Covid, and Now Elections

I want to bring up a sensitive topic in conservative churches right now.  

An elephant in the room that we are not talking about.  

The issue is the legitimacy of elections, and how deep the corruption goes in our political system.  This issue's figurehead is Donald Trump.  If you think elections have been and will be stolen, and the rot goes all the way down, you'll likely vote for Trump.  If, on the other hand, you think elections were not stolen (but were heavily media-influenced), if you think the system is salvageable by sane, moderate people, you are probably not a Trump supporter.

Both groups are now sitting in the same set of pews, eyeing each other.

The way church leaders in MY circles are handling this (and this is who I'm critiquing!), is by ignoring it and talking about Covid.  How we all know now what to do next time.  We are finding a false unity in the Covid post-mortem, when we should be dealing directly with our current disagreement.

As an aside, the Covid post-mortem really bothers me.  Almost every church with very few exceptions shut down for 4-12 weeks in March-June 2020.  But now we talk as if we didn't, and that we were all on the same page against shutdowns throughout.  We weren't.  We brag about how quickly we reopened.  A bit of honesty and humility here would be refreshing.

Set that aside.  I don't think the church is learning very well how to deal with disagreements.  The Covid issue was acute, and people voted with their feet, whether to mask or not.  Many churches have a whole new set of people in their pews because of this.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a yellow flag.

How will each church handle the 2024 election?

Will we wind up with churches proclaiming an election-denying, Trump-supporting position, and people vote with their feet to go there?  I would urge that this should not be.

Politically, this is a moment in our country where the Republican-voting populace is trying to figure out where to land on this issue.  This is a moment for the church to speak.  It's probably unwise to come down hard for or against Trump, as a church voice.

But laying out basic political principles, and how to disagree well is direly needed.

Next time I'll share my thoughts on that.