There are a significant number of people who voted for Obama and Trump, mainly because they wanted someone -- anyone -- from outside the System to shake it up. Historian Peter Turchin talks about the current struggle between 2 elites, the insiders and the outsiders, and how they each try and enlist the lower classes. I am trying to say that your point is well taken, that this isn't simply the hateful racist nationalists against us good guys. We are failing to see how the establishment has failed so many people that they started looking elsewhere. (A point Ezra Klein makes in his new book, Abundance.) A lot of people voted against Biden and for whomever was on the other ballot line, who happened to be Trump. As much as I despise Trump, many see him as an anti-establishment figure. (Not really paying much attention perhaps to what he is actually for.)
“Pastors need to take an honest, humble posture and ask: why would someone in my church vote this way?” Why, given the vocation to ordained ministry and the vows that clergy take, is this the question that clergy should be asking? The intervening logic seems to assume that a given political position is the only legitimate Christian response. It also presupposes that clergy can divine the motives of their congregants. I realize that the article offers this as the reasonable alternative to clergy who conclude their parishioners are benighted. But such are the alternatives when clergy imagine that they are the ultimate arbiters of the civic sphere rather than witnesses to the work of God in Christ.
If you cannot listen to people who vote differently than you, as a genuinely interested neighbor, long enough to find out what issues or situations motivated them to do so, then how on earth can you counsel them spiritually? Accusing people of sins you don’t know they committed, and then refusing to absolve them, to boot, is abuse of the office.
To the 14,000 Afghan people who were our allies during the Afghanistan war, and who have had their visas revoked and told to return to certain death in Afghanistan, every Trump vote was a threat. The last time an office holder held his hand out to the GOP to work together - specifically Obama - they didn’t just bite his hand, they chewed their way up to the elbow. I believe your essay is sweeping under the rug the real consequences of voting for a man who sent a mob to the Capitol building to overthrow a legitimate election, and who voted for him again. OK, his voters don’t see themselves as white nationalists, but if they vote for one, if they voted for someone who stands in opposition to everything found in the Sermon on the Mount, then precisely who are they? And why should they not be responsible for their decisions that rock the world of so many people? “Making nice” with these people have done zero to alleviate the suffering their politicians inflict. Do you have a Plan B to suggest?
Bravo! We need more of this nuance. Anything less means creating new forms of enemies that are flesh and blood, rather than the principalities and powers
You make some mighty fine points, Pastor Dennis. I've come to the mind that the leadership of my Episcopal Church is much more passonate about railing against President Trump than turning around the existential decline of the national church. Trump is doing what he promised against all odds. I applaud the 70 percent of protestant christians who voted for him with clear eyes about about his future performance based on the 20-20 hindsight of his first term.
I don’t think it’s responsible to give people who voted for Trump in 2024 - regardless of their reasons - when he’s been on the national political stage for a decade, four of those as President and implementing policies that by any objective measure are anti-Christian - so much benefit of the doubt at this point. In 2016, sure. Now? January 6th should have been a dealbreaker for literally every American. It wasn’t, and that apparently includes almost half of supposedly progressive churchgoers.
There’s a line at which compassion turns into unearned absolution. The longer we let people get away with rubber stamping a man with openly authoritarian ambitions, the worse this all gets. I agree that public shaming isn’t effective or desired. It shuts people down when they feel attacked. What I do want is accountability. Mainline churchgoers are some of the most highly educated Americans. They know that their vote would likely have consequences they did not intend. That much is evident now, if it wasn’t before the election. I want to ask people if they’re really okay with this, and if so, why do they sit in the pews of churches which it would seem don’t reflect their values? Do they mean to tell me that the church I attend, UCC, in which many trans Christians find refuge, voted 51% for a president who is enacting basically cut and paste Nuremberg laws against the trans community? Am I supposed to accept an excuse of “well I may have voted for a transphobic president, but I’m not personally transphobic” as though there is any meaningful difference to the persecution we now face?
I’m sorry but compassion without accountability gets us nowhere as a society. People are smart enough to analyze these issues in depth and recognize their own trespasses, and we do a disservice to people to infantilize them as though they know not what they do and have no intellectual agency. We need to treat adults like adults who are expected to know right from wrong and expected to act accordingly as part of our social contract. And ask them that if they really don’t agree with what is going on, what are they going to do about it, to help clean up this mess?
I agree with you to large degree. While reading the OP I was thinking, if they’re not closeted Nationalists, racists or etc., they were at a minimum ok with supporting those who are. I do think the pastoral “not letting them get away with it” is to take us as a congregation deeper into the heart of Jesus and caring about what Jesus cares about. We need to focus on issues and policies. Who they voted for is in the past while illegal transportation of legal immigrants to foreign gulags is happened today.
