Vice President Harris has a word for Virginia voters

Sunday morning worship services are not the place for voters to be presented with blatantly partisan appeals. You might think this should be obvious, but campaigning from the pulpit is happening in Virginia’s current race for the governor’s mansion. Vice President Kamala Harris recorded a video, now distributed to over 300 churches, urging worshippers to vote for Democrat candidate (and former governor) Terry McAuliffe. It is theological malpractice—and it’s cringeworthy.

Harris is not the first politician to use Sunday morning worship in order to make a last-minute political appeal. In 2016, the Trump presidential campaign created a video for churches with Donald Trump and Mike Pence, designed for similar impact, released the last weekend before the election. There is a history of both parties seeking to motivate religious voters, including the sudden appearance of political candidates at worship services.

But recently, there has been intense focus on this mixing of faith and politics, with a plethora of bestselling books taking conservative evangelicals to task for adopting a cozy relationship with the GOP. Some of this criticism is a helpful corrective, and yet, it is interesting how quiet many of the same critics are when this same unhealthy alliance occurs in Democratic-leaning churches. And it happens again and again.

When pastor David Platt paused to pray over President Trump during an impromptu visit by the chief executive during a morning worship service at McLean Bible Church in 2019, the outrage machine went into full overdrive. Platt’s actions, however, were entirely pastoral and praiseworthy. But buzzwords words like “theocracy,” “Christian nationalism,” and other pejoratives were sprinkled liberally throughout the op-ed pages of America’s leading publications, with not a few evangelical leaders themselves expressing self-righteous disdain. Yet when a Democrat makes an explicit appeal for votes in church—something that happens quite often during election season—the cries of protest are mostly muted.

Christian pastors need to be careful lest the pulpit and their congregations risk being used by politicians for electoral gain. Though there is a history of pulpit activism in America, and quite often the black church was the only safe place for an oppressed and marginalized minority to organize, explicit endorsements from the stage offer a mixed message to churchgoers.

Leaving the pulpit free of overt partisanship, however, shouldn’t be confused with a kind of pietistic withdrawal. It doesn’t mean not taking sides on issues of Christian conscience. The Word of God faithfully preached will always have political consequences. In the first century, Jesus’s followers declared that an itinerant rabbi from Nazareth is Lord. This was a direct challenge to the pagan gods of the Greco Roman world. The Christians directly challenged the claim that Caesar was Lord. The Christian ethic of human dignity that pulsates through the Bible condemns the inhumanity of abortion. The pointed preaching of the minor prophets is a rebuke to the injustices of the age.

Our challenge is to be political in the right sense without being partisan. This preserves the church’s purity and also serves public officials who sit in our pews. Immersed in a world of competing motivations and powerful influences throughout the week, those who answer the call to public service need the accountability of a pulpit that preaches biblical truth, with courage. While using their positions to speak out vocally on important issues, pastors should carefully guard their overt endorsements.

This doesn’t mean churches discourage civic participation or treat politicians like lepers to be avoided. It doesn’t mean that individual Christians should not make endorsements. On the contrary, there are many ways to help Christians form a robust ethic for engaging politics and ways to encourage and influence our public officials. It’s healthy, for instance, for Christians to host forums and debates, to use their buildings as voting places, to help people understand important issues and ideas.

But Sunday morning is when Christians gather together for the worship of Christ. Christians understand that true worship is our priority. The fact that the vice president of the United States is featured in a video made to be played during worship, pushing a candidate of her own party days before an election, is a warning to us all.