Why I am voting no to the culture war

I will be voting for some Republicans, a few Democrats and I suspect a Libertarian or two. But mostly, I will be voting no to the culture war.

America is a diverse country, and our diversity is an understandable source of tension. We worship different gods, desire different goods, reason toward different goals. These are not inconsequential differences. Politics, at its best, is a shared venture to order our society for the common good given the constraints of such pluralism. Politics, at its worst, is a winner-take-all cage match between a righteous us and a rotten them.

Stanley Hauerwas once suggested American politics have devolved into a dumpster fire because justice has replaced friendship as our primary political virtue. He is correct. For while there can be no peace without justice, neither can there be justice without friendship; people who hate each other cannot agree on justice, because they cannot agree on truth. Victory is more important to them than communion.

As a Christian, your primary political commitment should not be to victory over “them” (however defined) but communion with them.

Unholy culture parading as holy

I am not saying little is at stake in our politics, nor that Jesus was apolitical and we should be too, nor am I belittling our political differences. But I am belittling the unholy-but-pretending-to-be-holy culture warring spirit possessing far too many of us.

I suspect it’s instructive that while scripture includes many instances of righteous anger, almost every single time it directly addresses what we should do with our anger, it tells us to let it go and not pour gas on it in the name of some allegedly greater good.

I know we love to say to ourselves: Sure, I’m angry, but I’m angry for a good cause! I’m angry for justice, I’m angry for holiness, I’m angry for the vulnerable, I’m angry for the children, I’m angry for women’s rights, I’m angry for the unborn.

We think we are good at being angry for a good cause; God does not

We think we are good at being angry for a good cause; God does not.

Yes, Jesus Christ wielded the whip of anger righteously, but he was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and you (I think we can agree) are not.

So be angry! That’s a command from the Lord via Paul the apostle because when facing a world filled with evil and injustice, how can we not occasionally be angry? And yet in your anger, don’t sin. How? Don’t let the sun go down on your anger – that’s also a command from the Lord via Paul (Ephesians 4:26). Because when the sun goes down on our anger, our lives begin to revolve around it, and few things are more personally miserable and socially unhelpful than becoming someone for whom anger is the centre around which your life orbits.

If your faith needs enemies, you need a better faith

James Cone once stated his regret that black theology was formed too much in reaction to white racism. While understandable and perhaps unavoidable, Cone found this problematic because it implied black theology needed white racism, and he longed for a future in which black theology accounted for itself on grounds more constructive and thus less dependent upon the foil of white racism. And all of this because “one’s theological vision must be derived from something more than merely a reaction to one’s enemy”, he wrote. Cone is right, for while having enemies is inevitable, and perhaps even mandatory, we dare not need them. If your faith needs enemies, you need a better faith.

And so, my fellow Americans, vote! And do so thoughtfully and prayerfully as an emissary of God’s coming kingdom, and have whatever conversations and arguments you find necessary in fulfilling your social responsibilities. But please, for the literal love of God and neighbour, vote no to the culture war. Stop indulging the delusion you’re a righteously angry foot soldier in a social holy war, stop consuming the empty-calorie outrage peddled by performative political grifters, and stop entertaining the lie that you’re good at being mad for a good cause. Because Christian enrollment in the culture war is a loss far greater than any short-term political victory our culture-warring might achieve.