Religion Applied to Government: Navigating Competing and Complementary Spheres of Power

Abstract

Our paper offers two broad areas of focus for those looking to engage in political advocacy informed by the insights of religious belief and practice. The first has to do with the ends of politics: what is politics for and what does it pursue? Religious traditions offer key guidance over these fundamental questions. The second regards the issues of where politics happens, who participates, and what participation looks like. These questions defy simple answers or pat solutions. Rather, they pose a constellation of issues that calls forth sincere efforts at citizenship. Drawing on insights from theologians, political theories, and contemporary political science, we offer a series of reflection points on the realms of spiritual and temporal power.

A Sovereign who, as the Scriptures state so tersely, “establishes the throne by righteousness”, … does not obtain within any of these [earthly] spheres. There another authority rules, an authority which, without any effort of its own, descends from God, and which it does not confer but acknowledge. And even in defining justice in connection with the mutual relations of these spheres, this State Sovereign may not use his own will or choice as a criterion, but he is bound by the choice of a Higher Will by the nature and raison d’etre of these spheres. He must make the wheels to turn as they are destined to turn. Not to oppress life nor to bind freedom, but to make possible a free exercise of life for an in each of these sphere.

—Abraham Kuyper (1880)

The conflicts between men are thus never simple conflicts between competing survival impulses. They are conflicts in which each man or group seeks to guard its power and prestige against the peril of competing expressions of power and pride. Since the very possession of power and prestige always involved some encroachment upon the Prestige and power of others, this conflict is by its very nature a more stubborn and difficult one that the mere competition between various survival impulses in nature.

—Reinhold Niebuhr (1987)

1. Introduction

It is no exaggeration to say that debates about the role and influence of religion on the fields of government and politics have fundamentally shaped the trajectory of modern thought. It is similarly true to say that this topic remains one of the most contentious issues in domestic and international politics today, a fact made abundantly apparent in modern American politics. Of course, the mixture of religion and politics was inevitable.

After all, both domains pose answers to fundamental human questions. Religion strives to explain the “how” and “why” of life, while politics attempts to explain how basic social institutions are or should be organized. Each project inexorably draws the other into its orbit, as questions of “how” become questions of institutional design and questions of “why” become distributional priorities. Since at least the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, Western political thought has struggled to clarify the relationship between an all-encompassing faith and the political realm’s unique needs. One of the first major distinctions between the two spaces, faith and politics, came in 494 CE, when Pope Gelasius interpreted Luke 22:38’s descriptions of “two swords” to distinguish between the religious sphere, governed by the Pope, and the political sphere, governed by the Holy Roman Emperor (Bronwen and Allen 2014).

This long-standing interaction aside, questions of religion and politics take on a special relevance in liberal democracies like the United States. The first amendment of the US Constitution promises free exercise of religion and prohibits the government’s establishment of religion. Other liberal democratic nations, even those with established churches, such as the United Kingdom, recognize fundamental protections on religious liberty. Article 18 of the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights enshrines free exercise as one of the cornerstones of modern human rights. Such declarations create a presumption that the coercive force of the state should not be used to advance religious principles. However, they also create a presumption that people should be free to practice their religion fully and equally. For many, religious principles oblige them to adopt certain political positions. Simple examples include an opposition to recognizing certain rights, such as to abortion, a desire to limit the rights of others, such as excluding LGTBQ individuals from marriage or similar benefits, or diminishing the social welfare system. Unsurprisingly, then, questions about the role of religion in liberal democratic politics are particularly vexing. Trying to draw lines between the religious and political spheres is an ongoing challenge, and—as the fundamental nature of these two spheres indicates—a vitally important one.

Our goal in this paper is not to draw clear lines. Rather than focusing on bright-line distinctions, we propose approaching this subject from the perspective of citizenship. We think of citizenship as emerging in the practice of applying deep convictions—theological, political, or otherwise—to the actual practice of politics—to the voting, the advocating, the fund-raising, the electioneering—that translates those convictions into coercive law (for politics is by its nature coercive).

