I grew up in a politically active home. My parents were strong Democrats who choose careers in the non-profit arena. They were on their own and together committed to being knowledgeable and engaged. A campaign poster declaring “For the People and the Environment: Merson for Congress” hung prominently as a piece of art in the hallway of my childhood home for everyone who entered to see. As a child, my brother and I often accompanied my mom around the streets of our town as she campaigned for school board candidates. And in third grade, I remember how proud I was to bring in my homemade poster encouraging people to vote for Michael Dukakis. I knew that my parents believed in helping others, in equity and equality and in protecting our world.
But then something happened to mess with the political water I was raised to swim in: I became a Christian. I was a teenager, and this was yet another piece of life I was forced to rethink in light of this new-found faith. If there was one thing I understood immediately, even at that young age, it was that following Jesus had the power to flip everything I thought and believed in upside down. By signing up to be on “Team Jesus” I understood that my allegiance in everything was now to Him and to His Word. The message I internalized was that there was now a new set of rules and in order to get an “A” in Jesus class I needed to cram to learn those rules and be sure to follow every single one of them with absolute consistency and precision.
As my 18th birthday approached, and I was on the verge of being able to exercise my 15th amendment (well really my 19th amendment) right, I was faced with the question: how am I supposed to live out my faith in the realm of politics? I loved and trusted my parents. I knew their hearts. I knew they weren’t the “crazy left-wing liberals” many of the mature Christians mentors in my life talked about with great passion. And yet the clear message I got from MANY Christian sources was this: “if you want to be faithful to Jesus, you need to vote in a way that keeps “those dangerous people” out of our capital building, our white house and especially our courts.” There was of course more, but we will save that for some other blog posts.
I felt so conflicted. I got some of the arguments the respected Christians made from a biblical standpoint AND I thought there were definitely things about my parent’s politics that I still agreed with…also from a biblical standpoint. I saw corruption on both sides. I saw hypocrisy on both sides. I saw things I believed in deeply on both sides. There were lots of issues where I simply didn’t feel equipped to make a good decision, and frankly was terrified of making the wrong one. And there I stood in the middle—a political orphan with no home to rest my head. So where was I to go with that? I knew how hard women in the past had fought to give me the right to vote, to engage in the political conversation. But I didn’t feel like I had a horse in the game. So, what then?
I believe there are two extremes that Christians can fall into when it comes to the way we live out our faith in the arena of politics...
The first is the most obvious because it is all over the place right now. That extreme is to so combine our faith and our politics that we start to blur the lines. What may have initially been a politics emerging out of faith, has become so strongly embedded in a person that they start believing their politics as much as they believe their Bible. When abuses are committed, when unbiblical policies are offered by the leaders of that party, there is a blind acceptance, because the eye of discernment has been rendered inoperable as the lines between theology and policy have blurred. This extreme is the belief that politics are primary. It is a unity between political party and Christian belief that is unbreakable.
This was not the extreme I fell into.
I fell into the opposite extreme: total disconnection. Because I didn’t feel like I had a true home in the political realm I committed to make my home elsewhere. I decided that politics simply did not matter. I would vote…every four years…for the president…but the rest of the time I stayed away. I justified my lack of involvement by saying things like: “My activism is in the spiritual realm” and “I will be more effective one-on-one” and “why focus on politics when I can focus on eternal salvation?” It all sounded good to me…at the time. It all sounded right to me…at the time.
But over time, God would burst into my bubble of security and arrogance with a feeling in my gut that something wasn’t right. I would say “I don’t need to do anything here. I will pray because prayer is the most effective thing I can possibly offer.” And in one sense that was totally true. There is nothing more powerful than prayer, because there is no one more powerful than God. But then, when I looked to the Scriptures, I realized that in general, that was not typically how God worked.
I thought of the story of the Israelites in Exodus 17 when the Amalekites came and attacked them at Rephidim. Moses’ response was this: “Moses said to Joshua, ‘Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.” (Exodus 17:9) And that was exactly what they did. There were men on the ground fighting the battle with swords and there were men on the mountain praying. When Moses’ arms grew tired, Aaron and Hur held them up for him. There was fighting. There was prayer.
I also thought of the story of the rebuilding of the wall in Jerusalem under Nehemiah’s leadership. As the wall is being built up, their enemies become angry and hurl insults and threats in their direction. And in that moment, Nehemiah’s response is similar to that of Moses:
“’Hear us, our God, for we are despised. Turn their insults back on their own heads. Give them over as plunder in a land of captivity. Do not cover up their guilt or blot out their sins from your sight, for they have thrown insults in the face of the builders.’ So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height, for the people worked with all their heart.” (Nehemiah 4:4-6)
As the wall gets higher and stronger, the opposition gets fiercer. And together, their enemies plot to fight against them and stir up trouble. And again, the response is two-fold: “But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat” (Nehemiah 4:9). There was a practical response. There was a spiritual response.
