Russellings of the Spirit

Sometimes they seem to go together like…

… anchovies and marshmallows, or

… toddlers and Harleys, or

… armadillos and highways, or

… two other things that really, really don’t go together at all.

And no, I am not talking about Joe Biden and Donald Trump. I am talking about faith and politics. 

I mean, just look at these two! Politics is so very… OF this world. It happens right in the middle of the sloppy “sausage-making” of all the laws and policies that govern our lives together. 

In the often-unseemly world of politics, heads roll, dreams die, spirits wilt. Fortunes (and reputations) are made or lost… certainly altered… forever by the single stroke of a pen. It is an arena rife with name-calling, cheating, character assassination, graft and fraud.

YUCK!

Faith, conversely, purports to offer each of us a platform from which to take a higher, loftier perhaps, more principled relationship to the world around us. It invites us, in the words of Saint Paul, to, “… look not at what can be seen, but at what cannot be seen…” (2 Corinthians 4:18, NRSV) as the way to secure our footing. 

Like I said… armadillos and anchovies.

But are these two realms really so incompatible after all?

For the rest of this post – and maybe lapping over into one or two additional posts – I would like to try and answer three basic questions: first, IS THERE a relationship between faith and politics? Second, SHOULD THERE BE a relationship between them (whether there is one or not), and finally, what should that relationship LOOK LIKE… assuming there is and should be a relationship.

During my time serving as the pastor of several different local churches, I regularly heard members of the congregation say something like, “Faith and politics don’t mix.” Sometimes the comment was much more pointed than that. It was more like, “Pastor… I’d sure appreciate it if you’d just keep your politics out of it and just focus on preaching the WORD OF GOD!”

And in a very real sense, I had to agree with them. It would be utterly misguided for anyone who calls him or herself a follower of Jesus Christ (especially a pastor!) to promote the idea that the REAL savior of humankind is a card-carrying Republican or Democrat. 

Our hope – as Jesus reminds us – should only be built on the solid rock of God’s eternal promises. (Matthew 7:24-27). 

And yet, there is this central, unmistakable fact that none of us can avoid; faith and politics both have to do with LIVING OUR LIVES. 

These strange bedfellows both concern themselves with how you and I THINK… how we TREAT one another… how we MAKE DECISIONS… and how we set our PRIORITIES.  

They both claim they are based on a set of VALUES. They both claim that a system of MORALITY lies at the center of their work.

And it should not come as any great surprise when I tell you that even the most deeply spirit-centered, faith-based people I have met also have some pretty strongly held political views, too. 

We may not like it. It might feel “icky” at times. But whether we like it or not, faith and politics DO have a connection to one another. It is a connection we can trace just about as far back as time itself.

Moses and Pharaoh, anyone? 

A much more intriguing question to ask might be, “What kind of relationship should faith and politics have?”

But maybe we will leave just that one for another time.

Abundant blessings;