Letter to a Young Republican Christian

Dear Travis,

What a delight to talk with you! I’m impressed by your academic accomplishments. I’m cheered by your dedication to making the world better. And I’m intrigued by your search for integrating your faith with your political ideals.

You’re talking a language I understand. You also remind me quite a bit of myself when I was a little younger than you and nearing the end of high school.

Since I’ve known your parents for decades, I’m not surprised that you would find faith essential. Since they were teenagers, they have cared deeply about their faith and how they expressed faith in Christian community. Although they and I have not always been on the same page, I’ve valued their continued trust in me, even though they’ve been clear that they’ve sometimes doubted the wisdom of some life choices I’ve made. Overall, we’ve never allowed our differences to drive a wedge between us.

That you have been formed in a home with such values speaks clearly of how their examples have sculpted your self-understanding, your values, and your aspirations.

In our conversation, I heard your very real struggle to square your political opinions with your religious awareness. I remember being in a similar situation when I was your age. As I read the Bible, especially the gospels, I saw and heard very plainly that Jesus’ priorities were firmly on the side of caring for the poor; relating to the outcast; sharing food and time with the down-and-out; advocating for the mistreated; showing compassion for those who were weak or disabled; prizing the presence of children and others who were powerless; clothing the naked; caring about prisoners and captives. At the same time, I was an assiduous reader of our regional newspaper, digesting their conservative editorials against racial desegregation, opposing labor unions and workers’ rights, and uncritically praising capitalism. I read others who voiced similar opinions.

Because I grew up in a culture that affirmed most of those views, I accepted them as correct. The trouble was that I could find little basis in scripture to back them up or to reinforce my own political beliefs.

Things hardly improved when I went to college. I became friends with a fellow I’d met before our freshman year. We roomed together after the first month or so. We had grown up in the same religious tradition. He was an avowed Democrat, an admirer of then President John F. Kennedy. I, on the other hand, was solidly Republican and thoroughly enchanted by the political philosophy of Senator Barry Goldwater who became the Republican nominee for President the following year. We were discussing politics one night when I asked him what shaped his political beliefs. He thought about it for a minute and answered, “I think it was when I became more deeply engaged with my faith. That led me to—"

I didn’t allow him to finish. I erupted in a blast of anger. Shocked, he tried to ask me what my rage was about. I couldn’t answer rationally through the haze of madness.

Well, what was my rage about? I was furious that someone whom I liked and respected had reached a conclusion I had for some time feared and tried to avoid reaching myself.

Four years out of your life now, Travis, is a great big chunk of it. It’s literally bigger than a fifth of your total life. So it was in mine. By the time I finished college, I had come to understand that I couldn’t go on limping with two contrary sets of values. I had to choose. Would I follow what I knew to be the plain ethical teaching of the gospel, exemplified by Jesus himself, or would I nod at that but throw my energy to molding the world following the conservative philosophy of Goldwater and others like him?

Let me pause to say that my agenda is not to talk you out of either your faith or your politics. Rather, it is to comment that you are now, or soon will be, presented a major opportunity to do some real discernment. I suggest you might begin by asking who you are in the core of your being. What do you truly care about? What kind of world do you want to live in? And, to my mind most importantly, what kind of world do you want for the least, the lost, and the lonely among us?

I thought when I was a high school senior and for some time thereafter that life would go well for me. It didn’t occur to me that I might someday have a disabled child or a spouse with a fatal disease or find myself on the street unable to survive because a tough economy had thrown me out of work. I couldn’t imagine what old age would be like, or for that matter, what would be the stresses and challenges of childrearing. Fortunately, I’ve been spared all those things, but not because I’ve been smart or clever, only lucky, blessed.

Moreover, I didn’t realize how good I had it. Having grown up in a family—as you know—shattered by alcoholism, I had more complaints about my upbringing than gratitude for it. Nor did I realize how lucky I was for things I had no part in arranging: I was white, male, intelligent, and blessed with parents who had worked hard to feed, clothe, and educate my brothers and me. On top of all that, I went to college and later to seminary with abundant scholarships and financial aid. Higher education was not astronomically expensive, and students in my day weren’t faced with mountains of debt when they finished their academic careers. The country was prosperous. The world was jittery with Cold War tensions, despite which there was an overall optimism, at least until Viet Nam heated up and many of my contemporaries were killed.

All of that, save for the Viet Nam part and its accompanying angst and divisiveness, insulated me. And even the war did not touch me because I was protected from the draft by being in seminary.

What became apparent to me not just immediately but with increasing clarity through the ensuing years is that the majority in this country and in the world never had it as good as I. They weren’t less deserving. In many cases they were held back by being some race or ethnicity other than white or a gender other than male or an identity other than heterosexual. Or their folks didn’t have the money to pay for music lessons or books or sporty clothes. Some, through no fault of their own, didn’t have the intelligence or physical capability to compete in an increasingly market-driven world.

I hope you see my point. Don’t judge the status or potential of others by standards that apply to you. Perhaps they do apply to others, but you may be sure those standards don’t apply to everyone.

The question is whether you want to address that and, if so, how. Or will you ignore it and keep focused on your own goals, your own life, your own happiness and wellbeing quite apart from how others fare?

As I understand it, the purpose of any government is to make the lives of those governed as safe, good, productive, and happy as possible. When priorities shift to amassing wealth and power, pitting one group against another, or controlling people’s choices beyond the bounds of the common welfare, then whatever the system, it is on the way to corruption. More to my point, no such priorities are arguably supported by sound ethics in general nor biblical ethics in particular.

So, Travis, my hope for you is that you will continually examine your faith. And if you want to enter the world of politics, you will allow your choices to be guided by that faith, not by some distortion of it. Speaking frankly, there is nothing about White Christian Nationalism that reflects the spirit of Jesus. That’s an example of how the gospel can be taken and warped to suit the needs and goals of the powerful at the expense of the very humility, sacrifice, compassion, and love that Christ himself exhibited, taught, and encouraged.

Just so you know, I have frequently been critical, sometimes extremely so, of the Democratic party. The same temptations confront lawmakers no matter what their party affiliation is. Labels don’t excuse or erase that. Nor can buttons or flags or slogans or platitudes cover up hypocrisy. My hope is that you will never cease asking yourself those hard questions about what you truly believe and how you are expressing that. If you do that and keep at it, there’s no doubt in my mind that you’ll find ways to reflect the best of your faith in the life that you lead, the decisions you make, and the values for which you stand.

My ears, no less than my heart, will always be open to you.

Your godfather,

Frank