Faith and Politics – Ultimate Hope

I think it was just before the 2004 elections, I remember hearing about a church up in North Carolina where the pastor told his congregation – if you are not going to vote Republican, you’re not really Christian, and you may as well leave this church now. Can you imagine? I mean is God a Republican? Or, is God a Democrat for that matter? Can you reduce God to a political party? 

I remember a time in seminary when almost the opposite happened. Someone posted a note on the community bulletin board that asked, “Can you be a Republican and still be a Christian?” 

Someone wrote back, “All things are possible with God.”  And then someone else wrote, “Be careful, my friend. You are making an awfully small god. 

Have you ever noticed how we do that sometimes? We try to make God in our own image. Or we try to line God up with our own agenda. We’ve got to be humble enough to know God is bigger.

I like what Methodist pastor James Howell wrote due to his commitment to Christ: “I cannot stake out some dogged allegiance to any particular political arrangement, Republican, Democrat, conservative, or liberal. All these are human, fallible lunges by fallible people, trying to cope with chaotic life in a fallen world. No party, no candidate, no political line of reasoning can command my absolute zeal.”  

Amen to that!

We are blessed to live in a country where we have the freedom to worship, the freedom to vote, the freedom to serve others, and we have the freedom to speak up, to critique, and to engage.  

My prayer is that you would embrace that freedom…without ever denying it to others.  Absolutely let your faith inform your politics.  Pray about it. Spend some time reading the Gospels. Keep an open heart. Pray again about it! Get involved in the process, vote, debate, discuss, engage. But may you do it in a way that God would be glorified!

Let us pray: We pray O God, for our country in this election year. In spite of our political differences help us to listen deeply to one another, help us listen deeply to you. Where we disagree with one another – may we do so in a spirit of love. May we, who seek to follow you, be the salt and the levain and the light that reflects your gospel. By the way that we live, by the way that we speak, by the way that we work and play and interact – use our very lives to bring hope and mercy and joy to a world desperately in need. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.