Yesterday was Election Day in America.
I didn't vote. And the elections decided nothing grand for me.
Jesus is still King of every elected or non-elected political figure or office. I am still his loyal subject. And whatever vote I cast -- I didn't vote yesterday -- is cast everyday, in how I live my life as a subject of my King.
So I don't care one whit that the Republicans have gained control of the Legislative branch.
Because Walt Whitman was right: "America, it may be, is doing very well upon the whole, notwithstanding these antics of the parties and their leaders, these half-brained nominees, the many ignorant ballots, and many elected failures and blatherers".
Nothing much has changed on the fifth of November, from the third of November.
Voting, it turns out, isn't the most significant political practice we Christians do.
All of this is not born out of some animosity toward "America". I don't "hate" it, as my friend Dan is fond of asking why I do. I'm unconcerned, sure, but that by definition means I'm not angry or hate those who do.
And I don't condemn those who voted yesterday.
No, all of this doesn't flow out of some "Liberal" bias or "Anarchist" commitment. It comes out of the central story we Christians tell.
I'm a Christian so I tell the story of Jesus. Which goes like this:
Jesus was born and lived in a particular time and place; the kingdom He proclaimed did not seek to overthrow the Roman Empire and re-order society from the top down. Instead, Jesus sought to reenergize the grassroots social order of YHWH begun in Ancient Israel, a locally embodied polis that functioned most healthfully without a king. Jesus called 12 disciples, a little community that recalled the 12 tribes of Israel, and they shared life together in a way that proclaimed God's healing and abundance to the people they encountered.
After Jesus' ascension, his disciples spread throughout the world planting little communities that embodied Jesus in their own particular places. These churches were, in a very real sense, the incarnation of Jesus in these places and the shape of their life together modeled a politics -- a way of being together -- that was not rooted in greed, power-grabbing or any form of self-interest.
This basic incarnational story is therefore the basis for thinking theologically about voting specifically (and politics generally).
I see the main political task of Christians as Christians to be following the mission of God in the church and thus to embody Jesus faithfully in our place and to work with our neighbors toward the health and flourishing of our neighborhood. Whitman's assumption that there are more important political realities in our land than our elected officials rings true for me. According to theological narrative I have defined here, churches are the most important of these political realities, but also more important is the open dialogue and collaboration of neighbors as they seek to cultivate their places in such a way that they flourish and can be sustained. To invest ourselves in this political work is a viable alternative to voting, and perhaps more effective in shaping the future of our places. Hence, I think the things we Christians do everyday, in feeding the hungry, relieving the plight of the poor, delivering the oppressed, freeing the imprisoned, bringing light and sight to those in literal and metaphorical darkness: That's the real practice of voting that matters. Because Jesus is still King, and I am his subject, I will do his work every day.
To talk of politics from the narrative of Christ's incarnation, and the continuing incarnation of Christ in our churches, is to emphasize that our most important political sphere is ultra-local, the care and flourishing of our neighborhoods. The United States as a nation, and probably even our states as well, are too large in their scope. Whitman's scathing critique is leveled not at individual voters and politicians, but at a broken system in which the candidates who run for political offices are too far removed from us. We cannot know in any deep and meaningful sense who they are and what they represent. On the flip side, they cannot have intimate knowledge of all the places they represent and what is in the best interest of each of these places.
That's the problem with politics in America. Lots of folks voted Republican yesterday because they're sick of Obama's policies. But, trust me, things won't change. Even in a media-saturated culture of 24 hour news cycles, we're only told enough to get folks elected. We don't know them, and they don't know us. Not well enough to make the real business of politics work.
What I'm pointing toward is a classic observation: Only after we know character (in its depth) do we rule well. This is why Aristotle's "prequel" to his Politics was his Nichomachean Ethics.
Whitman got it right, I believe, that nominees are necessarily "half-brained", limited in their capacity to know the vast diversity of their constituents and the places they inhabit. Candidates are thus also condemned to the blathering of propaganda, masking their lack of knowledge with empty campaign promises in order to win votes. And yes, candidates are ultimately condemned to failure as the complex power-dynamics of office unmask their inability to truly fulfill those promises.
Despite our best efforts to the contrary, voters likewise act out of limited knowledge -- Whitman's "ignorant ballots". We don't really know who candidates are and how they will survive the massive pressures exerted in governing such a large domain as a state or nation. Political parties fill in some of these gaps for us, offering us a basic platform on which a candidate might be understood, but their "antics" -- to use Whitman's word -- mostly serve at the present to devour our political identity and to ignite division.
Because, let's face it: Those political platforms and "antics" serve higher powers. In Christian language, we call those "the powers and principalities of this world". They're fallen, not Christian.
My primary political identity isn't to those powers. It's "in Christ". Jesus alone is King, and the Lord who lords over all those fallen powers (Philippians 2; Colossians 1).
So I don't vote. And I'm not concerned about how yesterday's vote turned out. Not in the slightest.