Confessions of a Christian Democrat

A reflection on perspective, social media, and politics.

Nov 03, 2024

When Facebook first started, I was in high school. You couldn’t have a Facebook account at all unless you were a college student. No teenagers, no grown ups allowed. When I started college, Facebook was two years old, and it was basically a platform where you shared photos. You uploaded them, you tagged your new friends, you flipped through all the photos of the cute boy from your dorm and hoped that maybe he was doing the same thing with yours. The feed that is currently drowning in reels and recipes and advertisements and political content was much simpler then: it was a message board, a column of text, a wall where your friends could leave short notes, like, “Hey—was that you skateboarding down Chancellor’s walk today?” You could send private messages, you could post lengthier notes, like a blog, and that was about the extent of it. You couldn’t share media or memes or news articles. It was just a social platform, and because we didn’t have unlimited texts in 2006, it functioned like public text messaging. Simple and user-friendly, and I remember bemoaning updates each year; every iteration seemed to get worse.

I often stop using Facebook, and I have completely deactivated my account at least three times. I dislike the constant advertisements, the rants, the snarky memes that distill entire worldviews into one-liners. I dislike how divisive it’s become, and how much we rely on these types of platforms for connection. When did we start defining our community by the likes or comments we get? When did we start finding our identity behind a screen? When did we stop engaging in civil dialogue, in conversation meant to open our minds to other perspectives instead of merely validating our current one?

I am not sure if Facebook is always such an awful place. Maybe it’s because I’ve engaged more since starting this Substack so I’ve become more aware. Maybe it’s just because it’s an election year that Facebook feels like one of Dante’s seven circles of hell. I’m not sure, but whenever I make the mistake of scrolling online, I always end up feeling much like my five-year-old who, like me, has low iron—it hurts all over, Mom. Yeah, kid, it hurts all over: this icky condition of being human.

I can’t wait for Thanksgiving, because—God help us, the election will hopefully be over and maybe we can go back to our actual lives. We have historic opportunity to do our civic duty by casting a vote, and as Spider-Man always says, with great power comes great responsibility. That said, Christians aren’t supposed to be fighting over political candidates. Nor are we to demonize the other side. What we are actually told to do in the Bible, in Romans 13, is to respectfully accept the outcome, whatever it is, and then learn to live out our faith in whatever climate follows. There are no conditions on that. We don’t have to like the president, but we have to learn to live under him (or her). And if you’re a Christian, you’re pretty much commanded to do that without vitriol. You are also commanded to follow Jesus without fear, whether or not the country you live in adheres to your political ideology, and whether or not the country you live in is even a democracy.

I’ve spent time in a country hostile to the gospel. A “closed country,” where Bibles get confiscated, where in order to worship we had to place mattresses over the windows and crank fans by the doors to muffle the sound of our voices. A place where the emails we sent used code for everyday words like prayer. This is how the church operates in many places, and honestly, even historically, those believers are stronger and bolder for it. I keep seeing people on Facebook posting about this election being “the last one” and advocating for Christians to vote “like their life depends on it.” And while it may be fruitful to ask yourself what your faith might look like in that scenario, that isn’t what is at stake in this election. To talk as if it is is to make light of a very real situation in the world.

If we want a free nation, it must be free for all. For the Christian and the Muslim, the Jew and the Hindu, the agnostic and the atheist, the native-born citizen and the immigrant, for all races, all genders, all sexualities. In my opinion, it’s not the people who are trying to ensure freedoms exist equally for all that are being oppressive; it’s the people trying to force a nation to bend the knee to a God they don’t believe in. That is the path of empire, it’s the path our forefathers fled from, and I don’t believe it’s the will of the God who commands us above all else to love and serve our neighbor, with special provision for the least of these. (Which, by the way, has always, always included the foreigner.)

Recently, I’ve seen people posting online about how a win for Kamala Harris is the end of religious freedom and democracy, and all I can do is laugh. How is it I feel almost the exact same way about Donald Trump? I want my party to win the election, just like anyone else who plans on voting. And the fact that we disagree, that’s not really a problem for me. I’ve said this before: we have that right as Americans. But as Christians, we are bound to a different standard. You can be a Christian on either side of the aisle, but that doesn’t mean you have carte blanche over how you practice your politics.

One good thing that came about from scrolling Facebook this week was that I listened to a sermon by Rev. Adam Hamilton of Church of the Resurrection in Kansas. Two quotes really stood out to me as I listened.

“It’s not power and control and a privileged position for his disciples that Jesus calls us to, but to be salt and light, and to demonstrate compassion and concern for the least of these...”

