Everyone is interested in faith and politics in a presidential election year, so to learn how three local church pastors handle political issues, Rev! sat down with Alan Kraft (Christ Community Church, Greeley, Colorado); Clay Peck (Grace Place, Berthoud, Colorado); and Brad Jensen (Faith Evangelical Free Church, Fort Collins, Colorado).
How do you handle political issues, whether local or national, in the church?
Clay: I encourage members to get out and vote their conscience and to think and pray about moral issues -- and when they do, be salt and light and try to make a difference. But I don’t teach much beyond that because I believe the primary purpose of the church is to reach the lost with the gospel of grace in Christ Jesus, and if it starts to feel like it’s a Republican or a Democratic place, we’re going to miss a whole society of people. I would like to see us be able to have a chance to reach them all, so that’s something I try to be careful with.
Alan: I would agree with Clay. When I initially started in the pastorate, I was much more vocal about political issues. Then I read a book by Cal Thomas called Blinded By Might that really impacted me and made me realize the same thing -- the church is the only institution that’s about the gospel. I still get emails that say, “Get your church to call your senator about this.” I feel like the church got co-opted and used for a political purpose, and what happens is the church loses the power of the gospel, the one thing that God has entrusted us with; we lose that and politics then becomes a barrier. People think, Oh, I have to become a Republican in order to become a Christian, and suddenly politics becomes a barrier to the gospel, so we are very clear as a church. We don’t do voter registration; we don’t do petitions; we don’t do voters guides. I encourage people to vote and to even run for office if they feel led to do that, so I’m not against that, but we try to be tenacious about protecting the purpose of the church, which is the gospel.
Brad: I really like what Alan said about the church being the one thing that God has chosen, the one place where he manifests his wisdom through the cross of Christ. If the church loses that, then there’s no other place that has that purpose. There are plenty of organizations that have as their purpose offering information about what’s going on out there in the political scene. So as Clay was saying – offering encouragement to pray about moral issues that face the place in which we live and minister and to follow the example of Paul, who says to Timothy to pray for those in leadership and pray for those who govern, so that we can live a life that ultimately declares the gospel.
How can we not be concerned as pastors about helping our people sort through those issues that politicians will influence?
Clay: I think it is important to address moral issues that are impacting society, even if it does seem to be something that is more in line with one party or another. I think it is important to address the issue of abortion but not call it a Republican issue. It is probably important to address the issue of the environment also and ask whether we’re being responsible as Christians in that category, which tends to be perceived more as a Democratic issue. But I know I made a mistake a number of years ago by doing a message called Why Christians Should Vote. I went through all the reasons why I was going to vote, and I did it very passionately, but the way I did it made it clear who I was going to vote for, and while some people were ready to come to a standing ovation, we lost a few people who were unnecessarily offended -- it’s not about trying to keep everybody in the church -- but I’m going to be more careful about that in the future.
Alan: I agree with Clay. Even the voters’ guides that I receive all have an agenda, and it seems to me that they are asking questions a particular way. I think, for instance, the whole issue of poverty -- we need to preach on that, and we need our people to have compassionate hearts. Now compassion may look very different for a Republican or a Democrat in terms of the government’s responsibility, and that’s where I want to be really careful about stepping into the area of what government should do in response because the Republicans would say they are just as compassionate as the Democrats. They just think that you get government out of the way. So it seems to me that we preach the Scriptures and we preach God’s heart for the poor and the world in which we live, God’s heart for the unborn, God’s heart for the sanctity of life from birth to death. All of those issues we preach, but I think it is important to not step across the line as a teacher and a preacher and start talking about how the Bible says the government is to respond to a particular need. That’s where it gets a little messy. Are we really going to say that a particular Democratic candidate is more compassionate than a Republican candidate? Do we really want to go there just because they have a different policy or a different approach to an issue?
Brad: I recently had a chance to be in China, and it caused me to reflect on some of this because meeting with Christians in that country and hearing the way in which they interact, or the lack thereof, with government was a reminder to me that the church really is a place to make sure that these issues, which are often taken up by our government, are issues for people to wrestle with scripturally, as you were saying. And if it crosses the line for them personally in the way they vote as an American citizen, then my teaching from God’s word affects their action, and they can become salt and light in that way as they choose, but that’s only one part of it. I was reminded in China how small that is because a Chinese Christian realizes he has no voice and yet lives his life as a believer of salt and light in a much different way. We have been given this freedom, and we should use it to be salt and light in the U.S. in this way. So it was a good reminder to me that for the Christian, freedom in the U.S. to vote and to express this freedom is unique, and for a Christian, it is just another way of expressing what it is they believe.
Does your church have any official policy regarding politics and political issues?
Clay: We learned the hard way because we used to allow a particular group occasionally to put up a table to distribute educational tools for people to help them, supposedly, be better aware of what the issues were. It became apparent very quickly that it was it was a hard right-winger campaigning to collar people who would come by the table, so we just have a policy that we don’t allow it. There is not any literature; there are no voting guides...it is not allowed.
Alan: We do have a policy as well, and it came out of the number of requests we would get to set up a booth to pass around this petition, to do this and that. I began to wrestle with what is the church’s role here? We felt the need to put this into writing so that if people do come to us, we can just show them our policy. Also when I talk about influence and what it looks like, I use language about the church being a force, a fortress, or a fragrance. Too often the church tries to be a force through politics or whatever -- we are going to force our perspective, and we are going to gather a bunch of people to the school board meeting to get the school board to vote a particular way, and I tell people that’s not who we are. We are also not about being a fortress --just holing up in our shelter. You know, us vs. them or hiding out from the big bad world. But our role is to be a fragrance, and that kind of language helps when we have to talk about why we don’t do the boycott thing or the petitions or the voters guides. It’s because of our approach to what we believe truly influences society. Sowing seed, that’s the way the kingdom advances, that kind of language -- being a fragrance rather than a political force.
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