October 2024 - Evangelicals in a Diverse Democracy

Russell Moore: Christ and a Coin-Toss Race

Posted on October 29, 2024October 30, 2024 by Russell Moore

This essay is a new contribution to a weekly series in Christianity Today.

“Here we are, right at the end, and the election is a coin toss.”

A friend said that to me just a few minutes ago, referring to the razor-thin polling margins between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. A few thousand votes one way or the other in as few as three swing states could produce radically different alternatives for the future of the country.

I wonder, though, whether as American Christians we ought to think of Election Day as a coin toss in a different way as well. Even in a more secularized society, the words “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17, ESV throughout) are still recognizable to most people. The account—from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke—recounts Jesus’ response to the question of whether to pay taxes to the Roman emperor’s regime.

Like many other Scriptures, those words have been grossly misused. They’re quoted to justify churches engaging directly in political activism (often paired with a misreading of Abraham Kuyper’s famous declaration that there is not one square inch of the universe that Jesus does not claim as “Mine”). They are also quoted to make the case for a separation of Christian conscience from public justice (often with a similarly downgraded version of Martin Luther’s idea of two kingdoms).

First, Jesus upended an artificial controversy to provoke a genuine crisis in his hearers. The question about taxes was posed by two very disparate groups—the Pharisees and the Herodians—but neither side was truly grappling with a theological dilemma. They were executing a strategy. They were humiliated by Jesus’ parables against them and so plotted “to trap him in his talk” (v. 13). This was a proxy war.

Jesus saw through the artificial controversy and the manipulative flattery with which it was framed: “Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone’s opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God” (v. 14). It was not out of naive ignorance but “knowing their hypocrisy” (v. 15) that Jesus answered.

Karen Swallow Prior: What Campaign Signs Taught Me About Being a Good Neighbor

Posted on October 22, 2024October 30, 2024 by Karen Swallow Prior

This essay is a new contribution to a weekly series by Christianity Today.

Years ago, my father taught me something about neighborliness that took a long time to take root in my own life.

When I was a teenager, the father of one of my classmates (who lived nearby) was running for local office on the ticket of the party my family never voted for. So I was surprised one day to come home and see a campaign sign for my friend’s father in our yard. But it turned out that my friend’s father simply had asked my father if he could place one of his signs in our yard, and my father had said yes. Being a hospitable neighbor was more important to my father than partisan politics or a campaign sign.

Now, all these years later, this particular lesson in neighborliness is something I’ve come to apply in my own life in a slightly different way.

Often, when we talk about loving our neighbors, we are thinking in the abstract. Perhaps we are thinking about loving neighbors on a global scale—those who live far from us, whom we encounter on short-term mission trips and exotic vacations, or fill shoe boxes for at Christmas time, or learn about on missions Sunday when we put money into a special offering. And loving our neighbors can be all these things. But just as “all politics is local,” so, in a sense, is all neighborliness local, too.

I inherited my father’s keen interest in politics. Over the course of my life, I have attended campaign rallies, canvassed door-to-door for a candidate, slapped bumper stickers on my car, worn buttons, and even run for office myself. And as soon as I became a homeowner, I also put up campaign signs on my property.

When my husband and I moved to our current home 25 years ago, each fall still found me putting up those signs on our front lawn. It took me a long time to notice that our immediate neighbors did not.

Almost all of our half dozen or more immediate neighbors were already living here when we moved in. They are all still here. That’s a lot of history, a lot of tradition, a lot of heritage.

And our neighborhood is anything but homogenous. Our house is the oldest in the neighborhood. Other houses of various sizes and styles have popped up here and there over the past century, some built decades ago, others still being built. Our neighborhood has large new homes, small doublewides, and lots of modest brick ranches. Like their homes, the people who live in them represent just about every demographic box one might be asked to check. Indeed, the diversity of our little rural corner of the country could rival the hippest of urban neighborhoods.

Claude Alexander: Pastors and Public Servants: Lead Your Neighbor As Yourself

Posted on October 16, 2024October 30, 2024 by Claude Alexander

This essay is a new contribution to a weekly series by Christianity Today.

As a pastor, I’ve found one of the main difficulties in leading faithfully and living as good neighbors is that we can’t always choose our neighbors or the context and circumstances in which we lead and live.

And in a time of tense divisiveness, global conflicts, natural disasters, and other complex crises, this sense of helplessness is nearly universal.

We have all experienced the reality of a world beyond our control—not least during the COVID-19 pandemic, when life changed for all of us. Many of us were shuttering in place and scrambling to find masks, sanitizers, and so forth, grappling with a staggering amount of uncertainty about what we could and could not do. For me personally, the pandemic was a crucible for my leadership, and one I find instructive for ministry to this day.

As a multigenerational, multisite African American congregation in Charlotte, North Carolina—one of the earliest cities to issue stay-in-place mandates—we faced multiple challenges and points of tension during the initial years of the pandemic. Our staff wrestled with the same questions many Christians did as we sought to balance our individual and congregational freedom with community responsibility.