So, what was it that shook me out of this belief that I could live a life of faith that utterly ignored the political sphere?
It was John Lewis’ funeral.
My mom called me late that morning to remind me that it was about to begin. She thought it would be a good thing for my kids to watch with me. I agreed. So, I gathered the kids and we began to watch. I can’t explain exactly what happened to my soul as eulogist after eulogist stepped to the pulpit; as Scripture was read, as stories were told, as prayers were prayed, and as hymns and songs were sung. I felt like my heart was being drawn like a magnet. I felt like my spirit was being lifted. I felt like I was at church for the first time in months.
And as I listened, I remembered a paper I had written for my Church History class in seminary about the Freedom Rides of the 1960’s. So many of the stories of the people who risked their lives for the sake of racial equality; for the sake of the unburial of and recognition of God’s breath and likeness in all people had deeply moved me. But I would never forget one story from that time in our history of civil rights. It was a story about John Lewis.
After the funeral was over, I searched my computer deep into folders I hadn’t visited in years and found the paper I had written. And there it was: the story that still lingered in me all those years later. It was 1961. Lewis, a nineteen-year-old seminary student, had joined this movement in which white and black people rode together on segregated buses in the deep south. At this particular moment in the movement, some of the riders had just been beaten by police in Birmingham so badly that at least three of them required hospitalization. John Lewis was one of them. Taylor Branch reports the scene like this in his book Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963:
“John Lewis walked into [Solomon] Seay’s house fresh from the hospital, with a bandaged head, and received an emotional welcome in proportion to his wounds and his determination. He announced that even the two students left in the hospital were ready to go on.” [1]
I know there were many who were likely appalled by “how political” Lewis’ funeral was. Eulogists were recounting policies. They were talking about his work and not just his private life. They were even telling people to vote! How do these things fit in a funeral?!
This answer to this question, I believe is the answer to what it looks like to practically lift one’s hands and send the troops; to practically pray and post a guard.
John Lewis’ participation in the Freedom Rides and in the Civil Rights movement in general were not his way of entering into the political realm. Rather, they were a way to express and live out his Christian beliefs about the dignity of all human life and the necessity of that being acknowledged and protected in our nation. In the words of historian David Chappell:
“Lewis recalled feeling that the first sit-ins, in 1960, were ‘like a holy crusade.’ The dinner before his first Freedom Ride in 1961 ‘was like the Last Supper….’ And after that ‘Last Supper’ was over and Lewis began to feel the burn of the mission, he said that, ‘The hardest thing about being in jail was explaining to his mother that he was “acting according to my Christian faith and my conviction.”’ Lewis’s almost legendary willingness to get up after repeated jailings and beatings and go back for more is hard to account for without that faith and conviction.”[2]
Ultimately John Lewis’ faith did not lead him into the pulpit. Rather the convictions his faith instilled in him led him to become a protestor. They led him to become a leader in the fight for civil rights through the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and then the Voter Education Project. And finally, they led him to the United States Congress.
I do not believe that John Lewis abandoned his faith to pursue politics. I do not believe that he became so in love with and trusting in his political views that he no longer wanted or needed Jesus. Just as his love of Jesus led him onto those buses, so the love of Jesus led him into that office. He knew what God said about our shared humanity. And while he may have initially intended to voice that truth through the pulpit, as a minister, his experience taught him something else:
God can change countless hearts on a particular issue, but when laws are there that oppose the work God is doing in human hearts, those laws need to change.
As I listened to the words that were spoken at Lewis’ funeral, I had no doubt from the things I knew of his life that he was likely listening in heaven, head nodding with tears of joy streaming. His life was about his faith. His politics were about his faith. That’s why God put him here for this time—to work for biblical justice, through secular politics. He was a man who lifted his hands and went into battle. He was a man who prayed and posted a guard.
We as Christians cannot claim that one party is “the Christian party.” There are policies and assumptions on both sides of the center that fall in line with Scriptural commands and the heart of Jesus. And there are likewise policies and assumptions that do not. What we can do, and I believe what we must do, is seek to engage our faith in politics in this third way. We need to pray. We need to act. We need to ask God what we are to do in the spiritual realm and how that is the look in the material world. We need to lift our hands and we need to go into battle. We need to pray and post a guard.
I choose this third way. How about you?
[1] Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63. New York: Simon and Schuster Inc., 1988. P. 450
[2] Chappell, David L. A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004. P. 75-76.