“When you demonize your opponents, or immigrants, or the poor, when you seek power and control, when your words lose compassion, when mercy and kindness are lacking in the way you practice your politics, when you no longer do unto others as you would have them do unto you, what you’re practicing is no longer Christianity.”

With that in mind, I want to highlight two posts that I saw on Facebook recently that demonstrate the problem with our current political climate.

First, I watched a video where the speaker, who considers himself an evangelist, literally said that the Democratic party is demonic because of their support for women’s reproductive rights and the LGBTQ community. He was speaking specifically to uncommitted Christian voters, and he was persuading them to vote for “the side that stands on Biblical values,” which he clearly equated with being Republican. There was no mention of the Biblical standards that the Democratic party does uphold—social welfare networks, access to expanded medical care, credits for parents with young children and new homeowners, compassionate laws for the immigrant and the poor. Instead he said the entire left is demonic and that we will be held accountable by God for our vote.

In case it isn’t clear, friends, demonizing an entire political party in the name of Jesus is not Christ-like. Honestly, God is probably a lot less concerned about American politics than we are. I don’t believe he is taking a side in this election. I do believe he commands us to dialogue respectfully with one another, to work together in unity despite our differences, and to love our neighbors no matter who they are.

The second video was a snippet of a speech in which Donald Trump is quoted saying, “Our country needs a Savior right now and our country has a Savior, and that’s not me, that’s somebody much higher up that me.” He goes on to add that “the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ forever changed the world. And it’s impossible to think of the life of our own country without the influence of His example and of His teachings.”

Sounds great, right?

This quote was pulled from a speech Donald Trump delivered at First Baptist Dallas church at Christmastime in December 2021. In the clip I watched, after Trump’s segment ends, a young man gives his own commentary on Trump’s words, saying that he’s never heard anyone in Trump’s position speak this way. If God is using Trump and we come against him, this man declares, then we are coming against God. Those are strong words. The problem for me isn’t Trump’s words in this address to a church congregation. It’s the conclusion of the commenter that we must side with Trump due to his beliefs, while failing to acknowledge all the other times Trump’s words do not represent Christ. An analysis from The Conversation notes this:

“From Trump’s first campaign in 2015 through the next nine years, his speeches have increasingly included words and phrases related to crime and military conflict. In March 2024, for example, Trump said that “it’s going to be a bloodbath for the country” if he wasn’t reelected in November. By 2024, Trump’s use of violent language had surpassed that of nearly all other democratic politicians we considered, approximating that of authoritarian figures such as Kim Jong Un and Fidel Castro. This surge in violent rhetoric is not linked to significant external events such as wars. Trump has focused his messaging on violent crime, particularly in American cities, even as crime rates were declining. His repeated references to “murderers, rapists and thugs” paint a picture of a nation under siege, heightening anxiety among his supporters.”

While anyone can cry out “Lord, lord,” Jesus reminds us in Matthew 12:34-35 that “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.” Later, Paul shares with the Ephesians: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” (Ephesians 4:29)

It is dangerous to cherry-pick from politicians the words we want to hear, especially when we use those words as evidence for why the opposing side is wrong.

As the election ends, and whatever comes next begins, please be cautious of the words you write, the words you post, and the words you take in. Don’t forget that fear sells. Fearful rhetoric is strategic—the goal is to scare us into feeling a certain way. Much of social media is purposefully curated to make you feel afraid. Jesus knew that fear is powerful—that’s why he commands us, over and over again, not to fear. When we allow social media and political candidates to stir up our fears and anxieties, on either side of the aisle, we need to repent because we are no longer walking in the way of Jesus.

Now, in response to that second video clip, it’s also important for me to note that, whether we like it or not, we do live in a nation that separates church and state, a nation that was founded on the protection of religious freedom for all. It certainly makes sense why Christians feel conflicted around an election: do we vote for Christian governance or for religious and social freedom? Personally, I’m choosing the latter. Contrary to public opinion, America was not founded as a Christian nation. It was founded on Christian principles of human dignity. I believe Jesus gave us the example of his life and told us to walk in his way. He didn’t overthrow Rome, and he didn’t tell us to, either. He told us to love and serve our neighbor. Change is going to come not by seeking the path of empire, but by seeking the path of shalom. That is the work we are to focus on.

