Will the Election Change the Church?

By now we have heard all the commentators’ nautical metaphors for Tuesday’s election results. It was a “sea change,” a “tidal wave,” even a “tsunami” that swept congressional Democrats out of office and Republican candidates into office. America will be different, we are told. The Republican victors say it will be better. The defeated Democrats fear that it will be much worse.

Will the church be different? I hope not. It is built on Jesus Christ, who has established “a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Hebrews 12:28). Jesus himself said that earthly powers would come and go, but he would be with us “always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

Church officials who identify the Body of Christ with any political party, whether Republican or Democrat or any other, almost always come to regret that compromise. Political leaders often fail to fulfill their extravagant promises. Sometimes they engage in conduct that embarrasses the church and alienates people it is trying to reach. And, in the end, they lose their power and are succeeded by others of a different stripe.

Many conservative evangelical Christians have learned this lesson in recent years. (I hope they don’t forget it.) Over-identifying the church with the Republican Party was a mistake. When people became disillusioned with George W. Bush and his party, they also turned their hostility against the religious group most identified with that party. 

Now religious liberals face a similar situation. They invested a lot of hope—too much hope—in Barack Obama and his “progressive” agenda to change America. And it turns out that a majority of Americans—at least those who voted this year—don’t want to be changed in all the ways that President Obama had in mind. Will the religious left learn to be more cautious in its identification of the church and the Gospel with a single political party and ideological orientation?

The early signs are not encouraging. Ironically, this past Monday—the eve of the election—our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons was among a group of National Council of Churches (NCC) leaders who visited President Obama at the White House. The White House did not publicize the meeting; however, the NCC was quick to issue a press release emphasizing the political context: “On Election Eve, Top U.S. Christian Officials Meet with President Obama, Speak for Americans Who Are Struggling.”

The NCC and its leading denominations, including the PCUSA, have consistently backed President Obama’s major domestic initiatives, including health care reform, “cap and trade” regulations to prevent predicted global warming, tightened financial regulations, and greatly increased spending for government social programs. In this White House meeting, even as American voters were preparing to send a message of dissatisfaction with the president, the NCC leaders doubled down in their steadfast support of him. According to the NCC press release, they “thanked President Obama for passage of historic health reform legislation and robust engagement with the faith community.” This was quite a contrast to the same church officials’ sharp criticisms of George W. Bush and complaints that he was ignoring them.

The NCC leaders also had words for the president’s opponents. They expressed concern about how “political campaign rhetoric has descended into fear-mongering and divisiveness in the past few months.” A Religion News Service report said, “The Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, offered Bible verses that speak against ‘disorder and wickedness’ amid concerns over the country’s rancorous political climate.”

It doesn’t appear that the NCC delegation named who was engaging in this “fear-mongering and divisiveness,” but their complaint certainly tracks closely with the Democratic “spin” on electoral results in 2008 and 2010. In 2008, when Obama and the Democrats won, we didn’t hear a lot of oldline Protestant church officials lamenting about how “fear-mongering and divisiveness” were carrying the day. Instead we heard hallelujahs that the American people had been inspired by a vision of hope and were ready to step forward into a more just future. But now, when Republicans are winning, these church officials are suddenly worried that American voters have been consumed by fear and anger and all other kinds of un-Christian sentiments. Doesn’t this bit of pop psychology—Americans are schizophrenics, acting as the virtuous Dr. Jekyll when they vote Democrat and the vicious Mr. Hyde when they vote Republican—sound suspiciously partisan?

It seems to me, from a Christian perspective, that the truth is more complex than this simplistic diagnosis allows. Of course, our fallen human nature is often gripped by fear and anger. Ambitious politicians sense this vulnerability, and they make powerful and effective appeals to it. Republicans certainly play on people’s fear and anger. But so do Democrats, including President Obama on occasion. Fear and anger at Barack Obama may have motivated many voters in 2010. Likewise, however, fear and anger at George W. Bush motivated many voters in 2008.

On the other hand, by God’s common grace, people are capable of looking past their selfish interests and aiming for higher ideals of freedom, justice, and peace. This kind of positive vision inspired many who voted Democratic in 2008. But it also inspired many who voted Republican in 2010. Neither virtue nor vice is distributed on a partisan basis. Church leaders have forgotten their basic theology if they think otherwise.

The NCC, according its press release, “represents 45 million people and 100,000 congregations” in praising President Obama. You and I are included among those 45 million. The fact that many Presbyterians and others don’t share their church officials’ partisan identification does not seem to count. A Pew Forum poll right before the election showed that white oldline Protestants supported Republicans over Democrats by a wide 55 to 36 percent margin. (Here’s the IRD press release on the poll results.) The NCC leaders did not have their claimed constituency behind them. Perhaps that’s why the White House did not make a big deal about their visit on election eve. Ironically, the NCC was more politically focused than the Obama White House!

None of those poll results tell us who is right. It’s quite possible that all those Republican-voting church members are indeed misled by their burning anger and fear. And the Obama-embracing church officials may indeed be visionary prophets of a more just society, as they imagine themselves to be. But it’s also possible that the reverse could be true.

That’s why the church should stay espoused to Christ alone—not to any political party. Jesus Christ and his message are the same “yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). Christian faith is a steady confidence in God that does not ebb and flow with the election cycles. It does not exclaim, “Hallelujah!” when one party wins and lament “All is lost!” when the other wins.

Let us hope and pray that this election, momentous as it may be politically, will not change the church. May the church be changed only by the One to whom it belongs—the One into whose image it is our destiny to be changed.