Tell me how to vote! (Part II)
Tell me how to vote! (Part II)
The part where I ask about what you worship
This is the second of three parts in a series called “Tell me how to vote!” You can read part one here.
Dear Soulful Revolutionary,
I told you last week that I won’t tell you how to vote. But I will accompany you as you discern your way forward in this electoral season and beyond. I am always happy to accompany you with holy curiosity.
Today, in your political discernment, I invite you to consider the question:
What do you worship and why?
There are plenty of people who adulate political candidates, hitching their hopes and dreams to particular, powerful people. But if you are one of my regular readers, I’m willing to bet you’re not one of these folks. Rather, I imagine you are a savvy consumer of political discourse and an equal opportunity critic of the political elites whose outsized power shapes our lives.
I am also aware that as a good portion of my readership identifies as religious, some of my readers might quickly move past the question of “Whom do you worship?” with the perfunctory, “God alone,” or something similar.
Hence, I am not asking you “whom” you worship, but “what” and “why.”
Arriving at the answer to the first part of this question may be easier than the second. What we worship can be discerned by paying attention to where we place our energy, our attention, our time and our money. Why we align these resources in a particular direction is a question of desire — revealing our deepest longings, hopes and aches.
To illustrate this, allow me to begin with a confession.
Idolizing ideologies
Four years ago, I expended an extraordinary amount of energy in the movement to “save democracy” in the United States. It would be hard to overstate how much of an evangelist I was for democracy. (Sometimes, I think I have been a better evangelist for democracy than for Jesus, but I digress). I taught and preached and organized and trained for the sake of democracy like my life depended on it. And in many ways, I imagined it did.
The effort wasn’t entirely misguided — I still wholeheartedly believe in empowering people to step into their agency for the sake of collective change. Yet, convinced of the urgency and righteousness of this cause in the face of white Christian nationalism, my hyper-focus on “saving democracy” resulted in a kind of tunnel vision. As I worshipped at the altar of “democracy,” my critical lens became blurry and my global consciousness narrowed.
I was jolted awake a year ago by the US’s unconditional support for the “only democracy in the Middle East” (a truly laughable tagline for more reasons than I have room for here).
I see now that a “democracy” narrowly defined by electoral politics — i.e. “Vote for this party in the two-party duopoly and you will save democracy!” — is dangerously disingenuous. When self-appointed champions of democracy are not reckoning with the problem of US imperialism (including US interference in democracies worldwide), this disconnect becomes all the more apparent. When the preservation of the US political system is prioritized over and above the lives and dignity of people in other parts of the world, that’s not democracy. That’s US supremacy.
So I have to ask myself why I worshipped the ideology of “democracy.”
Was an element of this investment of time and energy about assuaging my fears that harm would otherwise come to me and people I know and love? For sure.
Did devoting myself to promoting this ideology make me feel good about myself amidst my feelings of political despair? Absolutely.
And yet, did my devotion to democracy in the US inadvertently prioritize the preservation of my and my family’s future over, say, the lives of Palestinian or Sudanese or Congolese people, most of whom I will never know? In some small way, probably. It certainly prevented me from channeling my time and energy in other important directions. What is the cost of worshipping democracy, both to people within and outside the US? Will we “save democracy” within this country, only to find we have thrown the global community under the proverbial bus?
If our adherence to an ideology leaves us ignorant of — or even justifying — the suffering of others, we need to call it what it is: a form of idolatry.
Interrogating the ideologies we idolize is a vital part of political discernment. This critical engagement is preferable to adulation of any our highest values, because it helps us allocate our time and energy more strategically, sustainably and always with a mind to collective care.
As you’re being instructed this election season to vote based on higher ideals (democracy, patriotism, financial security, safety and more), it is worth asking who benefits from your devotion to any one of these things. Examining closely the ideals we hold most dear is not about forsaking them, per se. Rather it is about prioritizing them properly, so that they can guide us toward what is best for the human and non-human (animals, land, air, water, etc.) communities of which we are part.
Deference politics
Worship can also happen in the space of deference politics, in which a group defers by default to the opinion of the most marginalized person in the room, rather than pursuing relationships of respect and mutuality within a dynamic community committed to the collective construction of a liberative politic.
Olufemi O Taiwo’s book ELITE CAPTURE addresses this phenomenon of deference politics, which Sim Kern helpfully summarizes in this video:
Discernment can disintegrate amidst deference politics, which have a propensity to idolize people. This is certainly not to say that marginalized voices should not be centered. It is to say that nobody’s voice should be cheapened and tokenized by making their perspective a replacement for our own vital work of rigorous discernment.
We can ask: is deferring to this person’s authority suppressing my sensitivity to my own inner authority? Is platforming them helping me ignore unanswered questions within me about the systems that are continuing to cause harm, regardless of the individual in power?
To be clear, this is not to say that there isn’t something hopeful about a person of the Global Majority potentially becoming president. It is to say we ought to be asking serious questions of anyone who is able to amass power within a system predicated on the oppression of the majority of people in this country and worldwide. Deference to someone purely on the basis of a marginalized identity they hold is a recipe for political disappointment.
Taking spiritual inventory: is this just for me?
In the aftermath of Israel arming pagers that exploded in the hands of thousands of people in Lebanon, Feminista Jones told viewers, “Vote for your spirit.” She urged her audience to be mindful that such atrocities continue to take place under Democratic leadership, a fact unchanged by the identity politics of a Black and South Asian woman running as that party’s candidate.
How do we know what a “vote for our spirit” entails? How do we listen to what our conscience demands?
A vote for our spirit is not some morally pure, spiritually righteous higher ground to stand upon from afar and feel good. Anything that cuts us off from our relationship with and responsibility to a wider community is ultimately self-serving. (Consider the reluctant prophet Jonah, looking down on the city of Nineveh, waiting for God to judge the city, only to be profoundly pissed off when the people repent and God shows mercy).
No, to vote for our spirit is to vote with Love as our highest law. Doing so calls for a courageous spiritual inventory that asks: who is this for?
I have recently been grateful to find examples of such robust political discernment in both Jewish and Muslim spaces:
The Jewish Currents podcast recently featured a Palestinian American political strategist bringing to the Jewish discernment process of Chevruta the question: “Does one who votes in an election for government have a portion of responsibility for the actions of the elected?” The host and guest look at the writing of a Hasidic 20th Century rabbi to accompany them in wrestling with the moral and strategic implications of this political moment.
And on The Thinking Muslim, political analyst Sami Hamdi provides compelling spiritual and strategic reasons why folks might choose to vote third party, while being very clear that he is not telling folks how to vote.
Suffice it to say: be mindful of what you worship and why.
Next week we will talk about discerning action beyond the vote.