We bring focus to the lived practice of both the religious and political domains in offering general guideposts for religiously inspired citizens contemplating some type of political action. In the process, we describe an ethos or disposition that will help practically minded citizens navigate this incredibly fraught—but incredibly promising—terrain in a way that affirms liberal democratic values while capturing the moral energy of religious conviction. Both religious and secular scholars note that religion can deepen and focus answers to fundamental questions about the meaning of justice, the scope of political membership, and the very purpose of the state. Who are our neighbors and what do we owe them? Who are the least of us and what responsibilities do we have to them? What is the nature of political power, and how can it be used in ways compatible with an understanding of human beings as made in the image of God? Such reflections fundamentally shape the answer to the basic political question: What is the state’s purpose? Thus, our first major question is: when and how, if at all, can religious citizens deploy the resources of politics to pursue the ends outlined by their religious convictions?

Exploring this terrain leads to the second area of focus: the practical contribution religion can make to the means of politics. As scholars of liberal democracy since at least Alexis de Tocqueville noted, connections between religious and political modes of organization create active and accessible pathways for citizens to take skills and motivation into the political sphere. As we show, religious affiliation and church membership often make up for political skill deficits and missing opportunities among historically disadvantaged groups. That is, religious institutions help create citizens who have the relevant skills to overcome long ingrained political disadvantages. Further, many religious traditions similarly emphasize the importance of the local, direct engagement with one’s immediate surroundings. Religious institutions thereby create venues and models for grass-roots organizations, as evinced by the work of Ella Baker and Martin Luther King, Jr. during the American civil rights era. Just as religious citizens must cultivate an ethos that enables them to participate in politics without collapsing the two spheres, we suggest that democratic activists must cultivate an ethos that works through and across group lines, finding resources and inspiration within diverse religious communities.

2. Religion and the Ends of Politics: Politics and Religion as Separate, Interrelated Spheres

The idea of a state itself naturally introduces fundamental moral questions relating to its basic goals or ends. At bare, the state puts a hold on violence and allows individuals to pursue good beyond that of mere survival. This is true even in the Hobbsian view, where the Sovereign’s enforcement of contracts does not only end the violence of the State of Warre, but makes possible goods like navigation, industry, agriculture, commerce, art, and other aspects of human culture. Beyond this, the state is a powerful tool for responding to injustices across the realms of life.

Paradoxically, this tendency also makes it highly likely that the state will pervert those motivations and turn efforts of reform into new abuses. The coercive means of the state are all too tempting for those who would claim to have a singular or exclusive grasp on the truth. This balance of moral goods and the mechanism of power becomes especially tricky to maintain in liberal democracies, committed as they are to the basic liberty and equality of persons. The American Founders were certainly aware of the state’s potential to achieve broad and shared ends of justice and collective welling—to “establish justice … [and] promote the general Welfare” as the preamble to the US Constitution puts it. However, they also took special care to ensure that no religious power could monopolize the political space and turn it to its ends. The First Amendment thus acknowledges that there is a clear distinction between the religious realm and the political realm when it declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting the Establishment of Religion.” Complicating matters even more, it also acknowledges that the sphere of religious activity must be given full protection when it asserts that it may not “prohibit the free exercise thereof”. In our political tradition, then, politics and religion are separate spheres. They are nonetheless inevitably intermingled, with religious ends giving insight and guidance to politics and politics constraining and enabling religious practice.

Faced with this intermingling, there are some who sense a dangerous incompatibility. From the religious side, some would make politics fully subservient to religious values. Particularly since the 1980s some, for example, insist that the United States is a fundamentally “Christian” or “Judeo-Christian” nation and that religious ideals ought to be given the full force of law. Senator Josh Hawley’s Christian Nationalism is but one recent example (Stewart 2021). Others, such as Stanley Hauerwas, see a similar incompatibility but advocate that the church retreat from the political sphere to preserve its distinct mission (Hauerwas 1991; Hauerwas and Willimon 2010). From the secular side, some suggest that religious values and arguments are suspect because they are “conversation stoppers”, effectively disabling the mechanisms of democratic deliberation (Rorty 2003). While we do not directly refute these ideas, the alternative path we outline here indirectly speaks to their misguidedness and makes them less attractive.

