At this writing, we are being persuaded that no one knows the what or when of the outcome of the contest that has dominated our national life with unusual intensity over the past year. On the presidential level, we are told that it is more than a choice between two parties and candidates and their accompanying visions of our national direction. Rather, they say, the stakes are higher than the normal spoils of competition and involve the very character of our constitutional republic.
Communities of faith of all traditions have struggled to know how to be faithful amid these challenges. Parts of the faith family have been clear and active in supporting one side of the contest, convinced that God has ordained their side’s claims. Others across traditions have offered support to the other side without the extent of mobilized alignment.
Many local families of faith have chosen to attempt a delicate balance of communal neutrality in a desire to respect freedom in diversity and to avoid disruptive divisions. The image of the “purple church” has emerged as a description of such faith communities.
The outcome of the election will decide “who wins,” officially at least. Roughly half the electorate will claim victory (or breathe a sigh of relief), and the other half will be disappointed (or react more actively, as promised).
On Good Faith Media’s platform, as elsewhere, there have been many good and helpful voices speaking to the challenge of faithfulness in these crucial times. There has been an abundance of reminders of what our calling as the family of faith can and should consider as we navigate the waters of conflict. We are in their debt.
We might characterize this significant guidance as a collective “theology of conflict”— faith seeking understanding (Anselm) during the inescapable conflict.
There is reason to believe that the election will decide significant aspects of the conflict. However, there is also reason to think that the months ahead will present a need for a “theology of recovery” to offer guidance for faith communities (and the nation itself) for dealing both with the lasting consequences of the conflict and with the election results, whatever they are.
The condition that has made us vulnerable in the present crisis has been a long time in the making, and its contributing factors are many. Recovery from it will not be quick or easy.
The image of recovery that is familiar to us from our experience with medical treatment and healthcare often includes what we know as “rehab”— that period and process between treatment and restoration to the desired level of function. A theology of recovery would address how we might interpret and apply faith to the path forward after the “fork in the road” has been chosen.
What does faith mean now that the contest has been decided? What is the function of faith in our collective rehab? What does a “recovery theology” look like?
A period in our covenant history reminds us that conflict and its outcomes are no strangers to the faith pilgrimage. Judah found itself in exile after a long history of weakened faithfulness to their originating covenant, enabled by an alliance of political and religious leadership.
The exile brought what two centuries of prophetic voices had foretold would be its consequences. With city, temple and homeland now gone, what does the covenant promise, “I will be with you,” mean?
The prophetic voices that shifted covenant theology from indictment to recovery— notably Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Deutero- Isaiah— offered a renewed understanding of faith. This new understanding looked beyond the losses of previous structures of security and toward a “new covenant” that would be “written on the heart” (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ezekiel 36:26-32) and a redemptive agenda that would find the clue to God’s work in history in loss and recovery (Second Isaiah’s “servant songs” 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-11; 52:13 – 53:11).
More recent voices, such as Lincoln’s second inaugural address in 1865 and Martin Luther King, Jr. ’s Lincoln Memorial speech in 1963, also reflect this perspective.
We also find a helpful methodology for a recovery theology in the familiar 12-step recovery process, whose benefits extend across religious traditions.
Perhaps this is a good clue to the task of a recovery theology: to return to the covenant that gave the community birth and sustained it in and through the inevitable conflicts that history and personal human experience provide. This doesn’t mean restoring former “greatness,” but recovering an essential goodness that has proven to be the sustaining feature of life and community.
Professor emeritus of religious studies at Mercer University, a member of Smoke Rise Baptist Church in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and the author of Keys for Everyday Theologians (Nurturing Faith Books, 2022).
