I was raised in a religious tradition with a very specific understanding of the relationship between church and politics. The expectation: keep politics out of church.
Presumably there are many reasons mainline Protestant churches by-and-large adopted this philosophy, but chief among them was an overall desire to hold together memberships that included people on both sides of the partisan line and avoid the rancor that sometimes comes with partisan politics.
Also somewhere rumbling beneath it all, an unsubstantiated concern about losing one’s tax-exempt status.
The problems with this faulty separation of the political from the life of faith are manifold. I think it’s a misunderstanding of the relationship between faith community and the polis, and honestly no church has ever lost its tax-exempt status for endorsing political candidates.1
For the most part they have also been over-shadowed by the problems we see in conservative Christianity today where religion is wedded to one party—the Republicans—and also wedded to a heresy, Christian nationalism.
My friend Angela Denker journals the wedding of nationalism and Christianity in her book Red State Christians. As she traveled the United States, she attended many church services where the Pledge of Allegiance, the American flag, and all the trappings of nationalism took center stage and Jesus, presumably at the heart of Christianity, took a back seat. In these same churches, although some leaders on the edges expressed concern at drawing too close in support of candidates like Donald Trump, the majority saw and continue to see no problems with aligning the church with one political party and endorsing candidates from that party in their pulpits.
I remember a few years back an Episcopal colleague of mine “accidentally” received an RSVP to a prayer meeting at a church in Rogers. The governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, was gathering with pastors from the region before he gave an evening talk at the church against the legalization of medical marijuana.
I decided to attend the prayer meeting, and found myself at one point awkwardly laying hands on the shoulder of the governor while all those around me prayed out loud how thankful they were to have such a good, conservative governor in office. It rankled me. It still rankles me.
But I still contend, having sat in that space, that although we can clearly see the abuse of a too facile alignment between Christianity and Conservative party politics (and now an alignment between Christianity and one man in that party, Donald Trump), nevertheless I do not believe the cure for this disease of too much politics in the church is facile separation.
I make this case in the following way:
On a practical level, if the left (or the liberals) detach religion from the political, they lose much of their organizing power. It divests them from organizing communities and hyper-individualizes faith and politics.
Such a separation also concedes a point the conservatives make, that if you are Christian you must be Republican. But that’s just not true. So why do we separate religion from the Democrat or Socialist movements to such a degree that we almost concede the point in practice?
The church’s place is not on one side of the dualistic church-state divide. The church is neither a religious nor a political movement. Rather, the church is a public movement that transcends both private organizations and government authority by building and extending “rhizomatic” (along the lines of Deleuze) relationships based on justice.2
If in fact the church is a public movement that serves in the struggle against systemic injustice, it will necessarily need to align itself with any and all comrades in that struggle. This can include at different times corporate leaders, political candidates, other religious organizations, other religions, non-profits, etc.
If the church is a public movement of this sort, it can and should receive politicians and candidates into its places of worship and other community events, and do so keeping in mind its transcendent role. This last point is not easy to put into practice and can be co-opted, but just because politicians will strive to make their political points doesn’t mean the church should necessarily exclude them. To do so is to push to the secular what really ought to stay close to the sacred and the potential for transformation.
“The public is a new sacred space for the church’s ministry of justice and peace” (Ilsup Ahn). As such the church, and in particular the progressive church of the 21st century, will need to explore this new sacred space and discover how to impact the political in transcendent ways that are not beholden to nationalism or strictly partisan politics.
So I’ll offer an example of how we attempted to do this recently at our local congregation. On Saturday evening the Democrat gubernatorial candidate for Arkansas, Chris Jones, called and asked if he could visit our church Sunday morning and share some words. I quickly jumped on text with our church council and discovered they were all essentially (even enthusiastically) in favor of the idea, with the one caveat that no one from the church should endorse Chris Jones from the pulpit or in any way as church.
So we called his campaign folks back, let them know he was welcome and that he could have 10 minutes to share some words with us. We also invited him to come early for our Parish Meeting time so he’d have the chance to meet and talk with some of our people.
Chris Jones is a man with experience in multiple fields and also pastor and an all around warm human being, so he had a lot of insights to share in his ten minutes that were wonderfully focused around Scripture and neighbor love. The only overtly political thing he said during his talk was mention his web site if you wanted to learn more about his campaign.
But here’s what Chris Jones got to see in action on one Sunday morning. He witnessed the baptism of a young trans woman. He was invited to stay for a Marshallese manit day meal thanking our congregation for our partnership with the Marshallese community. He saw the style and shape of worship of a progressive church in the South (including a handbell choir AND a new blues composition about Saul and David). He brought a caring energy to the space, a listening ear. He made the congregation feel honored through kind words. In other words, the visit opened a relationship.
Now I ask myself. What if his opponent asked to visit? He’s running against Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Sanders is very unlikely to visit a church like ours because I don’t think it would play well with her base, but if she did ask to come to GSLC, our council thought we’d extend the same kind of offer we extended to Chris. She could speak. We’d like her to listen. I have a feeling some in our congregation would really bend her ear.
She’d see the baptism of a young trans woman. She’d hear the stories of the Marshallese people. She’d get to see the life of a progressive church in the South.
Do you see my point?
I don’t think we’d extend this invitation simply out of a presumed fairness. Chris Jones and Sarah Huckabee Sanders aren’t the same, not at all, and I can be honest and tell you that I find both her platform and her campaign hateful of and disregarding of communities I care deeply about. Nevertheless, if the church is just separate from and doesn’t connect with these candidates, then we leave them free-floating in this fake secular space with the impression that our way of following the gospel of Jesus somehow doesn't “play” in their political decision-making.
But we know it does, right? I mean, the next governor of this state will have a greater impact on vulnerable populations than anything any non-profit or church can accomplish. There’s really no contest. If you want to love your neighbor you have to work to elect political candidates and structure political systems that benefit your neighbor.3
All of which leads me to believe the appropriate response of the church to the overtures of politicians is a complicated “yes” rather than a mistaken “no.” To partition the church off from the political is a spiritualizing error that cedes power to conservative Christianity. To wed the church to one very narrow nationalism and regressive form of politics is idolatrous.
To bring the church and the political together in public opens space for complicating change. It will require a kind of tenacity and vulnerability on the part of the church because it will make many who think their political views are “private” uncomfortable or even angry. But it is a necessity, because the political will never include in policy or voice that which it doesn’t even know. It has historically been part of the work of the church to steward the stories of vulnerable peoples, the cross of Christ being the emblem of that. In the absence of such stories, the political will go the way it so often does, bought by moneyed interests and beholden to glory.
Ok, in the whole history of the Johnson Amendment since 1954 there was one church that lost it’s tax exempt status, but that still basically proves the point.
For more on rhizomatic organizing in relationship to public church see Ilsup Ahn’s The Church In The Public: A Politics Of Engagement For A Cruel and Indfferent Age.
It should be noted that the political is not the only systemic power structure the church is called to struggle with. Equally if not even more important is the economy and the impact of neoliberalism. In a state like Arkansas, it’s not just the politicians. It’s also Walmart.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this! I grew up in a church that was so paranoid about the politics/501c3 thing, and so that's EXACTLY where my brain went yesterday morning. Thank you for educating me on the topic and for sharing your logic of why it's not just allowable but good practice.
(Small correction - I think Chris is PhD in urban planning...as well as a rocket scientist, preacher, former nonprofit executive director, if that's not enough!...and that his wife Jerrilyn is the MD...and professor, and veteran, and and and....) :D
LINO = Lutheran is name only. So sad.