Shhh! Don't Wake the Mainline.

A recent AP News article noted that the 2020 election seemed to have passed by the mainline Protestant churches. “We don’t endorse or oppose a particular candidate, but we do try to uphold moral principles and values that are key to our faith,” said (Episcopal Presiding Bishop) Curry." 

How very 2016. 

Or 1856. This from the "Crusty Old Dean" Tom Ferguson

in 1856, the General Convention refused to say anything about the violence or about how slavery was tearing the country apart.  It issued the following statement: the Church has “nothing to do [with] party politics, with sectional disputes, with earthly distinctions, with the wealth, the splendor, and the ambition of the world.”

Would it have been okay to vote for Jefferson Davis? Many famous Episcopalians supported secession and slavery. Could we have opposed Chancellor Hitler by name? "If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed." Mussolini made Catholicism the official state religion.

True, the "mainline" has relatively so few members, that it is already largely politically irrelevant. (The AP also notes that the historic St. John's - Lafayette Square presidential photo op was the rare exception; it moved the Episcopal Church to outrage.) But how much worse does Donald Trump and the current incarnation of the Republican party have to be before what's left of the old Protestant church says "no". We all love to quote Bonhoeffer from "The Church and the Jewish Question". 

There are thus three possibilities for action that the church can take vis-à-vis the state: first (as we have said), questioning the state as to the legitimate state character of its actions, that is, making the state responsible for what it does. Second is service to the victims of the state's actions. The church has an unconditional obligation toward the victims of any societal order, even if they do not belong to the Christian community. "Let us work for the good of all." These are both ways in which the church, in its freedom, conducts itself in the interest of a free state. In times when the laws are changing (e.g. Gleichschaltung), the church may under no circumstances neglect either of these duties. The third possibility is not just to bind up the wounds of the victims beneath the wheel but to seize the wheel itself.

Then satisfied, we stop.

I know of one exception to this general rule; Nadia Bolz-Weber, aka the Sarcastic Lutheran. She has endorsed the Biden-Harris ticket. 

As a woman of faith I am supporting the Biden Harris ticket because I believe it is foundationally patriotic to do so. It is to say, I will hold this country’s feet to the fire until we finally resemble in reality what we have always claimed to be in theory. I will not abandon this country to those who would wrap their bigoted self-interest in the flag and call it “God’s will”.

Amen.

I understand why a fragile church made even more so by the pandemic  would want to avoid conflict, to exercise self-care, to husband its resources, to stay clean and safe. Even my limited experience with politics tells me it is a mess. You can ask me about it sometime.

 

But  I wouldn't want to wake you.