The Biggest Warning Church Leaders Should Take From This Presidential Election

This election is one that we’ll be talking about for decades. The Tea Party insurgency of 2010 was a mere tremor compared to what is happening in 2016. The rise of Bernie Sanders and the dominance of Donald Trump is sending shockwaves through all political establishments. The institution of the church should take notice, too.

The number one factor driving people to Donald Trump is anger. Anger at the government, anger at the system, anger at the establishment. What the political elite thought was merely another fad, a primary protest vote, has turned into an insurgency that is shaking the political establishment to its core.

So what’s the warning to church leaders today? In the anti-establishment fervor sweeping the electorate, that bile could easily spill over into something else seen as the establishment: the American church. Evangelicals are breaking free from the voting bloc they’ve been cubby-holed into for decades and voting for someone who shares few of their values. Millennials are voting for a 74-year-old Socialist who’s telling them what they already know: the system is rigged.

I believe the fervor surrounding this election could accelerate what church leaders have been fretting about for years: declining church attendance and waning church influence. No one would dispute that the influence of the American church is waning in popular culture. The church is seen as part of the establishment, an institution on par with the government. Denominations as a whole are seeing every vital metric decline.

But I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. If you can sift through the centuries of church history and politics and go back to a dusty Judean hillside circa 33 A.D., you’ll find that when Jesus launched his movement (later known as Christianity), it was the biggest anti-establishment religious revolution his world had ever seen. Jesus didn’t come to establish a religious institution. In fact he launched a broadside against the religious establishment in place and gave religion back to the people. This is a history that many in the church today have forgotten. Jesus fought against the system; he was never a part of the establishment. When the church looks more like an institution and less like a revolution, we’ve moved onto shaky ground.

Here’s the warning: The anti-establishment political fervor sweeping the nation will continue to spill over and erode the establishment of the American church. For Christianity to survive and thrive, we need to go back to our roots and rediscover and embrace the revolutionary concepts of Jesus and the early church that fought against the establishment of the day and changed the world.