Polls, Polarization, Preposterous Postmortems
Plus, some unique and unifying worship
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Our highlights this week include:
- Christian integrity in polarizing times
- The Navajo demand rights to their water
- Changing how we think about polls
- The Democrats weren’t too woke
- And Jonathan keeps us grounded with a unique worship playlist
Jonathan’s Recommendations
Christian Integrity in Polarizing Times
Author and speaker Jason Gaboury recently preached a sermon demonstrating the integrity that followers of Jesus are supposed to have in polarizing times. We should “see politics through the lens of Jesus and not Jesus through our politics.” This is exceptionally difficult to do in such a divisive, fractured landscape. but grounding ourselves in God’s word, sound teaching, and the miraculous call to love our neighbors across difference is part of how we can bear witness to the Kingdom of God. It is also how we can resist the patterns of this world. Jason’s text is 1 Peter 2:9-17. He defines our polarization, calls out the disdain we often have for one another, and gives a clear call to follow Jesus. This sermon is a solid one to forward to someone who might need a reminder that there are churches willing to wade into turbulent waters with the light of Christ.
The Navajo Demand Rights to Their Water
The most recent season of the ABC podcast Reclaimed focuses on what life is like in one of the dryest places in the United States, and the discriminatory restriction of a vital resource: water. Oppression, exclusion, violence, and broken promises marked Navajo history after Europeans settled Turtle Island, also known as North America. Now, Navajo people do not have the legal right to use the water on their own land. So access to clean water is often scarce, and for many people, if they can’t travel, they must risk drinking from contaminated wells for daily survival. It does not have to be this way in the richest country on Earth. This podcast tells us what could change. I pray for fair and just legislation to come swiftly. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Sy's Recommendations
Changing How We Think about Polls
In recent election cycles, the media has grown more and more discontent with pollsters’ ability to predict election results. But opinion polls were never meant for that purpose. And after Trump won, we immediately turned to exit polling to tell us which demographics voted for whom. But those polls are not the best tool for that either. An interview last Friday on the tech podcast, TBD, gave me a 20-minute crash course on the proper uses and limitations of polling data. The interviewee was Tatishe Nteta, the director of the UMass Poll journalists and pundits frequently cite. He faults both pollsters and the news media for the public’s misunderstanding of what this data is good for. Once we listen to experts like Nteta, it’s on us to exercise some patience during elections and let go of the need for certainty that often lurks beneath our collective addiction to those percentage numbers.
- Listen to the podcast or read the transcript
The Dems Weren’t Too Woke
A narrative arising in many corners of our media over the last week-and-a-half is the notion that Democrats lost because they were too woke. This is nonsense. Republicans successfully painted the Democrats as too woke, but that’s not the reality. The Democratic platform and campaign this year were significantly more conservative than four years ago when Joe Biden won. A good example of this was Harris’s retreat on reforms of the criminal legal system. Democrats in the past couple years have fallen into their old pattern of running away from the “soft on crime” label rather than making positive arguments for just or humane policies. This hasn’t been a successful strategy. I don’t know whether going hard left on policing or criminal procedure can help win a presidential election, but trying to out-Republican Republicans doesn’t seem to make a compelling case.
- Read about the failure of the Democrats’ retreat
Staying Grounded with Jonathan
After the election, Joshua Miller, an associate pastor and worship leader at a Church in Columbus, Ohio, created a Spotify worship playlist with songs from several different church traditions. He then challenged his congregation to listen to it without skipping a song. His sermon on being a unified people in worship reminded me that, though we may hold different political perspectives, we worship one Good God. If we don’t segregate our worship before him, it will help us reject the invitation from our culture to segregate our political lives. So check out the worship set, and DON’T SKIP. You won’t connect with every song. but you can celebrate that someone else does.
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