Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

This past week, the clergy from the area deanery (a group of local Episcopal churches) gathered for prayer, meal, and conversation. The topic that arose in discussion was how churches can best serve in this coming election cycle.

Many churches have seemingly taken the path of being chaplains for one political movement or another, blessing the political preferences of members and clergy, and theologizing policy positions they like best.

I’d like to offer a different way of thinking about politics this year.

Note that I said politics which is simply the means communities use to negotiate priorities, practices, and principles. That is a different thing from partisanship.

Jesus, for example, was highly political speaking to the social order of his day and pointing out its hypocrisies with such force that it conspired in his crucifixion.

However, Jesus was always contrasting the existing social order not with some other earthly political movement but with the Kingdom of God. He preached a First Principles Citizenship in which a follower’s primary loyalty was not to Rome or Jerusalem but to the Kingdom of God.

We’re locked into a false binary in this country in which we pretend that we have two competing worldviews or political frameworks. This is true.

It is not true in the way we pretend.

The competition is between the strife and self-centeredness of our politics and the self-offering of the Kingdom.

The competition is between preserving systems of injustice and oppression and the Kingdom.

The competition is between repeatedly failed notions of human-centered progress and God-focused obedience.

The Christian political framework might best be understood as a Conservative Progressivism.

It is always focused on the betterment of the life of humanity and breaking down systems of violence and oppression. But it is always focused on those things because life is an inviolable gift from God.

It is focused on the protection of Creation because God has given it as a gift for us to steward. It is focused on individual liberty because God has given us free will. It is focused on the common good because God has commanded us to care for our neighbor. It is focused on peace because we are called to love our neighbor.

Its conception of progress is only progress in that it deepens our fidelity to the Gospel through our care for our neighbor. It is only conservative in that it emphasizes the preservation and protection of that which God has given to us not as masters but as stewards.

We are called not to be members of a party but to be members of the Body of Christ.

Our politics are a form of discipleship. They are the exercise of our conscience and liberty in the pursuit of truth and justice.

The best way we can live as both a Christian nation and one that is pluralistic and diverse is for each of us followers of Christ to view our politics as one more obligation in our lives in which we are pushed to steward the gifts God has given us to seek the common good, protect the gifts we share, and constrain humanity’s worst impulses.

Politics is a form of discipleship but it is a discipleship that finds its hope not in conserving human institutions, borders, nor flags nor is its hope bound in pretending our oft-broken notions of progress are our goal.

It is a discipleship based in the simple notion that what God gives is first God’s, is now God’s, and will be God’s. That includes our own hope and free will. That includes our dignity and our neighbor’s. That includes all of Creation.

We are called to conserve that which gives hope and promotes dignity. If that is progress then it must be progress toward the Kingdom which is our first and final home.

Yours in Kingdom Hope,

—Fr Robert