People want to talk to me about politics.
These conversations often come out of nowhere—or at least feel like they do. I’m a pastor at a church in the downtown neighborhood of a midsize city, and there are reliably people living on the sidewalk on my way to work. Some are asleep, others peddling, still others in line for a meal. My collar marks me as a member of the clergy, so when they approach me, it’s usually for prayer or practical help.
That’s what I was expecting when a man called me over last fall, soon after Donald Trump had been reelected. “It’s really good versus evil,” he told me, a smile on his face, “and after years of God’s punishment under Joe Biden, we finally have a godly president again.”
I was surprised but went with it. “Do you think this will make your life better?” I asked.
“Yeah!” he said. “Trump’s all about freedom and standing up for Christians. We’ll stop being persecuted.”
That wasn’t the only unexpected plunge into political talk I took in that season. In many conversations, more well-to-do folks expressed to me their dread and anxiety over a new Trump administration. They saw his reelection as an existential threat, and perhaps they guessed that as a Canadian living in Texas, I’d be likely to agree.
They’re right that there’s a lot happening with this administration that worries me. And I certainly don’t deny the real-life import of tariffs, religious liberty law, border enforcement, or any other policy concern.
related
But I’ve also come to see that when a conversation turns so suddenly and unexpectedly to politics, it’s often about some underlying fear, something far removed from the people and policies in Washington. We project our griefs and frustrations onto political figures and events as a way to talk about our worries without really talking about them.
In a later conversation with the man near my church, he told me someone had stolen from his encampment. He had so little to begin with and now had even less, and he particularly felt the injustice of it because, he told me, he’d never stolen anything. He felt sad, angry, almost persecuted.
And in those middle-class conversations, if I listen long enough, we’ll sometimes make it beyond politics to something else, like teenage or adult children who have left the church, or a frustration with ugly comments overheard from a neighbor, or ways their churches have changed or declined.
There are more pressing matters below the surface, but it can feel as if politics is the only conversation we’re allowed to have. Politics is everywhere all the time, and watching the news, reading the news, scrolling through the news—all of it—is a constant drip of anxiety, uncertainty, dread. How do we get past this permissible but miserable conversation to our real troubles?
I’ve decided to put my head in the sand. I’m choosing to be willfully ignorant. When someone talks to me about politics, I don’t have much to contribute, and this tends to move the conversation along to where it ought to go anyway. My hope (and, so far, my experience) is that is averting my sight from the spectacle of political life can open my ears to the hidden concerns of my friends and neighbors.
I recognize I have the luxury to do this. I am a normie. I don’t have a career in politics. I am not working on legislation. As a Canadian, I can’t even vote in federal US elections. My job is not on the line as the president makes sweeping policy changes. I am not afraid for myself or my family. I lead a little life.
Yet honestly, what good would my attention do? Given the complexity of American life and government, given the sheer vastness of this country, very few people have the ability or resources to make a big difference. For me to hang on every word of the president and his team and his rivals is futile, a waste of mental energy. The possibility that some new legislation or executive order could drastically change my life or the lives of my parishioners is real, but my focused attention has no power to attenuate misfortune that might befall us.
I am not a fundamentalist about this. I still live in the world. I notice headlines. I hear—roughly—what’s going on.
But I have responsibilities in the real world, in my home and my church. I have a wife and children who need me. We’ve planted a garden. I cook meals and clean up and put my children to bed. I have books to read. I meet with my friends and parishioners to drink coffee and talk. I have lost nothing but anxiety by letting go of the constant pull of political life. It’s no longer dragging me along.
What’s more, my vocation as a priest is not to tell people what I think about politics. They don’t care. It doesn’t help them. What do I know anyway?
Pastors are sometimes advised to “preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other,” a quote (probably spuriously) attributed to the theologian Karl Barth. I think this is bad advice. For most Christians in America most of the time, what’s happening in Washington, DC, is not terribly relevant to the daily challenges of living in faith, hope, and love. For most of us, far from the halls of power, politics is but a specter that haunts real life.
But the Bible is real life. The local church is real life. The people with whom I speak and visit and pray, they are real life.
That tangible connection determines when I do have to pay attention to politics: when it begins to harm people under my care. And then my role is to help them as best I can. Sure, this involves telling the truth. But more often it involves listening, praying, and helping in practical ways.
Since I stopped paying attention to politics, people still want to talk to me about it. But the conversations go differently now. As Justin Vernon croons in Bon Iver’s new album SABLE, fABLE, “I see things behind things behind things.” I am learning how fears of mortality, worries about the future, and grief over loss can present themselves as political outrage or enthusiasm.
I know that I risk being wrong about everything. But who doesn’t? I ask myself whether this approach is pastoral wisdom or dangerous acquiescence. But I can tell you that it’s bearing good fruit. I have work to do here in this city with the people I know and care about. This is what should be taking my attention, energy, and time.
When the Russian author and dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was being carted from one gulag to another, he would catch snatches of freedom. In a train station once, he heard people complaining about their jobs, their neighbors, their petty concerns, and all the while swaths of the population were dying or trying not to die in prison.
He could see there was no way to convey to the free how good their lives were. He didn’t want to cajole or criticize them for not attending to the grave misfortune around them. Nor did he want them to focus less on what was immediately in front of them. Rather, he wished they would be even more intensely focused on life itself and the relationships that sustain it.
“What about the main thing in life, all its riddles?” he asked. And his answer:
Do not pursue what is illusory—property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life—don’t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn’t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.
Whatever happens in this presidential term or any term to come, I will still have a family to care for and a church to serve. Even these things are ephemeral. But they are the responsibilities God has given to me. I’m putting on blinders about everything else so I can better see the people in front of me.
Cole Hartin is an Anglican priest serving in Tyler, Texas, and a fellow at the Center for Pastor Theologians.
