Invisible Leftovers

How will anyone know they’re safe if we stay silent?

“Are you going to keep bringing politics into it?” Words I heard after a sermon in which I named lies told by politicians as being poisonous to a community — like the claim that Haitians were eating pets. Exactly what James warned against in the scripture we had read that day: a tongue of fire that can poison a whole body. (The person who said it left the church, never a happy day.)

And I’ve heard it outside the pulpit too. At a community event, where the hosts told tables of people, “Don’t talk politics.” The event wasn’t about politics at all, but there was such anxiety about the mix of opinions in the room that they wanted to cut off the subject before it began.

I understand the desire behind those words. People are weary of division. They want safe spaces where we can connect without tension. But here’s the problem: politics isn’t something we can just leave at the door. Politics is tied to the very survival of an untold number of people – anyone deemed “different” in any way at all.

To say “let’s not talk about politics” is to assume everyone in the room can set those realities aside. But that’s a privilege not everyone has.

• If you depend on insulin, cancer treatment, or Medicare, you can’t leave politics outside. Public health is political.
• If your kid is trans and lawmakers are stripping away their right to use the bathroom, you can’t leave politics outside. The physical safety of trans people is political.
• If your skin is Black and you’ve been followed by police or profiled in a store, you can’t leave politics outside. Skin color is political.
• If you look like you might be an immigrant — if your skin is brown, if your last name isn’t European, if English isn’t your first language — you can’t leave politics outside.  Language, surname, and ethnicity are political.

When we banish “politics” from our conversations, what we’re often doing is silencing the pain of those who live closest to injustice. We’re prioritizing the comfort of those who are least affected.

That’s not neutrality. That’s complicity.

Here’s the deeper truth: Christians don’t have the option to disengage from the world. The Gospel is not an escape hatch; it is a summons to live with intention in the very places where the world is most broken.

The life of faith is not meant to be sealed off from politics but to shape it. When Jesus proclaims good news to the poor, release to the captives, and freedom to the oppressed, he’s not offering a private spirituality. He is announcing a kingdom that collides with the kingdoms of this world.

That means the church cannot be content with silence. Our liturgies, our prayers, our sacraments — they are not just “religious” acts. They form us to be the kind of people who carry Christ’s love and justice into the public square.

If worship teaches us anything, it is that our allegiance belongs first to God’s kingdom. That allegiance should make us careful with our words, humble in our actions, and steadfast in our love for our neighbor. And yes — it should influence how we live, vote, advocate, and participate in the life of our communities.

We live in a political world. The only question is whether we will be formed by the divisions and fears of the culture around us, or by the Gospel that calls us to another way.

But here’s the hard part: we don’t only bring our convictions to the Table. We also bring our differences. The Body of Christ is already broken and disjointed by the powers of this world — we have no business tearing it further apart by despising one another for our politics.

There are times when I look at the shape of Christian political life in this country and wonder how certain positions can be squared with the Gospel at all. And yet, I also know this: doubling down on hatred and division doesn’t heal anything. When the church mirrors the rage of the culture, we betray the one who reconciled us by the cross.

That doesn’t mean pretending differences don’t matter. It doesn’t mean ignoring the harm of policies that strip away dignity and humanity. What it does mean is refusing to let the world’s divisions dictate our relationships in Christ. Both the left and the right are responsible for gathering around the same Table. And at that Table, we are not Democrats or Republicans first. We are Christ’s own, called to love one another even when it costs us.

That love doesn’t erase our disagreements. It calls us to bear them differently — without contempt, without cruelty, without walking away.

Sometimes people tell me that by naming the failures of American Christianity or by critiquing policies that harm vulnerable people, I’m just adding to the fire. I understand that concern. But here’s the truth: my posts and my words are not aimed at changing the minds of those who already disagree with me.

I speak because silence is not neutral. Silence leaves the most vulnerable believing they are alone.  When I share about politics on social media, I’m not trying to win an argument. I’m signaling to the ones who feel unsafe, unseen, or unwelcome that they are not forgotten. That someone sees them. That someone is willing to risk discomfort to stand with them.

It’s a pastoral act as much as a political one. It’s a way of saying: you belong. You are loved. You are not alone.

I think about my own daughters, one who left Texas and one who left the country, because they didn’t feel safe here as a gay women. They weren’t opting out of politics; politics shapes their daily choices, their future, their sense of belonging. That’s what it means to say politics isn’t optional. It’s not about red or blue, left or right. It’s about whether our children feel safe in their schools, in their neighborhoods, in their own skin. And if faith means anything, it means standing beside them in that reality—not pretending it can be left at the door.

~ Rev. Dana