For, and contrary to cliched versions of the political theory of modern liberalism, there is an emerging consensus on the validity and indeed import of including religious discourse in our conversations about matters of fundamental justice. Thus, in the full articulation of his theory of public reason, John Rawls made clear that religious discourse could play a role in political deliberation, so long as it was not the only justification for a policy (Rawls 2001). Jurgen Habermas emphasized the need to tap religious faith as a vital means of recovering moral energy and bringing hidden or under-appreciated injustices into public discourse (Habermas 2011). In short, there exists a clear place for explicitly religious contributions to discussions about the fundamental ends of politics—about the meaning of justice, equality, and related goods.

Practically, our work focuses on two main political tasks. The first is the exercise of a kind of veto power—taking items off the political agenda. This centers on a discourse of religious rights and freedoms. It aims to make certain state actions impermissible or to carve out exceptions in the name of free exercise. Religion here serves a principle negative function. The second, more constructive role, involves making arguments to extend and advance state power in ways consistent with religious ideal such as justice, mercy, and common humanity.

2.1. Religious Citizenship and Seeking Religious Exemptions

Efforts to carry out the first task—using religious beliefs as a kind of veto on democratic power—have become increasingly popular in recent years, fueled by narratives of exclusion or oppression. Recent headlines are full of court cases adjudicating individual claims for religious exemptions from the state. In perhaps their most common form, these cases involve religious groups seeking to maintain benefits or avoid running afoul of laws promoting non-discrimination for groups denounced as sinful.1

Before engaging with the implications of some of these claims, it is important to flag a historical trend that should give pause. Claims for such exemptions—or claims that certain laws should not be passed in the first place—often involve the delicate task of balancing one group’s rights against another’s. Nowhere is this clearer in American history than in the religiously rooted augments for slavery. Numerous individuals defended those practices as ordained by God or as protected as part of their religious practices. They also suggested that attempts to prohibit them were violations of religious liberty. Where claims of individual rights come up against free exercise claims, religious citizens themselves should be circumspect. Too often, religious liberty has been a cloak to justify the status-quo and the perpetuation of unjustifiable domination. Oppression justified as free exercise remains oppression.

To be sure there may be times, such as when Karl Barth insisted on the independence of the confessing church from an attempted Nazi co-optation, in which the lines between free-exercise and state oppression come into focus, and it is clear who is on the right side of them.2 Far more common, however, are cases where the danger to religious practice must be balanced by considerations of the public good.

Religious citizens must, therefore, be careful to place their own religious considerations alongside those of other affected groups. They must be careful to not claim that a mere inconvenience is, in fact, an injustice. They must work hard to avoid special pleading, or to avoid making claims that, though draped in the language of universal rights are, in practice, a request for privilege or special prerogative. This is particularly important when confronting potential burdens on religious practice that stem from the expansion of rights for others. A long history of preferred status or majoritarian dominance can make the loss of unjustified privileges feel like an inappropriate imposition. Politically engaged religious citizens must be on their guard here, scrutinizing their motivations and taking stock of historical trajectories.

For those committed to the underlying norms of free exercise and non-establishment in any serious way, then, an individual ethos of self-critique is essential when defending perceived religious prerogatives from the encroachment of democratic forces. Consequently, when making a demand for exemptions from applicable laws or to prevent the passage of a law based on a claim that it will undermine one’s religious freedom, one should ask a series of questions. These include:

• How central is the practice in question to the core aspects of my faith? Is it possible to engage in the core traditions of my faith without it?
• Is the specific practice or policy at issue part of a larger class of actions or practices, or is it an isolated part of religious and political life?
• Do I bear the core consequences of practice in mind? Is it my personal conduct that is primarily affected? Or are there other groups that are equally or more fundamentally impacted?
• If other groups are fundamentally impacted, have I given them due consideration?
• Are there other religious traditions impacted? Are they impacted more than I am? Is the impact restrictive or enabling for them?
• Are those individuals and groups more vulnerable than I am? Have they historically been privileged in discussions and politics, or are they historically marginalized in them? Have their concerns been given equal standing and weight in my considerations?

These questions should help citizens and activists determine the underlying stakes, not just for their own religious practice, but for the polity writ large. For, though religious autonomy must be carefully guarded, the exact lines between the spheres of church and state are often blurry and freighted with history and power.

2.2. Religious Citizenship and the Ends of the State

The second kind of religious contribution to the ends of democratic politics regards ways to use state power to advance shared political and religious ends. Religion harbors, for example, expansive and powerful conceptions of human dignity—rooted in a concept of everyone as made in the image of God—and robust theories of community—grounded in religious models of sharing and caring for each other. Such models can be deployed in challenging and deepening the democratic polity’s commitment to its citizens in rights, ideals of justice, and protecting equality.