How do we honor the value of embodied, collective public worship while simultaneously protecting our congregation, especially those most vulnerable with comorbidities? How do I negotiate concerns about the budget and potential loss of income considering my responsibility to protect the livelihood of my staff and their families? How does a congregation of our size and influence set a good example in how we operate during a public health emergency, including in our rhetoric?

Above all, I believe the pandemic—as any major crisis facing our community can—created a unique opportunity for us to demonstrate our confidence in God when every aspect of life as we know it seems threatened and compromised. And as I’ve reflected on this truth since then, I’ve gleaned insights from the life and ministry of Ezekiel about what it means to lead faithfully and live as good neighbors in a world beyond our control.

Justin Giboney: You are the Light of the Public Square

Posted on October 8, 2024October 30, 2024 by Justin Giboney

This essay is a new contribution to a weekly series by Christianity Today.

The Christian public witness has raised a voice of emancipation in American history. Our faith has provided the civic muscle to build schools for the poor and hospitals for the sick. Christians have visited the lonely and comforted the dying. The church has confronted sex trade pimps and run off neighborhood dope peddlers. It’s no exaggeration to say that no other institution in America has a comparable record of service. At our best, Christians have illuminated the way toward justice and moral order in US society.

Conversely, at our worst, American Christians have misused the church’s social and political capital. We’ve demeaned the outcast and condoned the worst elements of secular society for the sake of our own power or validation. Too often, our hymns and public action have been in conflict. We’ve lent moral authority to amoral leaders and allowed ourselves to become the prop of devious political interests.

When wielded with selflessness and sobriety, the Christian public witness can be the conscience and Good Samaritan of this nation. When driven by pride, conformity, or domination, it can trample the best American ideals and even tread over the principles of our own divine exemplar, Jesus Christ.

Our public engagement has been a powerful—and regrettably mercurial—force in the American experiment. And in this polarized moment, we must decide which side of this dual legacy we’ll continue. Will we reflect the tenacity and grace of Fannie Lou Hamer and Dorothy Day? Or will we embrace the hubris of the Christian nationalist and the opportunism of the jackleg preacher?

If the issues our nation faces today were small and superficial, believers could just play nice and mind our own business. But it’s far more complicated than that. Americans’ disagreements concern our fundamental values and the well-being of our neighbors. Debates about economics, the scope of parental rights, and life-or-death issues like health care and abortion can’t be shrugged off.

We share this democracy, and many of our positions impact other people and groups—America is truly a union. We should be respectful across political differences, but not every political perspective is as good as the next one. There are ideas and movements that deserve a very public and democratic death, which means political conflict is unavoidable and necessary. We can’t silently watch from the sidelines as Wall Street steals from the widow or social media sexually corrupts the orphan.

The question is not “Should Christians engage in public life?” but “How can Christians imitate Christ as we engage constructively in the conflicts of democracy?”

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Who is my Neighbor?

Posted on October 1, 2024October 30, 2024 by Nikki Toyama-Szeto

This essay is a new contribution to a weekly series by Christianity Today.

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My neighborhood, just outside of Washington, DC, has a strong sense of local community. I know the people on our block, and I love bumping into folks—at PTA meetings, sports outings, or the grocery store. My neighborhood has quaint traditions: We celebrate holidays with cookie exchanges. Local groups play music on front lawns in the summer. On these lovely nights when people are walking the block, I don’t see the divisions and divides that worry me when I read the news.

So I was surprised a couple of months ago to find out that I didn’t actually know many of my neighbors. One of my kids was collecting items for a service project. On a Saturday morning, we slowly walked the block, placing a flyer at each door. With half a stack of flyers left, we continued to the next block—a block I walk or drive often.

But the slowness of the task caused me to pause, to stop at each door, to see each place where people live. I noticed the numbers on the walls, the color of the doors. And I was surprised at how many homes I had never “seen” before. I was surprised, just one block away, how few of the people I knew.

Before that day, I would have called these folks my neighbors. In reality, I didn’t know my neighbors.

Throughout the Gospels, we see the exhortation to “love your neighbor as yourself” and to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37–40; Mark 12:29–31). But who is my neighbor (Luke 10:29)? And what does being a neighbor look like in a time of such polarization?

When I try to make sense of what it means to love my neighbor, I think of Acts 1:8. In this passage, Jesus exhorts his followers to bear witness to the power of his resurrection in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Jerusalem was essentially the disciples’ city. Judea was the larger region that contained their local city. Samaria was a region just next to Judea—a place that was adjacent and had a different ethnic group. And the ends of the earth were, well, everywhere else.

I use these categories of Jerusalem (the city where I am), Judea and Samaria (the region I’m in and the one next to it), and “the ends of the earth” (everyone else) to help me think about whom I consider my neighbor. I try to make sure I have neighbors in each of these groups.

Month: October 2024

Russell Moore: Christ and a Coin-Toss Race

Karen Swallow Prior: What Campaign Signs Taught Me About Being a Good Neighbor

Claude Alexander: Pastors and Public Servants: Lead Your Neighbor As Yourself

Justin Giboney: You are the Light of the Public Square

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Who is my Neighbor?

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