Dozens of Democratic lawmakers left Texas yesterday, preventing the state House of Representatives from moving forward with a redrawn congressional map sought by President Trump. Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state police to find and arrest them, though state law enforcement is restricted to making arrests in Texas.
Other states have seen legislative walkouts over the years. Such moves can delay legislation and spotlight issues, but since Gov. Abbott can call special sessions month after month, the legislators will presumably have to return to the state at some point in the future.
Both parties over the years have gerrymandered political maps to advantage themselves; the governors of New York and California are now vowing to do the same in their states, for example. In response to such developments, California GOP Rep. Kevin Kiley has introduced a bill to block all fifty states from redrawing congressional maps before the 2030 census.
Such tactics have not typically gained political parties many seats over the years. However, a larger factor is at work here—one that is relevant to each of us and the future of our democracy.
A feature and not a bug
The Christian worldview was vital to our nation’s founding for three reasons.
First, the founders’ claim that “all men are created equal” was rooted in the biblical claim that each human is made in God’s image and likeness (Genesis 1:27) and therefore equal to all others in identity and status.
Accordingly, our governmental system purports to give each of us a vote and a voice. It took the 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th Amendments and the 1965 Voting Rights Act to get there, and our democracy remains imperfect. But aspirationally, it seeks to provide every person and perspective a seat at the table of power.
Second, the biblical teaching that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) undergirds the founders’ strategy of restraints on governmental power.
As political analyst Yuval Levin demonstrates, our system’s laborious process of legislation is a feature, not a bug. Its checks and balances are intended to keep any person or branch of government from exercising undue power over the process. This is not only because each person deserves to be heard, but also because no person deserves unaccountable power over others.
However, a third contribution of the Christian faith is foundational to the other two. And it is increasingly under duress in our secularized culture.
Jay Leno on late-night hosts
If gerrymandering is the strategy of redrawing political lines to favor political parties, a similar outcome is happening in America today, though not by the efforts of partisan politicians.
More than 20 percent of America’s counties gave 80 percent or more of their two-party presidential votes in 2020 to either Donald Trump or Joe Biden. This illustrates the thesis of journalist Bill Bishop’s 2008 book The Big Sort. He showed that Americans are increasingly clustering by religion, lifestyle, and politics into communities of like-minded people.
The recently announced end of The Late Show is an example. Jay Leno criticized late-show hosts for being so partisan that they “shoot for just half an audience.” And as former Sen. Ben Sasse noted recently in the Wall Street Journal, the end of the show illustrates the fact that we are “increasingly siloed by algorithms and the digitization of daily life.”
Here’s the problem, according to Sasse: “The Constitution requires a certain amount of unity, at least a minimal shared conception of the common good.” When our political parties eschew cooperation and compromise for tribal zero-sum tactics, they threaten the collective health of our democracy. And we cannot pass and enforce enough laws to force all of America’s 342 million people to behave morally.
Nick Saban on discipline and disappointment
The key to good citizenship lies not with us but with our Lord. We are called to “run with endurance the race that is set before us” by “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1–2). He alone can give us new hearts devoted to loving and serving others sacrificially and selflessly.
Our part is to practice spiritual disciplines in the Spirit: “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (v. 11). The disciplines of prayer, Bible study, and personal worship do not earn God’s favor but position us to experience his sanctifying grace.
Famed football coach Nick Saban noted, “There are two pains in life. There is the pain of discipline and the pain of disappointment. If you can handle the pain of discipline, then you’ll never have to deal with the pain of disappointment.” His adage was as true of our souls as it is of our sports.
To practice God’s transforming presence, we reject that which prevents such communion with him: “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God . . . that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal” (vv. 15–16). This is a powerful metaphor: sin is selling our “birthright” as the children of God for a “single meal” that cannot satisfy the needs of our hearts.
As counselors say, we must choose what we want most over what we want now. Oswald Chambers was adamant:
The main thing about Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the atmosphere produced by that relationship. That is all God asks us to look after, and it is the one thing that is being continually assailed.
What “makes good citizens”
Yesterday, liturgical churches remembered St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests, on the anniversary of his death in 1859. He noted, “A Christian’s treasure is not on earth, it is in heaven. Well then, our thoughts should turn to where our treasure is.” We do this by practicing the presence of God in prayer:
“My children, your hearts are small, but prayer enlarges them and renders them capable of loving God. Prayer is a foretaste of heaven, an overflowing of heaven.”
One day in heaven, we will kneel before God; today in prayer, we kneel with God. When we are transformed into the character of Christ (Romans 8:29) by choosing intimacy with him and rejecting the immorality that harms us and our nation, we become the change we wish to see.
Daniel Webster believed, “Whatever makes men good Christians makes them good citizens.”
Will you be a good citizen today?
Quote for the day:
“He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of Christianity will change the face of the world.” —Benjamin Franklin
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