Friends, siblings, partners in ministry,
I imagine you've voted already, and if not, I imagine you're on your way. If--by some chance--you're undecided as to whether it's worth it, I hope you'll take a breath and make a plan to head out soon. In a season of distrust and cultural conflict, splitting families and communities across the continent, voting is one of the most constructive choices you can make. Democracy requires full participation and active engagement. It says HOPE. It says WE CAN. It says THERE'S A FUTURE FOR US ALL.
So I urge you NOT to allow the purveyors of chaos to distract you. They have many reasons for peddling cynicism and dissuading us from participating. They're hoping you'll sit this one out, and let desperate and divisive candidates move easily to the front. I'm not one to tell you how to vote (or for whom)--but I am certainly urging you to resist their disspiriting rhetoric and anti-democratic program. You should vote. We all should vote. Every one of our voices should count.
Last month, with some of you, I walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, for the first time. On that bridge, in 1965, civil rights activists joined school children, elders, shopkeepers, teachers, religious leaders and hundreds of others to confront the forces of violence intimidating voters of color and restricting democratic participation to favor white elites. John Lewis and so many others crossed that bridge twice, insisting that nonviolence and faith could and would overcome anti-democratic and racist currents in American life.
In 2022, that bridge is still being crossed, day by day, election by election. Sadly, there are still many (far too many) among us who would use every means available to deny equality, to restrict voting rights, to rig the system in favor of white nationalists and their corporate benefactors. In the name of all that is fair and just, we must not sit idly by. We must step into the flow of history, onto the nonviolent path of democratic engagement. And we must vote!
One last thing...it's possible that the results of today's election will prove maddening, even disheartening to us. A former president--undermining democratic practice on all fronts, and pushing candidates who do the same--may step back into view as a viable candidate in 2024. Among us, especially those of us in the church, hopelessness is not an option. God refuses to yield the future to authoritarian despots and warmongering emperors. On the other side of this election, the country will need churches like ours to stand firm and tall as beacons of resilient and defiant hope--grounded in the ways of love and nonviolence, committed to compassionate resistance at every turn
If that's what comes of this election, I'll be there looking for you on the other side.
Yours in hope and heart,
Dave Grishaw-Jones
Pastor
Community Church of Durham, UCC