Indeed, religious engagement with politics is often most potent and when religion emerges as a critic of the political status quo and challenges liberal thought to live up to its proclaimed principles. Obvious examples here include William Lloyd Garrison’s religious critiques of slavery and Martin Luther King Jr’s religious criticism of segregation. Both explicitly invoked religious principles to ground their critique of the extant uses of political power. For example, King’s famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was addressed to moderate white pastors who critiqued his non-violent protests as disruptive and counseled more patience. In his response, King invokes the religious notions of just and unjust law codified in Aquinas’s writings and elaborated by 20th Century theologians like Niebuhr and Martin Buber. To King, the religious perspective on human dignity grants the moral clarity to call out unjust laws as “no law at all” (King 1963).

In more recent years, theologians and thinkers as diverse as John Milbank, an Anglican theologian and proponent of what he calls “Radical Orthodoxy,” to the African-American philosopher Cornell West have emphasized the need for secular liberal thought to engage with the critiques and concerns about it raised within religious contexts. For example, Milbank insists that the commitment to human dignity embedded in the prohibition on torture, only becomes non-negotiable when grounded in a foundational belief that everyone is created in the image of God (Milbank 2004). West affirmed that a late career move from Princeton University to Union Theological Seminary in New York was motivated by a desire to more fully affirm that his political critique was rooted in his identification with the prophetic Christian tradition (Goodstein 2011). In other words, religious thinkers insist that there is a vital role for religion to challenge the scope and implementation of liberal principles, highlighting gaps and inconsistencies, and challenging liberal societies to enact their beliefs in new ways.

Here, as with the efforts to protect areas of personal autonomy from government encroachment, care must be taken to engage in self-critique to ensure that the proposed changes are responsive to the claims of vulnerable others impacted by decisions. As noted, proponents of slavery and segregation also marshalled religious arguments and energies to their side. Nevertheless, religion’s role in helping clarify and galvanize support for fundamental political ends has been recognized in recent years by liberal political theorists. As noted above, two of the most noted voices of liberal theory in the 20th Century, John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas, revised their theories in later years to be more inclusive of this role for religion. Liberal theory offers an explicit invitation to religious citizens to bring their critical energies into political deliberation.

These interventions may take the form of doctrinal statements, such as that undertaken by Catholic Bishops in their 1986 document “Economic Justice for All”, which offered a vision of a political and economic systems committed to equal human dignity while not making specific recommendations (USCCB 1997). Or it might look like organized lobbying for a specific policy, such as faith based calls to pass the Affordable Care Act (or to modify it) as a matter of religious and social necessity. However, whatever form advocacy for a religiously inspired vision of political ends, we stress that it should be pursued with a “practitioner’s temperament”. We emphasize the need to recognize the dual role contained in the idea of a “religious citizen”. One may be a believer, first and foremost. However, in entering the political arena, the arena of power—even as a discussant—you take on the mantel of citizen as well. You take up a responsibility to conduct yourself in a way that recognizes the danger and limitations of the means of power. In entering politics as a democratic citizen, you affirm your commitment to norms of equal respect and reciprocity that limit your ability to advance your religious vision in this venue. In the Augustinian tradition, you affirm that there is, in fact, a difference between Athens and Jerusalem, between the city of man and the city of God.

This acknowledgement has significant practical consequences. As a religious citizen, you must be prepared to moderate the quest for ideological purity and moderate your vision. You must be willing to interrogate your beliefs and practice to distinguish the core objectives from the preferred or comfortable outcome. You must be willing to listen earnestly and sincerely to differing perspectives, to be willing to compromise, or even give up on your claims, for the sake of acknowledging and protecting the rights of others. Second or third best options must become acceptable outcomes.

