When Americans woke up to a new president, they also woke up to two different versions of reality. Progressives see the 47th president as a threat to democracy: a twice-convicted felon with a propensity to contest election results. The political right, of course, sees something different: the mass rejection of wokeness by everyday Americans, centered on a figure who, despite his flaws, keeps on winning.
How should Christians navigate this new-but-old post-election world? If the last eight years are any indication, the country will continue to polarize. The challenge is maintaining our Christian distinctiveness while fighting for the good, true, and beautiful in the public square. Since no political ideology is perfect, politics is always about the art of compromise. Yet our faith should never be.
Is there a sure path forward?
It’s Okay to Feel Relief
One popular idea is that an election shouldn’t phase Christians at all. “If you are too happy or sad about these results, politics is an idol,” is a common—yet misguided—sentiment. It is true that Christians can have joy deeper than our circumstances and that Christ is on the throne no matter who is in office. Yet we don’t levy the same charge of idolatry when people care about other things: marriage and divorce, getting fired, global recessions, or winning the Superbowl.
Because we are made in the Imago Dei, we are supposed to care about the world around us.
Good or bad laws directly affect our neighbors’ well-being. A Harris/Walz victory would have had troubling consequences on several fronts.
Harris supports the practice of late-term abortion and would have fought to restore Roe vs. Wade, threatening countless unborn lives. She opposes the rights of wedding vendors and other faith-based contractors to decline participation in ceremonies they disagree with, which is a serious threat to freedom of speech. Economically, her war on the so-called “price gouging” practices of grocery stores would have set the United States down the road to a command-and-control economy. It shouldn’t shock us that countries like Venezuela have tried the same thing over the last few decades . . . with grueling consequences.
Those who feel like a bullet has been dodged have every right to feel that way. A Trump/Vance administration will have its pitfalls, but a commitment to destructive transgender ideology, misguided DEI policies, and the demonization of religious groups will not be among them.
Live Not by Lies
It’s an old maxim that “in war, truth is the first casualty.”
Both sides today live in digital echo chambers, spurred on by alternative facts and unwilling to grant their opponents any toehold. The fiercer the battle grows, the more tempting it will be for Christians to ignore any truth that hurts our side and focus instead only on that which hurts our political opponents. But this is a mistake. More than anyone, Christians must cling to the truth—no matter where it is found.
Proverbs 12:18 (NIV) reminds us: “The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”
Of course, admitting that both sides can bend the truth is not the same as pretending all political choices are equal. That fallacy, known as “both-sideism,” assumes that the truth always runs neatly down the middle of competing ideologies. But this is not true. Faithful Christians have sometimes found themselves on one side or other of their own political spectrum. Deitrich Bonhoeffer is a good example, a faithful German labeled a traitor because of his resistance to the Third Reich.
In our day, we need both unwavering convictions and to be “peacemakers who sow in peace” (James 3:18, NIV). That is a rare combination.
It only happens when we love truth more than we love being right.
A good test is to ask, “How willing am I to believe the worst about the other side without investigating it first?”
As Russian dissident Alexander Solsynetizen, imprisoned 8 years in the Gulag for criticizing his government, wrote,
“The simple step of a simple courageous man is not to partake in falsehood, not to support false actions! Let THAT enter the world, let it even reign in the world – but not with my help.”
Lies have been a feature of political dialogue throughout history, but followers of Jesus must always resist them. Even as we feel some relief this past election, Christians must remain vigilant to both falsehoods from the other side, and comforting lies spoken by those we agree with.
Love Your Neighbor . . . By Talking About Politics
Unsurprisingly, the percentage of those who find talking about politics “stressful and frustrating” has spiked in recent years. Fewer than 1 in 5 Americans admit being willing to discuss politics with family or friends. There is some obvious wisdom to that. When a lifelong relationship is in jeopardy, or the person across from us just isn’t interested, wisdom might mean changing the subject.
However, a bigger misperception is that the best way to avoid political tension is to never talk about it. Other studies show that Americans frequently misperceive the political landscape as being far more negative than it is—due largely to interactions on social media. What if filtering all our conversations through the internet while ignoring the living, breathing people around us is why it feels so hopeless?
Summit President Jeff Myers often compares striving for unity in politics to finding unity in a marriage. Nearly everyone wants unity in their marriage. But how many think that the process is easy? Myers wisely notes that,
“Unity is not diminishing disagreement; unity is working through disagreements in a spirit of grace. That is something Christians can model and should be modeling for society at large.”
The challenge is that engaging our neighbors takes courage. We have to be willing to face rejection, and disagree without being disagreeable.
That spirit is what our country badly needs right now. According to one study, over half of Americans agree with the statement, “Nobody knows me well.” What if this is because, gripped by fear, we’ve stopped engaging each other on any topic that could remotely be considered controversial?
Christians today have a chance to restore the concept of classical tolerance—the ability to disagree without shunning or intimidating others. This is the opposite of cancel culture, the state of affairs in which people’s real feelings are hidden for fear of being ostracized. Christ loved all of us even when we were unlovely; he listened to people when they were wrong, and he never once compromised the truth. What if, by imitating him, Christians can create a new oasis of trust in an otherwise bleak political landscape?
Over the next four years, we have the perfect opportunity to try.