After the Midterms

Across the country, people are sitting with their bills on the kitchen table. And many parents are calculating how much of the grocery-shopping can be put off until maybe the next paycheck. Some immigrant families are wondering if it is safe to exhale. Some of our elders are  With the teacher who needs us to care about the children in the classroom long after we have finished arguing about them on television.

Democrats have won control of both the House and the Senate in the November 3 midterms, and that changes the possibilities for congressional oversight and the balance of power in Washington. I am very attentive to this. For those of us who have been longing for a meaningful check on this administration, this shift offers some reason for relief. I welcome that possibility. I also want to know what it will mean at the kitchen table and how long it will take for the kitchen table conversations to shift 'hopewards'.

Because of all the intersectionalities in me, I cannot separate political outcomes from the bodies in the pews and around me that must bear their consequences. Each time I hear discussions about immigration, I think about families. Each time I hear arguments about public spending, I think about people whose survival is described as an unnecessary expense. So, when I hear appeals to national greatness, I can't help but wonder whose sense of belonging will be questioned in the process. I wrestle with these questions because of my faith. I find them still necessary even when the people I prefer win.

A congressional majority creates an opportunity to govern differently. Whether that opportunity becomes protection, accountability, and material relief depends on what elected officials do with it, and what we insist on after we have congratulated them. You see, a campaign promise by itself cannot pay for a prescription. And the obligations of public office cannot be exhausted by being nicer or kinder than the alternative. I am always interested in whether people can live and be their full selves.

I want to know things like: Can people afford a home and still eat? Can people receive medical care without their credit being ruined? Can our children learn their history without having their ancestors’ suffering edited or erased? Can people move from sea to shining sea without their skin, accent, gender identity, religious identity, or family structure becoming an invitation to public contempt? To me, all of these questions are theological because they concern people who bear the image of God. They are also political questions because public decisions help to  determine the answers to them.

When Jesus announces his ministry in Luke 4, he speaks of good news to people who are poor, release for captives, recovery of sight, and freedom for the oppressed. His proclamation gives us a way to examine power from the lives of those who are subject to it. What does this decision make possible for them? What burden does it lift? Who will be able to breathe more freely because it has been made? I get that that is a demanding measure for any administration. Nonetheless, people who follow Jesus should keep using it.

We also need to resist the temptation to read an election result as evidence that the country has finished reckoning with itself. Racism does not disappear because a congressional seat changes hands. Misogyny will still survive the defeat of any candidate who exploits and practices it. Even after the campaign advertisements stop running, the willingness to make immigrants responsible for every national anxiety or catastrophy can won't vacate the room. We still have to deal with what people were willing to excuse, what churches were willing to bless, and what neighbors did to each other. And this work will not be completed with a cheerful appeal for everyone to get along and move on.

I do believe in reconciliation. I have given my life to a faith that makes room for repentance, forgiveness, and changed relationships. It is because I believe in those things, why I cannot reduce reconciliation to the injured person’s willingness to stop feeling the pain or talking about the injury.

In Luke 19, Zacchaeus makes his response to Jesus tangible through generosity and restitution. The people whom he has harmed are part of the conversation. Thus his encounter with grace addresses the arrangements that made him wealthy in the first place. I believe there is a lesson here for our public life. Reparations must connect with and even be shaped by the people who paid the price. 

The church has work of its own, too. We need to examine how readily we offer prayer for suffering while at the same time avoid talking about the decisions that produce it. It is okay to organize a food drive. However, we must still challenge why working people cannot afford food. It is okay to arrange a ride to court for a family who is caught up in immigration narrative, and we must challenge the language that makes their neighbors indifferent to their fear. It is not enough to welcome children on Sunday (or any other day of worship) and not defend their dignity at a school board meeting.

My Wesleyan understanding of grace calls people toward changing lives through love. That change should become visible in how we share resources, confront harm, and accept responsibility for our neighbors. What I am saying is that holiness has public consequences.

After the midterms, then, I want the church to stay attentive and hold elected officials accountable to their promise of a good life - it must be for everyone.We must stay in deep relationships with the people whose lives are being debated, so that our advocacy stays accountable to them. I am grateful for every opening through which justice might advance and I intend to make use of this one.

After the midterms, I will be looking for the bills to become manageable, for families to feel safer, and for children and the elderly to have what they need. You see, that is where the promises will be tested because that is where our neighbors live. I am saying that that is where the church needs to be.

#Midterms #ElectedOfficials #Habibi #HouseandSenate