A Letter to the Church

Growing up, I was grateful to be in a church that by and large avoided prioritizing politics. The church is first and foremost the visible union of those in Christ, imperfectly signifying the ultimate union of, I sincerely hope, all people in Christ in eternity. Given this, I think it is important for churches to avoid becoming subsumed in the sturm und drang of political debate, because they need to minister to all souls and model a community in which even enemies are neighbors, and no neighbors are shunned.

We must love our neighbors in the reality in which they live, however, and throughout history lives are impacted in many ways by events, including those subject to political controversy. When a natural disaster falls on those around us, we should not ask their political views before helping them. In the same manner, when something akin to a natural disaster in its effect falls on our neighbors, we should not avoid helping them out of a desire to remain politically neutral.

We are presently living through a moment where those who carefully consider both history and the events of the day, from across the political spectrum of mainstream American politics that we grew up with (if you grew up at any point in the seventy years after 1945), recognize as just such a calamity. I do not want the church to endorse political candidates, or commentate on elections; but I think in a moment when institutions are collapsing into a nascent authoritarian lawlessness, and innocent human beings are being wrongfully imprisoned, abused, and discriminated against, we lose the right to act as if everything is normal. We have to either react like humans capable of love and with the capacity to perceive even a scintilla of the truth, or we completely lose our witness.

I realize many people who used to exist comfortably on one side of the political aisle have reacted to circumstance and shifted into a position of independence and great discomfort with both sides, which is a credit to them – this type of shift is difficult and challenging on a personal level. There is, however, a temptation that comes with it – the temptation to find a new way to rise above controversy by answering any wrongdoing by one side with a compensating example of wrongdoing by the other. This was perhaps once a wise and reasonable impulse, but in extreme circumstances it risks reifying a false equivalency. I fear we are too prone to this posture in the church, and that this does real, material harm to people we should protect, because a commitment to defining the middle as equidistant between the two poles cedes control of what is within the ambit of acceptable politics to whoever is willing to run the furthest from that center in their direction, and thus drags the center with them. Some things must remain beyond the pale for those who love justice and mercy.

I think in our case, we have a particular duty to avoid lending our silence as assent to what is currently transpiring around us. We have all seen the statistics on political opinions among Evangelicals, especially Southern Baptists; the head of our flagship institution of theological education and study uses the position the denomination has placed him in to actively, consistently, endorse and support an administration that is doing more violence to the freedoms Americans ask their soldiers to defend, and to the spirit of charity that Christians are called to live out, than any external enemy ever could. In short, to the reasonable member of the general public, we appear by our own association, complicit. Complicit in what? In kidnapping, torture, and murder by neglect. If we want to preserve our witness, and if in fact we want to obey Christ by loving our neighbors, we must not be silent when evil is transpiring in plain view, we must not act as if everything is normal, and go about our business as if all disagreements are simply that – disagreements, without responsibility. To quote Bonhoeffer, “We must finally stop appealing to theology to justify our reserved silence about what the state is doing — for that is nothing but fear. ‘Open your mouth for the one who is voiceless’ — for who in the church today still remembers that that is the least of the Bible’s demands in times such as these?”

But most importantly, we must act in love. I have no interest in the kind of political posturing so many churches do, without actually helping people or risking anything. I believe there is an absolute moral imperative to help those in peril.

When I was a child, I recall a young man from Sudan came to stay with a family in our church. He had walked out of a war, out of a famine, and out of his country to get to safety. He had no legal place to go. The church helped this man, and gave him a future – or rather, the church was merely the instrument passing along the blessing that was not originally theirs to give. Today, there are people like that young man all around us, even in our nearest communities – people with no good options, with nowhere to go – and some of these people are being scooped up by a machinery of evil that is operating not only in our name, claiming to act on our behalf, but also in the name of our God – they are being scooped up, and some of them are being dumped into places like that my refugee friend walked out of – in some cases, the exact same war zone, in fact.

If we are serious about ministering to the needs of our most vulnerable neighbors, we cannot simply stay within our comfortable walls and watch. And, as recent events have demonstrated that no one can have an expectation of safety in any place, if we take seriously the safety of those attending our church, as I know we do, we cannot simply hope or assume that nothing bad will ever happen to our community.

In short, we need two plans. We need a plan to reach out to those who are at risk of falling under the oppression of our own government, and to shelter, protect, hide, and succor them. They may not be safe at work. Their kids may in fact not be safe at school. How are they to live? They are among us, and we have the capacity to act; we must put ourselves at their service, and keep them fed and clothed and as safe as possible. I recommend we connect with other churches in this, regardless of denomination, as well as other charities, and legal counsel that has experience with these issues. We also need a revised safety plan for our church. If on Sunday, ICE appears at the door and tries to seize people, to take children who are in our care, for instance, we should not be caught by surprise; we should decide in advance what to do, and suffer the consequences for living by our Christian principles. I do not believe we should allow concern over what authorities may or may not do to us to intrude on our consideration of what God would have us do. Perhaps (hopefully) nothing will happen; perhaps there will be persecution; perhaps we will all die tomorrow in an earthquake, or in an atomic fire – as Lewis said when faced with that very fear: “If we are all going to be destroyed…let it find us doing sensible and human things: praying, working, teaching, reading,” etc. There is a world of moral difference between expecting retaliation for doing the right thing, and therefore refraining from doing it, thus allowing and assenting to the evil one would not prevent, and anticipating consequence, and doing what is right even if it is ineffectual, because you make the wrongdoer harm you in order to commit their sin. We should interpose ourselves between those who destroy themselves with violence toward others, and the actions they seek to commit. We cannot ourselves be harmed.