As we were coming home from church one Sunday, my mom commented excitedly about the pastor’s sermon. It was 1992 and the presidential race had been heating up. President George H.W. Bush was running for re-election and he had two opponents: the Democratic Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton, and billionaire businessman H. Ross Perot, who ran as an independent. Bush had been relatively popular and at first looked like he’d be cruising to an easy win. But things took a turn, Perot’s run began to siphon some of Bush’s support, and the charismatic Clinton started to become a real threat. Clinton was hounded by mutliple scandals based on sexual indiscretions. He had also famously dodged the draft, avoiding service in the Vietnam War, and had admitted to once smoking pot – though he famously said he didn’t inhale.
Bush on the other hand was as straight-laced as they come, a decorated World War II veteran who had dedicated most of his adult life to civil service. And while he was also very intelligent and articulate, he suffered from a comparative lack of charisma and relatability. You could just tell he found the idea that this crass kid could beat him for the highest office in the land was unthinkable. He would never say that though. What he did say was that this contest was a matter of character more than policy or ideological differences. Character, he said. It was a careful way of saying, “Are you going to elect the draft-dodging, word-fudging, pot smoking, womanizing power abuser, or the patriotic war hero who has devoted his life to public service?”
Of course, we know what America chose.
But that Sunday in church in 1992 we didn’t know yet. And our pastor had something to say about it. But he couldn’t quite say it. As you know, a clergy person cannot publicly endorse a political candidate without threatening their church’s tax-exempt status. I grew up in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, a denomination that historically aligns with political conservatism. We were Republican Christians – in that order. Our pastor took to the pulpit and preached long and hard on the Christian virtue of character – its importance in our personal lives, and its necessity to our communities. Hard to argue with that. And even harder to miss the message behind the message. This was what my mom appreciated: That the pastor had found a way to say the thing she believed in without actually saying it – that Christians should vote for George Bush.
Tax issues aside, the general consensus in what we would call American mainline Christianity has long been that church should not be overtly or directly political. And certainly, when the two mix, it can be problematic. What a danger it is when a religious leader uses their platform and privilege to speak conclusively about how Jesus would vote, or who is on Jesus’ side. Politicians are, after all, fallible and often times influenced by their own self-interest. And when politics is at its best it functions in compromise. It can be difficult to reconcile compromised accomplishments with the seemingly objective uncompromising truth of God.
Would Jesus have voted for George Bush, who demonstrated, decorum and intelligence, but who also had deep ties to oil companies, had been dishonest about his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, and was generally out of touch with the average working American? Or would Jesus have voted for Bill Clinton, who was deeply and openly flawed, but went jogging in public, ate Big Macs, was quick with a joke, but could also make even the lowest person feel seen and heard and cared for? Maybe Jesus was a third-party kind of guy, and would’ve voted for Perot. Would Jesus have voted at all? I know a few Christian anarchists who are adamant Jesus would not participate in our clunky, corrupt system at all.
Do you see how quickly this mental exercise can get exhausting? Better to stay out of politics altogether, isn’t it? Who are we to speak for God anyway? It’s divisive and we are here trying to create community. It is complicated and we are here trying to find peace. Simpler and cleaner to keep faith in the realm of personal prayer, hymns, and potlucks. Maybe my preacher will help me to remember to give the guy on the street a spare buck if I have it.
The first time I saw Michael Curry speak in person was at a church gathering in Indianapolis. He is a bishop in our tradition, and at the time he was speaking, he was the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Bishop Curry had recently returned from a trip to the western coast of Africa. There he had toured some of the ports from which slave ships had sailed. He had walked through the dungeons where thousands upon thousands of human captives had been held before being loaded on the ships. Bishop Curry is of African descent. Hearing him describe the connection he felt to his ancestors as he walked in their tortured footsteps was heart rending.
But according to him, the dungeons were not the most chilling part of the tour. No, for him, the most painful part was when he walked upstairs from those terrible rooms and found himself in a chapel. It was there he felt with gut-punching enormity, the complicity of the church in the global slave trade. The clergy who read their Bibles and said their prayers and preached their sermons, and shared communion, while below them, captive humans rotted in cages.
And then Bishop Curry truly shocked me. He called what he saw a failure of formation. I have never forgotten that. A failure of formation. He said that the church’s failure to condemn slavery, the church that blessed the ships that carried people to Hell, the church that at best remained silent in the face of rank cruel inhumanity, and at worst promoted it – that such a church fundamentally misunderstood the work of forming Christians.
Christians are meant to be in the process of shaping our lives like Christ. This is the actual work. This is our baptismal identity – not to fill the Christ-shaped hole inside ourselves with prayer and worship, but to shape our own lives to be more like Christ in such a way that the world is blessed and healed. To think that you can take seriously the words of Jesus, and pray the Lord’s Prayer, and share in the communion, and then idly accept the grievous inhumanity being committed in your name – this is a failure of formation.
Last month, a Maryland resident named Kilmar Abrego Garcia was arrested in an IKEA parking lot, and deported to a prison in El Salvador. His 5-year-old child was left in the car. This happened without any kind of due process. Abrego Garcia is an immigrant who is here legally and has committed no crimes. He was not accused of anything or tried for anything. Our own government has since publicly acknowledged that his arrest and deportation was because of a clerical error. A clerical error. And our government now claims they have no responsibility or ability to get him back. His wife – who is an American citizen – and their child have no idea if or when they will see him again. This was done in your name and in mine. This was done on behalf of our country.
That same month, Rumeysa Ozturk, a grad student at Tufts University was surrounded by masked agents on the streets of Massachusetts. They arrested her and, ignoring a judge’s ruling, moved her out of state to a private detention center in Louisiana. She is being held as a prisoner, though no charges have been brought against her. She has been denied legal counsel and is awaiting deportation and revocation of her visa, though she has done nothing illegal. This is happening in our name. This is how a great country acts.
For what are we being formed? Really. If you belong to a Christian community as I do, what do you believe that community is supposed to do to you? How do you expect it to transform you? Is it just supposed to make you nicer? More prayerful? The first century Christians often spoke of their Christian life as training, like one would do for a marathon, or for battle.
What have we been training for?
