Evangelicals and Politics at Election Time

KINGDOM ETHICS D a v id p. G u shee

Evangelicals and Politics at Election Time

ments breaking up asphalt roads because they cannot afford to maintain them.

NewYorkTimes columnist Paul Krugman aptly describes our nation as being on the “unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.”

Evangelical political engagement has never been very strong on economic issues. Some of my heroes, like ESA’s own Ron Sider, have devoted much of Two years ago I published a mapping and their career to calling for Christians to analysis of evangelical political engage- care for the poor and work for ecoment titled The Future of Faith in American nomic justice. Meanwhile, most readers Politics. Today, amidst another bitterly of PRISM will know about how such contested Congressional election, and calls for basic Christian principles often with the presidential race of 2012 already have been met with cries of protest under discussion, I want to talk about from affluent suburbanized American the “present” of faith in American poli- Christians. But notice that the Sider tics — in other words, where are we now? call for generosity and the angry response The major rational concern of the have in common a backdrop of American American public this fall is economic affluence. Evangelicals don’t really have distress. That distress is being felt in two much to say these days about the fading primary ways — disastrously high rates of of American affluence and the spread unemployment and underemployment of economic anxiety up the economic and dramatic cuts in state and local pub- ladder.This is not really our turf, and we lic services. (Not to mention a $1.4 have not produced very many productive contributors to this discussion. trillion federal budget deficit.)

This leaves election-year discussions As of August 2010, nearly 30 million Americans either cannot find work about economic anxiety in the hands or cannot find the work they want. of others. Mainly it seems to me that That’s 14.6 million people officially Republicans want to use current ecounemployed, 5.9 million people who nomic fears and miseries to bury the have stopped looking for work but still Obama presidency, which might be nice want a job, and 8.5 million people who for partisan purposes but doesn’t really work part-time and wish they worked address mass unemployment.And Demofull-time. Half of American families have crats are trying to defend the policies of been directly affected by the economic the last two years. Never in my years of distress that has hit our nation since late observing the political scene have spe2007.Tens of millions of people face the cifically Christian contributions seemed worst crisis of their lives — right now! — more marginal to public debate.

Unless, that is, we are talking about and no power on earth seems able to do the two major irrational concerns of the much about it.

Sluggish tax revenues have contri- American public right now — illegal buted to budget cuts beyond what immigration and Muslim mosques (at Americans in this era have ever seen. “Ground Zero” and elsewhere.

On the illegal immigration issue, leadMost of us know about school cutbacks, furlough days, and reduced public ser- ing evangelicals and their organizations vices. But I think the twin symbols for generally have overcome their differences this new era have got to be cities cutting to come together to advocate for humane, back on streetlights and local govern- comprehensive immigration reform.

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Indeed, the coalitions calling for a reasonably humane solution to our immigration issues have fulfilled a hope I expressed in Future of Faith — that despite deep divisions among us, immigration might be an issue in which evangelicals could unite and provide moral leadership in our nation. That has occurred (with some notable right-wing exceptions), but it has not been enough to overcome the mass xenophobia now sweeping the nation. Far from making progress on passing comprehensive immigration reform, the best we can now hope for is to forestall the spread of punitive Arizona-type legislation around the nation.

As for the controversy that has erupted over a mosque and community center near the WTC site — with the news that other proposed mosques are running into opposition around the country — here evangelicals will have to decide whether we will stand up for religious liberty for Muslims as we so often demand it for ourselves. And we will have to decide whether Christ’s call to love our neighbors includes our (sometimes feared and hated) Muslim neighbors.

All of this is to say that after nearly 40 years of defining the “social issues” agenda (mainly around abortion, stem cells, gays, etc.), evangelicals do not currently have the opportunity to set the national agenda. It is being set for us — by profound economic distress and the undoubtedly related racial/ethnic and religious hatefulness that is spreading like wildfire across our troubled land.We will be relevant to the public debate to the extent that we provide meaningful solutions to these problems. n David P. Gushee is director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University, where he is also a professor of Christian ethics.

His twelfth book, Religious Faith,Torture, and Our National Soul, was just released

by Mercer University Press.