As we enter the voting season this year, some of us will be observing Faith and Democracy Sunday this month. Faith and Democracy. Many people might not put these two words together, at least in an ideal society. The ideal, we may have been led to believe, is that faith and politics should be and remain separate. We have the separation of church and state, after all, which limits the government from establishing an official religion, and limits the government from encroaching on the rights of religious people to gather, to speak, and to worship as they please. Government officials are, of course, not supposed to create laws that would coerce others to follow their own religious beliefs, values, and practices.
That is why it is disturbing to hear of court cases that blur the lines between church and state – cases in which the argument is made that the government should fund education opportunities that include religious instruction (Carson v. Makin), or that it is ok for coaches to pray with their teams on the field (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District). In these cases, people are forced to fund religious education through their tax dollars; and children are forced to decide between either being part of the team and engaging in a religious practice that might not be their own, or standing apart in defiance of their coaches and peers. Given the power dynamics involved, this choice is inherently coerced.
Though we may find these particular cases pretty cut and dry, we can also acknowledge that it is difficult for lawmakers to uphold the separation of church and state because it is difficult to separate people from their religious beliefs and values. And the government is full of religious people.
I know that I, for one, will be voting for those who uphold my values. And at the same time, I know others will vote for those who uphold their own religious values, but who interpret those values differently than I do. The result is that we find ourselves, every election cycle, in the midst of a sometimes quiet and sometimes not so quiet war of religious beliefs and values.
Now voting according to our own consciences, according to our own biblical and theological interpretations, is not a violation of church and state, of course. The laws of the state uphold the freedom of religious people to gather, to speak, to worship, and to vote. But when lawmakers introduce bills and vote for or against them on the basis of their own religious beliefs or those of their constituents, the lines can become blurry between lawmakers acting on their own religious convictions and coercing others to follow their religious values.
On Faith and Democracy Sunday, we are not going to clear up the blurry lines between church and state in our country. Democracy is inherently messy, it is inherently dependent upon each citizen and lawmaker conversing with one another, advocating for their positions, correcting one another, and hopefully even listening to one another. Democracy has conflicting interpretations of reality, including religion and the constitution, baked in, so to speak.
And so, we want to first acknowledge that the separation of church and state does not mean the separation of faith and democracy. The separation of church and state does not entail the separation of religion and lawmakers any more than it entails the separation of religion and voters. That is very simply because religion doesn’t exist on its own; it only exists within people. To put it starkly, we can say that there is no such thing as religion; only religious people. And so religion can never be separated from politics, because people are both religious and political.
We see that even in our scripture for today.
When Jesus returned to his hometown of Nazareth, after preaching throughout the surrounding region, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.
Jesus unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Holy One is upon me,
because God has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Holy One’s favor.”
Jesus then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Now if that isn’t both religious and political, I don’t know what is.
And so the question is not whether we are going to be able to keep religious conversations out of political conversations, or political conversations out of religious ones. As long as there are people, we will have both, and they will be intertwined. The conversations will be messy and conflictual and will strike at the heart of who we are and who we believe ourselves to be as followers of Christ.
But no matter which side of any particular debate we might find ourselves on, we maintain that participation in these messy conversations, participation in democracy, participation in the process by which we govern ourselves, is something that every citizen should have access to.
Since 2013, a surge of anti-voter bills have been introduced and even passed into law. For example, in Georgia, “in response to an unprecedented number of voters (particularly Black and brown voters) participating in the 2020 election, and a historic, party-flipping Senatorial election, Georgian officials signed a bill, SB 202, into law that reduced the number of ballot boxes in communities of color, limited voting hours, added additional voter ID requirements, and made it illegal to provide those waiting in line with food or water, among other measures.” In Texas, “in 2021, legislators passed bills limiting citizens’ capacity to vote and expanding protection for partisan ‘poll watchers.’ Partisan poll watchers are volunteers deployed by major parties to observe the voting and vote counting processes. Many people consider the presence of poll watchers to be a form of voter intimidation. In addition to granting poll watchers new access, protection, and power, the bills limited mail-in voting and early voting hours and restricted in-person voter assistance for people with disabilities or those requiring support in the voting process.”
But Jesus proclaims: “The Spirit of the Holy One is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Holy One’s favor.”
It might be uncomfortable for us to admit that faith and democracy cannot be separated. It might be uncomfortable for some to hear about voter suppression and public policy from the pulpit because of the illusion that we could somehow leave our religious beliefs and values behind when we act as citizens or lawmakers. But we are complicated, messy people. And we are whole people. We cannot compartmentalize our lives into discrete areas, religion in the private sphere and politics in the public. In fact, Jesus calls us by his example to engage fully in public life – to speak where we must speak, to engage with the powers that be, and to hold fast to our vision of right relationships.
Through our democratic system, may we play some small part in bringing good news to the poor, release to the captives, and freedom for the oppressed.
This piece was originally delivered on October 15th, 2023 as a sermon for Faith and Democracy Sunday at Little River United Church of Christ (Annandale, VA), where I serve as senior minister.
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