Most people, at the end of the day, want the same things. Rev. Dante Stewart wrote recently about the people voting third party: “No they don’t want Trump—they want less bombs and more freedom and less bigotry and more peace and less weapons and more schools and less mangled bodies and more children laughing and less hatred and more compassion. They want what we all want: dignity, humanity, and safety.” Dante Stewart isn’t voting third party, but he was graciously trying to understand where others are coming from, even when their votes are going to affect his own side. We have to start realizing that there are Christians in both political parties working for what they believe to be a better America. There are even—God forbid!—Christian communists and Christian socialists. God doesn’t care what political party you identify with. There is no requirement in the Bible for that. In fact, it may come as a surprise, but God is not American. He cares less about your politics than he does about your heart, the words coming out of your mouth, the things you post and tweet and share, and the way you act.

As a left-leaning Christian, I have been so dismayed by my brothers and sisters in Christ over this election cycle. People influential to me are essentially saying I’m not a Christian, albeit indirectly, because I choose to vote Democrat. I am angry and frustrated, and most days I ebb and flow between wanting to cry and scream about the way of the world and our country right now. I know many of you feel the same, even those on the opposite side of the aisle from me. Often, it takes every ounce of self-control to not respond to political points that I think are misguided, misinformed, and misrepresentative. I don’t always succeed. But over the next few days, as the votes get cast and counted and argued over, I think we all ought to check our hearts.

In August, writer Tyler Huckabee penned a piece for Religion News about why he is a Christian for Kamala but not a “Christian for Kamala,” and I think he does a good job of sharing why no political party really ticks all of his boxes, but why he believes Kamala is his choice. My goal in sharing his writing isn’t to convince you that he is right—it’s simply to share that those Christians who vote blue aren’t possessed by dark forces. We just hold different convictions. Huckabee writes:

“My politics don’t conveniently map onto either political party. I think most Christians feel the same way. Heck, I think most people feel the same way. … a lot of things I’d like to see done politically are not being touted by either party. For example, I’d like to see some action on climate change commensurate with the actual threat it poses. I’d like to see the U.S. stop sending strongly worded letters to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and actually shut off the endless stream of weapons that allow him to vaporize whole entire blocks and everyone on them. I’d like to see every American earn a living wage and have access to health care. I want well-funded public schools. I want strong unions. I want LGBTQ kids to live without fear. I want accountability for police and other authority figures who abuse their power, particularly where racial minorities are concerned. … In the Gospels, Jesus proclaims a unique vision of the world — one where the meek inherit the earth and the mourning are comforted. I do not think either Trump or Harris is going to bring the kingdom proclaimed in the Sermon on the Mount to reality. I do think Harris is likely to get us marginally closer, but not if all of us just put the entirety of our weight behind her, no questions asked.”

He sums up well my own feelings. Do I think Kamala is perfect? No. Do I think she is a better choice than Trump? Yes. I don’t agree with her stance on abortion, but I’m voting blue anyway because while, yes, there are one million dead babies each year, and while that is a tragedy, there are also forty-seven million immigrants in this country and thirty-eight million people living at or below the poverty line who are equally made in the image of God and whose rights we also need to consider. I love babies as much as the next person; I value their life and believe God grieves the loss of each. I also know he cares for the foreigner, the poor, and the oppressed. I believe he cares about the climate and about economic policies that protect our planet and resources, because we were created to steward the earth He created. Many of these single issue topics, like abortion, like gun control, are not even decided exclusively by the President, but by our local governments and our Congress. So, as Huckabee suggests, our work is to align ourselves with the work of justice—not a particular political party. We cast our vote according to our conscience, based on the best understanding we have, and then we keep up the work to which we were called: to act justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8).

In a remarkably timely sermon this past week, my pastor reminded us of Psalm 19:14: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” He encouraged us to consider three things before discussing, posting, or commenting on this election, and I have tried to be mindful of these things as I wrote and revised and edited this post. His recommendations were to consider whether our words are true, whether they are loving in both content and tone, and whether they build up or encourage the listener. These recommendations are rooted in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 4, verses 25-32, and they mirror a similar phrase my mother-in-law shared this week when discussing anything online: Is it kind? Is it true? Does it need to be said?

I hope we all take those recommendations to heart. Jesus often spoke sharply, offering reprimands to crowds and to the religious leaders and authorities of his day, but he was incredibly gentle with the individual. Think about what fruit we might see in the life of the Church if we redistributed all the energy we’ve spent arguing and blaming each other into actually being Christ-like? Instead of trying to convince one another to change sides or accusing one another of being on the wrong side, what if we shared our hearts and our homes with our political “enemies” and actually listened to one other and learned about their lives?

Wouldn’t it feel different to simply change our tone from one of combat to one of camaraderie?

We may even see the change we hope for.

As Mother Teresa once said: Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.

In love and hope,

Jenica

Joy & Jubilee

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