Faith, Hope, and Love in the Face of Authoritarianism

This morning, we are waking up to the reality of authoritarianism taking control of our nation and the inevitability of widespread harm to vulnerable communities.

In times of crisis, the church has always turned to three theological virtues: faith, hope, and love (1 Corinthians 13:13). These virtues take on renewed meaning and urgency through three key actions: endure, protect, and resist.

Endure (Hope)

I purposely choose the word "endure" over mere survival. And, to be honest, thriving doesn't sound very possible at this moment. But endurance suggests strength, resilience, and determination to press on. The apostle Paul writes that "suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope" (Romans 5:3-4).

Right now, endurance needs to look like lament. Perhaps the Bible was onto something when folks would put on sackcloth and sit in the ashes. Lament gives us permission to do all the things our Sunday school teachers told us not to:

• It questions God's goodness
• It questions God's ability to save
• It's filled with statements of anxiety or despair
• It dares to complain about suffering

Our culture lacks healthy practices of collective grief and rage. We haven't properly lamented the moral injuries of recent years—millions dead, sick, or disabled in the pandemic, our complicity in the genocide in Gaza, the apathy of racial disparity, the erosion of democracy.

And now we have to lament that the majority of voters want a convicted rapist, felon, philanderer, sexist, racist, and authoritarian strong man to be in charge of our country.

The Psalms and of course the book of Lamentations give us permission for this kind of raw honesty before God. Lament includes rage, sorrow, despair, and questioning everything. Lament can demand change and even be the place where we voice our most violent fantasies.

The purpose of the [lament or imprecatory] psalm is not to report on God's action. It doesn't presume that God fulfills each person's cry for vengeance or even rescue, as if God were a conjuring trick that puts the world in order in the way people think it ought to be. The Psalms hold space, and often they hold space for lament. They give words to unspeakable suffering. Jeremiah Wright

One of the most powerful things we can do when we see the lamentable is to bear witness. To speak the truth about what is happening. And what is happening is lamentable.

If we are to endure, two things are simultaneously true. We must lament the lamentable; we must express our despair. And lament and despair must eventually transition into establishing life-giving patterns and routines that keep us and our communities going. We have to know what will it mean to rest and sabbath. To care for our bodies, our souls, our spirits, and our neighbors. Endurance will, for a while, have to look like going through the motions of life in order to go on, in order to make a living. And endurance will have to look like setting up predictable patterns and routines and habits that keep us going. We endure because we have hope that "the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion" (Philippians 1:6).

But right now today endurance is lament. It's grief. It's rage.

Protect (Love)

We are facing down new and restored policies that will materially harm and crush women, LGBTQ+ folks (especially trans people), immigrants, refugees, people of color, and the poor. In this election, sexism, patriarchy, transphobia, racism, and capitalism made their voices loud and clear.

So for those of us who have any sort of privilege, any sort of resources, or are at the intersection of any sort of power, there is an absolute responsibility to work to protect those who are already at the margins and are going to be pushed to the absolute brink.

This means concrete action: supporting abortion funds, churches providing sanctuary to immigrants, becoming bastions of mental health care and transition care for trans folks, opening up homes and wallets, and using whatever influence we have to shield the vulnerable. As Jesus said, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me" (Matthew 25:40).

This call falls especially heavily on straight, white, cisgender folks like myself. We bear the greatest responsibility to leverage our unearned social power for the protection of others. But everyone has some sphere of influence where they can embody Christ's love through protective action.

Resist (Faith)

Finally, we must resist by building coalitions of power to oppose authoritarianism. This means more than just waiting to vote again in a few years. It requires putting our resources—and sometimes our bodies—on the line to prevent the worst outcomes. It means seeking positions of local influence and serving our communities in ways that create positive change.

Another translation of the word often translated as faith (pistis) is allegiance. My allegiance is first and foremost to Christ's Kingdom. And the way I show that allegiance is by utterly refusing to bend the knee to unjust laws, to authoritarian leaders, and to Christofascist ideology.

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws…The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.’ —Martin Luther King, Jr.

The early church gives us a model for faithful resistance to empire while maintaining our core identity as people of peace. As Peter declared, "We must obey God rather than human beings!" (Acts 5:29).

A Word About God's Presence

We must not confuse being marginalized or pushed to society's fringes with being abandoned by God. The Christian tradition has deep roots in being a minority, a remnant. Throughout Scripture, God consistently shows up on the underside of power—with enslaved Israel, with the exiles, with the early church under persecution. It's not just when things are going well that we think, oh, good, God's on our side. No, God is still on the side of justice, even when the forces of evil and oppression and authoritarianism are ascendant.

We live in the "now and not yet" of God's kingdom. We trust in Christ's ultimate victory over the forces of death and evil, while acknowledging that victory is not yet complete. We've been given responsibility for how to respond to evil in the meantime.

So today we lament and rage. In the days ahead, we continue to endure so we can protect those who will be harmed. And we prepare to resist, not with violence, but with the weapons of faith, hope, and love. For as John reminds us, "The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world" (1 John 4:4).

May we be found faithful in living out these virtues in concrete ways that bring glimpses of God's kingdom even in dark times.