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Last week, The New York Times reported that Church for All Nations and Fervent Church in Colorado Springs and The Rock in Castle Rock had hosted talks by the U.S. Election Integrity Plan and FEC United.
Though a small minority of the 350,000 congregations across the country, churches like these are providing a platform for election conspiracy theorists and their debunked theories. Zealous Trump supporters tried to sacralize the Trump presidency while he was in the office with prayers of praise and assurances of the man’s chastened soul. Now, these holy hangers-on hang on to the hope that miraculous proof will surface to support their speculations.
Unseemly but unsurprising; for good and for ill the politicized pulpit is nothing new in America.
The 44th president had his controversial preacher-supporters. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright gained national infamy for saying God should damn America and that the US deserved 9/11 because “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” His inflammatory sermons came to light when the press discovered that then-Senator Barack Obama was Wright’s parishioner.
The late Jerry Falwell, Sr., Baptist preacher and founder of the rightwing political organization Moral Majority, backed Ronald Reagan with holy fervor and openly questioned President Jimmy Carter’s Christian faith for having supported the Salt II and Panama Canal treaties.
Father Charles Coughlin takes top place among politically opportunistic religious leaders in US history. A vocal supporter of FDR’s 1932 candidacy, he later became the president’s blistering critic and a thorn in his side. Coughlin spewed a volatile mix of far-right and far-left opinions on his popular radio show and in his magazine Social Justice.
As these examples suggest, the politicized pulpit is characterized by the exaltation of politicians to a messianic level and pontification on issues notably absent from the scriptures. While the Bible exhorts Christians to love their neighbors, seek justice, love mercy, and pursue the good of the community in which they live, it provides no guidance whatsoever on foreign affairs, spending priorities, tax rates, voting machines, masks, vaccine mandates, immigration, or most other public policies. Adding a religious veneer to such issues diminishes the sacred. There are many right answers and thoughtful people of faith are free to weigh the costs and benefits, take positions, and advocate for their opinions without suggesting divine sanction.
The power of the pulpit need not be reserved for only spiritual things but it should be reserved for great things. There are times and places when religious leaders must speak out. For example, 16th Century Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas was right to advocate on behalf of indigenous people in the Americas and seek their protection. Quakers in colonial America led efforts to free slaves and secure laws against slavery in the northern states.
Christian leaders animated the abolition movement, were involved in the Underground Railroad, and provided education for the formerly enslaved. German pastors like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Father Bernhard Lichtenberg preached against the Holocaust and lost their lives for it. Pope John Paul II used his influence to help end the brutal tyranny of Soviet communism. The eloquence of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. hued from the mountain of despair a stone of hope for civil rights.
Unfortunately, during these human rights battles, there were Christian leaders who remained neutral or worse, were complicit in human suffering.
Knowing when to weigh in takes discernment. It takes courage to speak out on behalf of the suffering and marginalized, seeking justice and mercy on their behalf, and it takes courage to remain silent on mere earthly matters.
History shows that mixing politics and religion at the pulpit is like combining nitric acid with glycerol. The resulting nitroglycerin can be explosive or medicine for the human heart.
Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.
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