There are a significant number of people who voted for Obama and Trump, mainly because they wanted someone -- anyone -- from outside the System to shake it up. Historian Peter Turchin talks about the current struggle between 2 elites, the insiders and the outsiders, and how they each try and enlist the lower classes. I am trying to say that your point is well taken, that this isn't simply the hateful racist nationalists against us good guys. We are failing to see how the establishment has failed so many people that they started looking elsewhere. (A point Ezra Klein makes in his new book, Abundance.) A lot of people voted against Biden and for whomever was on the other ballot line, who happened to be Trump. As much as I despise Trump, many see him as an anti-establishment figure. (Not really paying much attention perhaps to what he is actually for.)
“Pastors need to take an honest, humble posture and ask: why would someone in my church vote this way?” Why, given the vocation to ordained ministry and the vows that clergy take, is this the question that clergy should be asking? The intervening logic seems to assume that a given political position is the only legitimate Christian response. It also presupposes that clergy can divine the motives of their congregants. I realize that the article offers this as the reasonable alternative to clergy who conclude their parishioners are benighted. But such are the alternatives when clergy imagine that they are the ultimate arbiters of the civic sphere rather than witnesses to the work of God in Christ.
If you cannot listen to people who vote differently than you, as a genuinely interested neighbor, long enough to find out what issues or situations motivated them to do so, then how on earth can you counsel them spiritually? Accusing people of sins you don’t know they committed, and then refusing to absolve them, to boot, is abuse of the office.
To the 14,000 Afghan people who were our allies during the Afghanistan war, and who have had their visas revoked and told to return to certain death in Afghanistan, every Trump vote was a threat. The last time an office holder held his hand out to the GOP to work together - specifically Obama - they didn’t just bite his hand, they chewed their way up to the elbow. I believe your essay is sweeping under the rug the real consequences of voting for a man who sent a mob to the Capitol building to overthrow a legitimate election, and who voted for him again. OK, his voters don’t see themselves as white nationalists, but if they vote for one, if they voted for someone who stands in opposition to everything found in the Sermon on the Mount, then precisely who are they? And why should they not be responsible for their decisions that rock the world of so many people? “Making nice” with these people have done zero to alleviate the suffering their politicians inflict. Do you have a Plan B to suggest?
💯
Bravo! We need more of this nuance. Anything less means creating new forms of enemies that are flesh and blood, rather than the principalities and powers
You make some mighty fine points, Pastor Dennis. I've come to the mind that the leadership of my Episcopal Church is much more passonate about railing against President Trump than turning around the existential decline of the national church. Trump is doing what he promised against all odds. I applaud the 70 percent of protestant christians who voted for him with clear eyes about about his future performance based on the 20-20 hindsight of his first term.
I don’t think it’s responsible to give people who voted for Trump in 2024 - regardless of their reasons - when he’s been on the national political stage for a decade, four of those as President and implementing policies that by any objective measure are anti-Christian - so much benefit of the doubt at this point. In 2016, sure. Now? January 6th should have been a dealbreaker for literally every American. It wasn’t, and that apparently includes almost half of supposedly progressive churchgoers.
There’s a line at which compassion turns into unearned absolution. The longer we let people get away with rubber stamping a man with openly authoritarian ambitions, the worse this all gets. I agree that public shaming isn’t effective or desired. It shuts people down when they feel attacked. What I do want is accountability. Mainline churchgoers are some of the most highly educated Americans. They know that their vote would likely have consequences they did not intend. That much is evident now, if it wasn’t before the election. I want to ask people if they’re really okay with this, and if so, why do they sit in the pews of churches which it would seem don’t reflect their values? Do they mean to tell me that the church I attend, UCC, in which many trans Christians find refuge, voted 51% for a president who is enacting basically cut and paste Nuremberg laws against the trans community? Am I supposed to accept an excuse of “well I may have voted for a transphobic president, but I’m not personally transphobic” as though there is any meaningful difference to the persecution we now face?
I’m sorry but compassion without accountability gets us nowhere as a society. People are smart enough to analyze these issues in depth and recognize their own trespasses, and we do a disservice to people to infantilize them as though they know not what they do and have no intellectual agency. We need to treat adults like adults who are expected to know right from wrong and expected to act accordingly as part of our social contract. And ask them that if they really don’t agree with what is going on, what are they going to do about it, to help clean up this mess?
I agree with you to large degree. While reading the OP I was thinking, if they’re not closeted Nationalists, racists or etc., they were at a minimum ok with supporting those who are. I do think the pastoral “not letting them get away with it” is to take us as a congregation deeper into the heart of Jesus and caring about what Jesus cares about. We need to focus on issues and policies. Who they voted for is in the past while illegal transportation of legal immigrants to foreign gulags is happened today.
No, some of them are uncloseted Christian nationalists.
Just reading about Thomas Aquinas. I think his position on common sense is needed again. Perhaps Leo XIV might revive the idea.