was one of the initial signers of the Confession of Evangelical Conviction, a statement which, in my mind, is a thoroughly uncontroversial application of the Christian faith to political life. It is saturated with basic Christian claims: that Jesus is the head of the Church, that our loyalty belongs to no political party, that our decisions ought to be driven by love not fear, that the Scriptures ought to dictate our priorities, that character matters, etc. Each of these are standard evangelical commitments and even though I don’t commonly identify as an evangelical (for political, not theological reasons), I eagerly trumpet these claims. But of course, more is necessary for us to face this particular political moment. This became even more clear to me a month ago when I sat on a panel and gave a plenary talk at the Center for Pastor Theologians Conference in Chicago.
This year, the conference’s theme was Kingdom Politics, and alongside Kaitlyn Schiess, Miroslav Volf, Carmen Joy Imes, Christina Edmondson, Preston Sprinkle and others, I spoke to a number of pastors and laymen and women about what Christ requires of us politically. The distinction between being political and being partisan was repeated. Brothers and sisters told stories of our politically divided congregations. You could probably narrate such controversies in your own communities and families yourself. But there was a moment that struck me early in the conference that made me add to my own plenary talk, which was second to last.
During the Q&A for the panel that I was on, a brother came to the microphone and asked a question with some language that made my ears perk up. He asked something that many were thinking: How do I respond to and care for folks who think that they are voting for God’s chosen one and the Antichrist?
I bristled. Not at the question because it is a real one. I bristled at the categories that we, as Christians, have allowed to persist in our moral and theological imaginations. So I went back to my hotel room, scratched out one of my points and wrote anew.
Wednesday morning, I gave my talk as I had planned, framing how the Christian’s primary political responsibility is actually to resist the assumptions and death-dealing power of racialized neoliberal capitalism, as I argue in my upcoming book, The Anti-Greed Gospel (pre-order now!). There and in this talk, I argued that there are three primary ways in which Christian communities do that: by building communities of deep economic solidarity, by building communities of comprehensive and creative anti-violence, and by building communities of prophetic truth-telling. When I got to the final point, prophetic truth-telling, I told those present that we were going to take a moment to practice that point and I recalled the question from a few days before: How do you care for a congregation where some folks think that their candidate is God’s chosen and the other is the Antichrist? My answer was simple:
As Christians, we need to narrow our understanding of God’s chosen and expand our understanding of antichrist.
So the first thing I did was move away from the pulpit and ask those present who God’s chosen one was. Some spoke up. But I wanted to hear the voice of the Savior loudly so I asked again. And a resounding “Jesus!” arose from the crowd. At that point, I assured them that the name of Jesus is the only name that ought to exit the mouths of the people of God when they use the language of God’s chosen one. And if it is the case that we are to be united to Christ, that we are to share His priorities, and to be ultimately shaped into His image, then that necessitates that we orient ourselves against everything that is antichrist. So then what is antichrist?
Getting on a debate stage and spreading false rumors about immigrants that then incites violence against precious bearers of the image of God is antichrist. Spouting racist filth is antichrist. Vowing revenge on one’s political enemies is antichrist.
But placing on your policy page that you will make sure that the United States military continues to be “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world” is also…antichrist.
In fact, if we were to pay attention to American political history through the eyes of Black Christian thought, we would really see that our options, at least presidentially, have always been considerations of varying levels of antichrist tendencies. But we also ought to recognize that this is not the fault of the particular candidates. In order to aim to be President of the United States, one must affirm the maintenance and extension of the American empire. Some of my colleagues were reticent to refer to the US as an empire, but the ways in which the country continues to exert its military and economic power across the world and in its territories make “empire” a reasonable term. “Corporate plutocracy” is also an entirely legitimate summary of our situation. So then how should we vote, given said options?
The answer I gave was this: In a presidential election, vote for the regime in which you believe, to the best of your ability, the oppressed are least likely to die. The oppressed will die regardless, but we have the responsibility to make the wisest decision that we can, in each of our spaces, to restrain that injustice. Our systems are shaped in such a way that the poor, widow, orphan, immigrant and child are regularly trampled, but as Christians, we ought ever be discomfited by that reality.
Two temptations then present themselves: both-sidesism and withdrawal. The former is to stunt our moral reasoning and assume that because the two major parties are both subject to antichrist impulses, they are equal in their evil. That is not true. The polarization of American politics is profoundly unequal as the right has moved much more rightward than the left has moved leftward. We must do the hard work of actually naming the ways in which the major parties of American politics facilitate death and though we will not be able to fight all of them with single votes, we can fight them through collective action. Single-issue voting will not do when death and Mammon use many issues to reign.
On the other hand, in the desire to keep oneself pure from evil, one can tend to total withdrawal. Although I have deep Anabaptist sympathies and that is the best way to define my own political theology, I cannot suggest political withdrawal. Withdrawal communicates that collective action is useless. That communication is an abandonment of the world rather than an invitation to it. Each of us, insofar as we have the opportunity to shape our local, state and national landscape, has a responsibility to use that influence for the good of the needy. Failing to use it in that way is unfaithful to the Lord that bought us and commands us to love our neighbors.
Whether you vote Republican, Democrat, third party or choose not to vote in this coming presidential election, that is not the totality of your political witness. It is symptomatic of an anemic political theology to think that it is. We have responsibilities to our local and state communities as well. As is stated by the Evangelical Commitment to Simple Lifestyle, we have the responsibility to “get to know poor and oppressed people, to learn issues of injustice from them, to seek to relieve their suffering, and to include them regularly in our prayers,” especially those in our immediate vicinity. As Christians in the midst of a modern nation-state also captive to the assumptions and machinations of racialized, neoliberal and financialized capitalism, we have a responsibility not only to see the world as it is but also to imagine and form an alternative world: communities that live by the logic of the Kingdom of God, rather than the logic of the kingdoms of the world. We have the opportunity to build communities based in sharing rather than hoarding, service rather than domination, love rather than hate, truth rather than lies, and equality rather than exploitation. That’s going to require more than a vote.
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