As Christians, our role is one of resistance

by Joseph Nangle, OFM
Pax Christi USA 2023 Teacher of Peace

Crisis: “An unstable or crucial time or state-of- affairs in which a decisive change is impending.”

The United States is clearly facing a monumental crisis in Election 2024. Without any exaggeration the outcome of this event, from the highest level of our government to the local, will determine for generations who we are and who we want to be.

The crisis is even more stark considering Pope Francis’s somber observation at a press conference during his return from a pastoral visit to Asia: “Neither candidate is pro-life – we’re left to vote for the lesser evil.” While the pope mentioned only two anti-life issues, he could well have cited others ignored by both candidates. Under the rubric of intrinsically anti-life situations, Pope St. John Paul II, in his 1992 encyclical “Veritatis Splendor,” listed realties which demand attention, for example: genocide, trafficking of women and children, degrading working conditions. He could have added many others: threats to our common home and the great divide between “developed” and “underdeveloped” nations, our bloated military budget. The list is long.

The crisis we face goes far beyond the choice of a president, however. The two presidential candidates are a metaphor for the deep, seemingly unbridgeable divide among the citizens of the United States, and truth be told, within the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations. We are turned against ourselves in vicious ways. Social media has enabled people to vilify others using the grossest language.

The famous words of Abraham Lincoln, spoken 1858, resound across the years. Quoting from the Gospel of Mark in the face of another mortal threat to our democracy, he said: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” (Mark 3:25)

Worse than that, for better and too often for worse, the United States holds an outsized economic, military, political position in the world. We think of US involvement in Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, the world of migrants, the World Bank, the United Nations. To undermine this democracy will have incalculable consequences across the planet.

So, what should be the posture of Christian-Catholics and other faith-based communities today and going forward? Whichever presidential candidate is elected, our role will have to be, as it is often already, that of resistance. As a stark warning, we remember the largely craven non-responses of the Christian churches as Nazis took power in the last century. The failure of those denominations was a historical failure, a monumental scandal and it led to enormous tragedy.

Back to the here and now on the eve of Election 2024.

At this 11th hour and to prepare ourselves for November 6 and beyond, prayer is crucial – for our country and for ourselves. We might begin our prayerful reflections with the Book of Genesis, Chapter 18, and Abraham’s “bargaining” with the Divine on behalf of the decent people around him. It is not out of place to plead for God’s mercy on our nation in the name of millions of righteous people in the United States.

There is the example of St. Paul writing a powerful letter to the small, mainly gentile Christian community living in the heart of imperial Rome. One motive for Paul’s message surely was a strengthening their faith and witness at that fraught time and place. Or his message to the Christians in the Roman city of Ephesus: “Our struggle is with… the world rulers of this present darkness.” (Ephesians 6:12)

Above all there is Jesus, living and preaching a resistance message in a corrupt political/religious environment that was backed by a world-wide empire. His is the shining example of the power of the prophetic word. His followers can do no less in our current prayers in this ongoing challenge than to summon the courage to speak that word.

Let us see ourselves always as Christians who happen to be US Americans – not US Americans who happen to be Christians.

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Joe Nangle OFM is a Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace and the 2023 Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace. As a member of the Assisi Community in Washington, D.C., he is dedicated to simple living and social change. Joe also serves as the Pastoral Associate for the Latino community at Our Lady Queen of Peace, Arlington, Virginia.