This leads us to a second point that requires some soul searching on your part. It might be that, with the specific set of talents and dispositions you possess, overt political activity on behalf of your religious concerns is not your appropriate calling. There is no shame in arriving at this conclusion. In fact, understanding your strengths and weaknesses in this regard is an asset. To be clear, our view is that everyone can bring their religious views to bear on the political process in some way. But the public-facing political practitioner needs a skillset that is highly verbal and analytical, especially if one imagines working as an advocate on a controversial political issue. If one’s envisioned activity is more service-oriented, then the need for a strong verbal skillset is diminished. In that case, organizational skills might be better suited to the task at hand. Others may simply wish to be the “hands” doing the work devised and directed by others. Whatever the case, it is important to know your relative strengths and weaknesses and how you might best fit into a certain type of practitioner role.

Moreover, we encourage religious citizens to think carefully about the specific issues and advocacy areas they engage. Rather than sweeping visions, democratic politics—as we will explore in more detail below—often thrives in small-scale, relational settings. Thus, service-oriented efforts (e.g., soup kitchens, literacy programs, clothing centers) will always find broader cooperation across people of differing views. Advocacy efforts are a mixed bag given the range of issues on which one might advocate. Those entering the advocacy arena must be prepared to hold on to their sincerely held beliefs while also navigating the political landscape. This challenge is made easier (or more difficult) depending on how aligned the practitioner’s approach is with the larger organization and its core constituencies.

Whether one is a believer entering the political realm or a political actor confronting demands from religious individuals, this is no doubt a challenging and difficult level of citizenship. But if pursued honestly and earnestly, cultivating the disposition and habits necessary to such citizenship can open powerful opportunities to harness the state in pursuit of higher-order moral goals like justice and equality.

Our view of a practitioner’s temperament may seem at odds with some of religion’s more declaration-like aspects. This is intentional. While some forms of lived religion are interested in exclusivity of doctrine, belief, and practice, the American political context (polarized as it is currently), does not allow for an exclusivist orientation in achieving any long-term success. However, if a practitioner can maintain her core religious beliefs while working with (and sometimes ceding ground to) entities working on behalf of competing interests, she stands a decent chance of contributing successfully to the democratic project. Sincerely engaging some of the following questions may be helpful in determining if this kind of religious citizenship is appropriate for you:

• Do you have the disposition for politics? Are you willing to do the hard internal work to cultivate and embody a “practitioner’s temperament” as opposed to assuming an ideological or dogmatic posture in politics?
• What feeds your desire to become a practicing political advocate? Is the desire the same to work for a service-oriented religious organization? What might explain any differences?
• Have you taken a personality inventory to gauge your relative “type”? What were the results? What do you think they predict about the work you are best suited to performing? Does this “suitable” work match with your anticipated involvement as a political practitioner?
• What do you know about the possible jobs available to you in advocacy? Specifically, what about salary, benefits, commute time, working space, and expectations for working beyond normal business hours?
• If applicable, how does your spouse (and/or children) view your work goals and intention to become a practitioner?
• If you are already an advocate or service practitioner, how satisfied are you with the experience? What advice would you give those looking to enter this line of work?
• Do you have an option to work part-time or as a volunteer on a reduced schedule before committing to a new job?
• To what extent are there differences in theological or political perspectives between your faith community and intended practitioner role? Does the organization you would work for require adherence to a statement of faith and/or conduct that you are able to abide by?
• What groups or organizations does the place you would look to work for collaborate with most often? Do you have reservations about any of the partnerships that exist?

3. Religion and the Means of Politics

The above section outlines the complex task citizens face when asking that fundamental political question—what is the purpose of the state?—in a way informed by religious beliefs and practices. This set of questions understandably draws much attention, as it involves clashes over abortion, healthcare, marriage, and other questions of life and death. This brings into focus another crucial area in which democratic political life is deepened and enriched by its intersection with religious practice and institutions: the day to day skills and habits that cultivate democratic citizenship. These are the actual means of politics: meeting, discussion, prioritization, communication, compromise, and mobilization.

If there is one lesson we hope practitioners on both sides of the line between religion and politics take from these sections, it is that that they should pay significant attention to the ways in which religious institutions contribute to the means of politics. For religious institutions cultivate habits and mores that are essential to democratic practice. They create networks and pathways of organization and engagement. And, they provide sites for both local and trans-local activism. That is, from the most intimate individual level to the largest scale of political organizing, religious institutions and beliefs supply skills, models, and venues for political action.

