31 Oct Special Invitation to Prayer from Pastor Morgan + Election Thoughts

Hi all! Unless you just arrived from another planet or have been on vacation for several years, you know that the next presidential election is coming up next Tuesday.

I am asking you to join me and a number of Mosaic Church leaders on a special Zoom prayer call tomorrow morning from 7-8 am!

Zoom Link
Passcode: 832512
Meeting ID: 846 9265 8057
Many of us read about the election, and we should. We should pray about it as well, or even more.

I’ll open with a short devotional thought, and then go from there with a series of prayer points for us to lean into. Even if you are taking your kids to school or getting ready for work or you are at the gym, you can leave your camera and/or microphone off and still be present for an encouraging time as we “pray at all times, and never give up” (Luke 18:1).

Additionally, I’d like to leave you with a little longer read; it’s an excerpt from the late Dr. Timothy Keller, from 2005. On one hand, it’s a little disheartening to read, knowing that our nation’s political climate has not fundamentally improved since he wrote it, but on the other, it’s also really encouraging, in that his words are prescient and insightful as a forecast of where we are and how to process where we are.

Here is an excerpt from “Reflections on Faith and Politics”, published just after the 2004 presidential election.

“Post election, there has been an explosion of interest and debate about the relationship of religion to politics. Here are some things I believe Christians should keep in mind as they listen to and participate in this debate during the coming year(s).

First, we should recognize that politics is ‘downstream’ from culture. During this election, both sides claimed to be ‘battling for the soul of the culture.’ But politics can only respond to major cultural trends, not create them. For example, in 1905, no politician, no matter how powerful, could have passed sexual harassment legislation. The culture had to change before such laws could be formulated and enforced. Interestingly, even the Civil Rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s is now being seen as more of a religious movement than a political one (see David L. Chappell’s book, A Stone of Hope, 2004).

Culture changes when a society’s mind, heart, and imagination is captured by new ideas that are developed by thinkers, expounded in both scholarly and popular forms, depicted in innumerable works of art, and then lived out attractively by communities of people who are committed to them. Politics only comes along later and responds to what is happening. It may resist or support cultural changes, but it can’t generate them.

The current obsession with politics misses this. A particular group cannot “change the culture” by taking power. Any group that simply goes after power without aiming to serve the common good will not win the hearts of society; the basic narratives animating such a group will not capture society’s imagination. This is not to say that Christians should be less involved in politics than they are, for example, in scholarship, art, journalism, education, film-making, literature, and business. But we should not think that politics is any more central to the forging of culture than these other pursuits. It may, in the final analysis, be less so.

Therefore, the level of apocalyptic rhetoric (on both sides) is very discouraging…It is dangerous because it makes an idol out of politics — it makes politics the ultimate thing. When people no longer believe in Truth, there’s nothing left but power, and then politics is everything. That’s not how Christians should see it! So culture is not changed by politics — politics only slows down or speeds up cultural trends.

Second, we must recognize that neither political party is driven by the breadth, balance, or basis of biblical ethical concerns. The Enlightenment overturned the premise on which all traditional cultures had been built when it asserted the sovereignty of the individual over the family and the community. It made individual fulfillment the ultimate good. This idolization of the individual is so dominant today that it is the bedrock assumption of both sides in U.S. political debates. Liberals think government should control and redistribute income, but should leave people free to do whatever they choose in the area of personal morality. Their radical individualism comes out in their views of abortion and marriage.

Conservatives, on the other hand, think government should control and forbid personal morality but should leave people free to do whatever they choose with their money. Their radical individualism comes out in their deep distrust of the public sector and in their understanding of poverty as mainly a failure of personal responsibility.

If you are more concerned about abortion, changing sexual mores, and the severe secularization of the public square, then you will tend to vote Republican. If you are more concerned about racial discrimination, marginalization of the poor, and the erosion of the environment, then you will tend to vote Democrat. Of course, the problem is that all of these things are concerns for anyone who reads and trusts the Bible. What are we to do? I think each Christian will have to find his or her own “tie-breaker” among the various biblical concerns and then choose a candidate.

But as we do that, we should not idolize one party and demonize the other. The two-party system does not serve Christians well. Currently, it virtually forces us to leave half our faith at the door — either personal wholeness ethics or social wholeness ethics. Our spirit toward those in the other party should be cordial, respectful, and humble. Unfortunately, there are few voices speaking with such tones in the political world today.”

As a pastor who has spent the last few years researching how to help multiethnic churches do better with respect to difficult election moments, I appreciate his thoughtfulness and kind tone. Indeed, I have come to believe that placing a clear emphasis on Jesus’ Kingdom above and beyond the kingdom of humans is, perhaps, the most radical and countercultural thing local churches and individual Christians can do, even as we get involved in politics and do our best to be salt, light, and leaven as Jesus commanded us.

I’m praying for us and for you, and hope to have you join me tomorrow morning from 7-8 am.

Blessings,

Morgan Stephens
Lead Pastor