Taking sides? Yes, but not from a pastor’s pulpit

Not many pastors I know take sides publicly when it comes to presidential politics. Every pastor I know has strong, carefully considered positions and a strong personal choice of the candidate to vote for.

That seems contradictory, but the choice not to advocate strongly for a particular candidate within the church environment is deliberate and reasoned. Factors become involved in the church setting that are not important in a workplace setting or even in an everyday social setting, because church relationships are different from those of the work or social context. What factors are involved?

A pastor isn’t merely a friend or a co-worker to anyone. Pastoral status suggests a level of authority in the lives of believers, which affects even those who don’t fully accept that authority. (True, the authority level differs among the varied traditions, but it is there to a greater or lesser degree in all churches.)

Therefore, the pastor speaks with weight behind the teaching or the opinion that isn’t there when it’s the next-door neighbor talking. There are times when that authority is very important to apply, but there are reasons why many pastors choose not to apply it to electoral politics.

Few churches consist of members who are all of one political party or outlook, and if pastoral authority is applied on behalf of one party’s candidate, it can lead people of the other party to view the pastor as an enemy or traitor. When that happens, a division is encouraged in the body of believers – a division needing healing, not encouragement from pastoral leadership.

In a time of nasty politics that encourage the partisans of each side to view those of the other side as terminally stupid for even thinking of voting for that other candidate, any church may be handicapped in the struggle to remain whole if its leadership enters into the political arena and legitimizes the desperation implied in such partisan thinking.

A church also is likely handicapped in that same struggle if the pastor seems to some to have betrayed members by advocating a candidate whom they perceive to threaten their sense of what is just, what is good, what the country is about. The time is no longer when the voter could see the two parties or candidates as representing different opinions as to how the nation should live out its promise: Today we are encouraged to believe that one candidate or the other will destroy the country.

“Healthy Democracy thrives on Rancor” reads the headline of an op-ed article from the newspaper a few years back, and perhaps the article is correct. Churches, however, cannot be healthy through rancor and division. Pastoral authority should encourage each believer to vote, but most pastors choose not to try to direct how each should vote.

Scriptural guidance, too, suggests the authority of the pastoral station be used in other ways.

Jesus pointed out to Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” (John 18:36). This doesn’t suggest believers should be nonparticipants in the political process but that the results are small stuff in God’s eternal vision. The church has serious, God-given responsibilities to the world, but risking fractures within itself is not among those responsibilities.

Another word of Scripture also instructs, “See to it … that no ‘root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.” (Hebrews 12:15, English standard version).

Whatever seed a root of bitterness springs from in the church, it leaves the faith and relationships of many believers defiled. Many pastors choose not to encourage partisan politics to become such a root. There are too many other important matters always surrounding us requiring us to be together.

The churches’ struggles for unity within are a fact of life. Adding the world’s political divisions to the struggles for theological clarity and unity brings in an element that many believers find a devastating addition to those struggles.

Believers are, absolutely, to apply Christian understandings to the voting process. If they do not, they are not truly living their Christian commitment. Reconciling a pastor’s declaration for one candidate or another with one’s own opposite choice, however, can require a tough personal struggle that goes far beyond the issues. For some it is not a healthy process.

W. Lyman Phillips is president of Grace Evangelical Center for Undergraduate Studies & Seminary, Bangor. He may be reached at tphillips@GraceEvangelical.net