As a break from Part 2 of my series exploring CHIP and the housing crisis, I wanted to take an aside to recommend something I had worked on in another arena of my life. Folks who read this blog know that I wear many hats, and one of them is thinking about the intersection between my faith and political engagement. In this capacity, my friend
asked if I could help with a team working on a project to create a devotional that spanned the six weeks leading up to the election.The devotional was an outgrowth of James’ vision to create a resource to help guide folks who shared our Christian beliefs and cared about local politics to navigate this season. The goal was to create a resource for people who wanted to be challenged to avoid two pitfalls as the upcoming election got closer:
Avoidance: Some may be tempted to avoid engagement altogether because it is too messy or simply not our concern. Avoidance is not an option in the long run because it fails to live up to our obligation to seek justice and right relationships in our world and neighborhood.
Assimilation: The other risk is that we engage in a way that does not center the unique aspects of our faith but instead gets subsumed in the activist energy we surround ourselves with. When we do this, we also fail in our calling to seek justice and right relationships. When formed by pure activist energy, we will ultimately fail to uphold our commitments to aspects of our faith, like loving our enemies or seeking truth even when uncomfortable.
I realize the readers of this blog are reasonably pluralistic in their beliefs about ultimate reality, which is something I greatly enjoy about my audience! So, some of you may have zero interest in this, which is fine; feel free to return for part two of the CHIP series. But others will hopefully find this to be an intellectually and spiritually engaging exercise over the next six weeks. If you were unaware, election day is five weeks from tomorrow, meaning today is day one of the guide. So feel free to start using it!
The six weeks each have a unique theme:
Finding Hope in Uncertainty:
Resisting Political Idolatry
Discerning Truth
Seeking Justice for the Oppressed
Loving Your (Political) Enemies
A Call to Action (this conveniently overlaps with actual election day, and the days of counting votes afterward)
Here is the guide below to download:
I would love to get folks’ thoughts as they progress! Keep in mind that I personally only wrote one section of the devotions (week 3), so please attenuate all praise and feedback based on that fact :)
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