If you’re keeping up with the news, you know the Democratic National Committee is holding its convention this week. The Republicans did the same thing a couple of weeks ago. And now it’s got me thinking about religion and politics and what the church’s role should be in those.
Personally, I don’t like to mix religion and politics because of how volatile it can be. I think there was a very good reason the founding fathers believed the church and state should be kept separate. But the lines are being blurred. A couple of years ago, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert said, “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the Constitution.” She then went on to say, “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church.”
This ideology is terrifying to me. As a student of history, I know bad things happen when the church and the government join forces. Read about the church in Nazi Germany and you’ll see what I mean. Unfortunately, there are Christians in America who agree with Congresswoman Boebert. They believe the church and its beliefs should guide our country because we were meant to be a Christian nation. Read a little about American history, and you’ll see that’s not true. The founding fathers prized religious freedom more than having a national religion.
The Church has become a pawn in a political chess game. Politicians are using “Christian issues” like abortion, marriage equality, and immigration to pander to people of faith. And it’s working! Christians and churches are crawling into bed with whatever politician says what they want to hear, and they are finding their identity in political leaders and ideologies…usually around the issues of abortion and equal rights for our LGBTQ+ siblings. And politicians have learned that if you want to win an election, you have to win the Christian vote which, unfortunately, is working and in the process turning us against each other.
In these last couple of months before the election in November, my hope is not that we’ll be able to change someone’s beliefs; it’s that we’ll be able to love and care for them in spite of those beliefs. Our faith isn’t in a party or a platform or a political ideology…it’s in the kingdom of God we are called to work toward here and now. Can we reconcile our politics…how we vote…with how we are called to live as the people of God…human beings created in God’s image? That’s the question we must answer.