It’s Friyay! Isn’t that great? I’m covered in dogs and cats staring disconsolately out at the rain and longing for spring. To console ourselves, have a coffee or something nice.
I had a whole slew of takes, but then I came across something that seriously sauteed my shallots (the 2004 foodie version of boiled my onion, which is another way of saying, ‘irritated me enormously’) and I scrapped them all for seven takes on this terrible idea:
The speaker is Curtis Chang and he’s talking about something called The After Party, (Megan Basham has written about it here) a curriculum for sale meant to aid churches and pastors through the forthcoming fraught election season we’ve all got to face. The clip is sure something. In case you didn’t wander over to X to watch it, I’ve taken the trouble to transcribe it for your edification and horror:
It's tempting to think, I've got to preach The Sermon. The sermon that will reframe everything, solve all my problems. And that turns out to be for most pastors, a really flawed process. Because the Sunday morning sermon is actually a really bad way to deal with something like politics. It's one to many communication. It's limited. People are bound to misunderstand even a small thing you say. People will filter what you're saying through their existing political biases. In 30 minutes, I guarantee you, if you go up on Sunday morning in most congregations and you try to preach the one sermon on politics that you haven't been preaching on for a long time, your Monday morning inbox is going to be an ugly scene. And that's honestly why most pastors, or many pastors, don't preach on politics on Sunday morning, because they instinctively know my Monday morning inbox is going to look awful if I do that. So the challenge we need is to give churches and pastors a way to head toward healthy Christian politics that doesn't force them to preach this magical Sunday morning sermon that will solve everything. And the After Party is our attempt to do that so that you don't have to do all the heavy lifting. And also, frankly, you to have to take the bullseye, right? Because, this way, if you run the After Party in your small group community, in your Bible studies and so forth like that, then if people get mad, they get mad at Curtis, Russell, and David, they get less mad at you. You can have plausible deniability, you can just say, hey, you know, I don't agree with everything these guys say, but I think they're worth listening. That's a classic move. You know you make as a pastor, right? You want to inject something, but, you know, not have to take all of the shots for it, which you shouldn't have to take all the shots for. That should be part of our job to do that. This is, that's the partnership here.
One
I am hoping at some point that more of this talk emerges because it is stressful to be dropped into the middle of it like this. Chang seems to be an engaging speaker. He clearly, from the sounds of laughter in the room, holds the attention of the crowd. This must be a group of people who find themselves in the predicament he describes—how do I get the people in my congregation to agree that their political inclinations directly relate if not to the gospel itself, at least to the moral vision of the Christian life as I, the pastor, happen to see it? It is in this frame that Chang begins to offer a solution. “It’s tempting to think,” he says, that you’ve got to “preach The Sermon.”
What happens is, the preacher is feeling queasy. He isn’t in the same political and ideological space as his people, and so he wants to do something to fix it. He needs to “reframe everything.” If only the people understand what’s at stake, they’ll behave (and vote) in a different way. If they know better, for sure they will do better.
But, you know, the throbbing fear in the back of his neck. If he stands up in the pulpit on a Sunday morning and says “Don’t Vote For Trump You Numbskulls” a bunch of people who weren’t expecting it will walk out. Turns out Chang (and French and Moore) agree that’s a bad tactic. He needs those people to stay and keep giving, don’t you know.
Also, let me just pause and say how funny it is that we’ve had to endure so many decades of lecturing in the manner Mr. Collins trying to communicate his violent affection, about how wicked it is to bring politics into divine worship. Discussing politics, heretofore, was the worst thing you could possibly do. You had better not say anything about abortion! or who to vote for! or that the implications of Jesus’ sovereign reign over all the earth might have real-time consequences in a political season! so we have been splained for nigh on thirty years. Like so many sheep thinking the shepherds were not cowards, many of us believed this exhortation.
And so, those who really didn’t want to have to be in a big auditorium on a Sunday that waved a massive American flag and had the national anthem as a Sunday hymn and had to be shouted at by Paula White heeded the call and judiciously kept politics out of it. It’s just that, see, it wasn’t that politics should stay out, it was that progressivism needed room to creep in when no one was paying attention.
Two
I’d like to go on record and agree that “the Sunday morning sermon is actually a really bad way to deal with something like politics” but not because it’s “one to many communication” and “limited” but because, how shall I put it?
The sermon is supposed to be about Jesus.
I know, crazy! Who could have ever imagined?
What a preacher really should do is study during the week and then write down a sermon about whatever portion of the Bible is on the schedule. Then he gets up on Sunday morning and preaches about that.
Wait A Minute, you might be thinking, you can’t separate the Bible from politics! The kingdom of God will necessarily bring you into a conflagration with the powers and principalities of this world. You’re gonna have to vote, probably, and run for mayor. What are you going to do!?
