Why America needs its pastors right now

The 2024 Presidential Election is upon us, and the stakes and emotions are running high. The major candidates are light years apart on fundamental worldview issues, yet both Harris and Trump routinely use biblical and religious language to mark their campaigns as righteous crusades. And the prospect of a tight election undecided for days or weeks is unnerving given our frayed connections to one another and our deeply divided politics. In sum, America needs its pastors right now.

Here are three specific ways they can help:

First, elections involve deeply spiritual questions. Many if not most of the major issues in the 2024 election — from abortion to immigration, from religious freedom to sex, and from gender to care for the poor — are inherently moral questions. The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth (I Tim. 3:15), and its role vis-à-vis the state is to provide moral guidance and wisdom (Mt. 5:13-16, John 6:18) so that the state punishes evil and promotes good as God defines it (I Peter 2:13-15). Unfortunately, the Church’s silence on many biblical issues that culture has deemed political has left many Christians without discipleship in the area of citizenship. And the parties or political pundits are filling in the moral blanks for American Christians.

The Internal Revenue Code’s bar on a pastor’s speech from the pulpit concerning candidates is clearly unconstitutional, and it may yet see its day in court. But even that rule does not prohibit pastors from doing what they are called to do: forming the conscience of their church and the nation. Now is a time for biblical clarity, and people in the pews want this type of clear teaching on pressing moral and cultural issues. A spiritual crisis calls for spiritual guidance, and pastors need to step off the sidelines to provide that leadership right now.

Second, our social fabric is fraying. Since 2020, I have preached in hundreds of churches and other ministry settings about Christian citizenship.  A consistent theme that has come up in discussions afterward is the deepening division in communities and even churches and families over politics. Our population is self-sorting according to worldview and political views, urban neighborhoods and suburban or rural towns just miles apart feel foreign to one another, and politics has turned from an important exercise to an ultimate contest.

These divisions raise grave, Lincolnesque questions.

Can a house so divided stand the moral, technological, demographic, and global changes we are facing? In response, the local church and the local pastor is an oft overlooked or neglected resource. I watched recently as a pastor led a Bible study composed of MAGA and more moderate Republicans as well as Democrats, challenged them to think biblically about the election, and then closed with “see you Sunday!” Where else can Americans find such leadership and encouragement in the context of relationships? What, other than the commands to pray for all governing officials (I Tim. 2:1-2), to speak with truth and grace (Col. 4:6), and to reach out to and care for our neighbors despite deep differences (Luke 10:25-37), will pull America back from the brink of its developing civil cold war? Again, we need pastors to lead out on these efforts.

Third, we need a better way forward. American politics has always been, well, rowdy. John Quincy Adams won the presidency due to a single vote in the House of Representatives in 1824, we fought a bloody civil war, Rutherford B. Hayes won a hotly contested presidential election in 1876 by a single electoral college vote, and most readers know the electoral history from 2000 to the present. Given that history, the 2024 election cycle is not markedly different from the general rough-and-tumble of American politics. But our public discourse has turned crass and dehumanizing. The Democratic party has, as set out in its platform, abandoned the created order concerning the sanctity of unborn lives and human sexuality (Gen 1:26-27), and the Republican party, as set out in its platform, has backpedaled on the sanctity of life (Ps. 139.; Jer. 1:5).

This is not a statement of moral equivalency as vetoing a nationwide ban on abortion does not equal a call for nationwide abortion on demand. But it is a statement that our nation is in a profound moral and thus political crisis. Regardless of the result of the 2024 election, we need pastors to step into the yawning social divide to courageously speak truth, to lead their churches to strategically impact their zip codes, and to show our neighbors a better way forward.

For all these reasons, America needs its pastors right now.