Scared Before Halloween

First United Methodist Church in Duluth, Minnesota, where I am the pastor, is located on a beautiful site. We sit nearly atop the hill overlooking Lake Superior (my office has a spectacular view). We also sit at a busy intersection. Bordering our property is a sidewalk – a public sidewalk. Being public space, people are free to use it for any lawful means, including campaigning for their favorite candidate. This can lead to misunderstanding, as it may appear that the congregation is endorsing one candidate or the other. First United Methodist Church does not endorse any political candidate, though we encourage our people to use their faith-based values as they vote, and in their lives as citizens. As pastor of the church, I will not endorse a political candidate, even in my private life, though I will be voting.

As already noted, though we do not endorse political candidates as a congregation, our location can make it appear that we do. This led to a recent phone message, most of which I have transcribed.

I just drove past your church and I’m very disheartened by an Obama sign on your property. Two young ladies holding up a hand-made blanket that said “Women for Obama.” How in the world can women be for Obama when he believes that partial-birth abortion is o.k? That is murder. That is the most heinous crime there is – tearing an unborn child from the woman’s womb. That’s awful. I can’t believe your church would endorse such a thing.

I don’t know how any Christian could ever vote for Obama. Do you know he has taken the American flag off of his campaign plane and replaced it with a rising sun? Check snopes.com and type in Barack Obama’s plane.

This man is scary. Christianity – if he gets it, which I don’t think he will, God’s not going to allow that, it would disappear fast. Please rethink this. [The caller then left her phone number] Unbelievable, in front of your church.

I am glad the caller left her phone number. I called her back and left her a message clarifying that the sidewalk around our property is public space which we don’t control, so her call was misdirected. I did take her up on her offer to check out the story on Barack Obama’s plane, and it is true, to a degree. He did remove the logo for North American Airlines, which was a version of the United States flag. He replaced it with another version of the flag, this one inside an “O” with a sun rising over it. It is an Obama campaign logo symbolizing something like “morning in America” I suppose (where have we heard that before?).

This action does not lead me to label Barack Obama “scary.” What I find scary is the passionate dislike for Obama displayed in this phone call. This person is clearly going to vote her faith-based values, just like I hope people in my congregation do. But I also believe that people of deep and thoughtful faith can disagree about issues and candidates, and that one point-of-view is not, thereby, God’s point-of-view and the other something hideous and evil. And last time I checked, Barack Obama was a Christian, sometimes criticized for the remarks of the pastor of his Christian congregation. How would his election make Christianity disappear fast? If Nero, Caligula and Domitian couldn’t rid the world of Christianity when it was a much smaller movement, how would a democratically-elected president of The United States accomplish this?

The election is just days away, and whoever is elected will have his hands full from day one – an economy in crisis, two wars in progress. It will take the best efforts of our elected leaders and our citizens working together to move the country forward in a positive way. Christians and others concerned for justice and the common good will need to find ways to work together. If we begin with the premise that God did not want the newly elected president to be elected, such working together is going to be a challenge. That’s scary.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David