Well, one thing you could do is exposit what the Bible actually says and trust the people of God to use wisdom, discernment, understanding, and discretion to think through the issues and decide what they think God is saying.
Three
The other option, I guess, is to develop your own political leanings both in isolation from other people (your congregation) and the Bible. What you do is spend a lot of time online and in various ideological bubbles and then sort of passive-aggressively hint at your thinking in sermons and Sunday school, without ever coming out directly and saying anything. In fact, you want to create a sort of in-group and an out-group. The in-group, or inner ring if you will, are people you trust to say how you plan to vote and how wicked you think the people are who disagree with you. The out-group is most of the rest of the congregation who will definitely be caught off guard and be angry if they really understood your feelings. Most of all, though, it’s important to be ruled by fear, both of your people and their power to instant message you.
Four
It’s ok to be a coward, though, because Chang has your back—
So the challenge we need is to give churches and pastors a way to head toward healthy Christian politics that doesn't force them to preach this magical Sunday morning sermon that will solve everything. And the After Party is our attempt to do that so that you don't have to do all the heavy lifting.
Oh gosh. This is so awful. First of all, who gets to decide what “healthy Christian politics” is? I mean, I know they hope it will be them. But I think it should be local groups of people laboring through the scriptures in their own communities and with their own troubles and considerations in view. Politics Is Important. But not in the way that an outside “expert” class that you pay could possibly help you sort out. All you’re doing is giving your money to people who don’t care and have no stake in anything beyond their own accumulation of political and cultural power.
I learned this morning that the grocery store nearest to my church, which is in a depressed neighborhood, is going to close. It’s not “making enough profit” for the larger company which is based somewhere in Pennsylvania. This is going to be awful for our community. Most people walk through the church parking lot to get to that store. They have to drag their bags through the snow, but at least it is within walking distance. They don’t have to pay for transportation when they need milk and bread. Honestly, I’m incensed. I don’t know what we’ll do. It’s going to make life, which is hard enough as it is, even more uncomfortable and alienating.
But guess what I don’t need? hTe After Party to come in a tell me how to vote. I need instead to talk to people around here and get other people to pray and think and worry about the people who live here.
Five
Also….ALSO, of course the Sunday Sermon isn’t “magic.” Did anyone say it was? And of course it won’t “solve everything,” The pressing question is “solve everything” for who? The pastor? What a dumb thing to say.
In truth, the sermon is part of the larger sacramental framework. The people feed, spiritually, on the Word of God in a way that they don’t any other time of the week. like when they’re reading it by themselves. They bite down on the Word and then they straggle forward to swallow the Bread and Wine, receiving into themselves again the mercy of their Savior and offering themselves to him. The whole thing “solves everything” over and over and over again. If you think it’s about shoving everyone into the correct ideological political framework, though, you are a boob and a knave, and no one should ever listen to you about anything.
Six
That was all bad, but the crowning moment of fatuity is this “plausible deniability” bit. In the words of Greta Thunberg, “How Dare You.”
If you aren’t willing to take incoming fire for what you believe, as the Pastor Of A Church, what are you even doing there? You ought not to have taken the job. You should not be trusted with anything.
Your single job is to protect, feed, and care for the flock of God. That’s your job. It’s not to get them to vote the right way. It’s not to make them into political activists. It’s not even to make them into good people. It’s to deliver up their souls to your Master either before you die and they die, or before he comes again.
For he could come back at any moment. And what are you going to say then? David French made me do it? Curtis Chang and Russell Moore said it was ok for me to do this way? I was just trying to be creative? I was just doing it this way now? I joined into this “partnership” that was a convenient way of selling the souls of my congregation to a political ideology, my bad? What will the Lord say, then? I don’t think he will react well.
Seven
In a strange turn of events, a bishop in my own church, the ACNA, after saying something wicked from the pulpit about another church cleric, instead of doubling down and justifying himself, offered a sincere and clear apology. This is twice now when leaders in my church have publicly owned their errors and sins and been reconciled to those they’d injured. I know a lot of people like to bag on Anglicans, and we do have a lot of problems, but at least our pastors have had the courage of their convictions and haven’t been habituated to always passing the buck.
May God have mercy on all our souls, and have a nice day, if you’re up for it.
You articulate the biblical vision of an undershepherd. Well done.
I hear what you are saying and agree that comment on plausible deniability was unsettling. However, Moore and French generally seem to try to get people to think about things rather than joining the party line- whether political or religious. Honestly, Moore kept me sane in 2016 when Christians were jumping on the Trump bandwagon, and I was pulling my hair out, asking, “What about character? Doesn’t it matter anymore?”
Having said that, I have not researched Chang or the curriculum, nor have I read much of French since he went behind the NYT paywall. So, this is not a hill I’m dying on, just a different perspective since you views and mine generally see to align.