Reviewing the state of Jacksonian Democracy, Tocqueville located the key for understanding democratic societies—characterized in his mind by their relatively high levels of material equality—in the New England colonies. Their history showed, he argued, the merger of two spirits: liberty and religion. It was this merger that, he suggested, created a set of American habits and mores that allowed them to develop democratic ideas of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in a way that avoided the excesses and horrors of France’s democratic reforms of the time (de Tocqueville 2002).

By associating to meet non-political, local needs—including the organization of local festivals, the development of schools, building churches, etc.—citizens learned the skills and made the social connections necessary for them to participate in increasingly larger-scale and more overt political activity. As a result, individuals seldom felt overwhelmed or isolated in their social and political milieu. They experienced direct connections to their fellow citizens and had an almost instinctual understanding of how to use social networks and institutions to affect politics. Moreover, citizens engaged in politics with an understanding of what Tocqueville considered the proper understanding of self-interest They recognized that for them to achieve their individual aims, they needed to cooperate with others and take the long-view that working in coalitions that might not immediately achieve their preferred outcomes but would enable to them to do so in the future (de Tocqueville 2002, pp. 500–3).

Tocqueville’s analysis sets the agenda for understanding modern contributions of religious institutions to democratic practice. The notion of civic associations, and anxiety about their decline, forms a major axis for understanding democratic politics today. Robert Putnam, in his classics Making Democracy Work (Putnam 1994) and Bowling Alone (Putnam 2001), details the import of civic associations as a source of individual social capital. Putnam and his followers have traced the decline of those associations, attributing to it a loss of social capital that provides individuals with the resources necessary to engage in democratic practice. In its place, a pressure group model of democracy has emerged that is susceptible to domination by special interests and is inaccessible to most citizens.

But religious institutions, particularly those modeled on the traditional Mainline Protestant Congregational polities, continue to provide civic skills and social capital (Stout 2010). Most significantly, these institutions tend provide those skills to individuals and groups that are historically disadvantaged, giving them a sense of efficacy that is otherwise lacking (Rosenstone and Hansen 2002).

This is why religious institutions are often ripe for recruitment by political activists. The groups present a particularly fertile ground for finding individuals who have the skills necessary to transform political talk into political action. In the same vein, religious institutions are also prime venues for organizing and expanding political movements. Religious institutions can connect smaller, hyper-local groups to larger trans-local group. Indeed, churches and religious institutions often already have formal or informal ties to groups beyond their immediate congregations or communities. These ties are often ecumenical. These connections can be and have been used to mobilize on a national scale.

Even if one is wary of direct partnership with religious institutions, these organizations provide a vital model of how to organize and connect individuals in ways that lead to efficient and efficacious public action. They represent a fundamental challenge to the top-down model of democracy that dominates politics—particularly national politics—in modern liberal democracies. For rather than being driven by the needs and interests of the few wealthiest donors who have the most direct access to the levers of power, a politics modeled on the methods of organization embodied in religious institutions gives voice to ordinary citizens, including the traditionally marginalized (Bartels 2010).

3.1. Civic Skills and Religious Institutions

For liberal democratic societies, the basic unit of analysis is the individual. Since the advent of modern polling and statistical analysis after World War II, political science has spent considerable energy trying to understand the dynamics and mechanics of individual political behavior (Berelson et al. 1954; Converse 2006). Who participates in politics and why do they do so? Why do people vote and what influences their vote choice? Is politics easier for some to engage in than others? What role do religious beliefs and institutions play in these decisions?

One of the most basic findings for political organizers to note is simply that religious belief plays a role shaping individual political attitudes. Religious beliefs are, for many practitioners, foundational to their outlook on human life and social organization. Early public opinion survey results confirmed the expected hypothesis that religious beliefs play a role in shaping political beliefs. Indeed, recent scholarship argues that religious belief functions similarly to other kinds of basic identity—such as those based on ethnicity, race, gender, or sexual preference (Gutterman and Murphy 2015). As such, individuals will often adopt policy preferences and political affiliations that match the values embedded in their religious tradition. As group identities, religious institutions often serve to create durable political coalitions. For example, the tendency of white evangelical protestants to identify with and vote for the Republican Party is a well-known feature of the American political landscape. However, these general tendencies are, just that, tendencies; in practice, individuals and groups will deviate from their “expected” or “natural” alignments (Wald and Calhoun-Brown 2018). This is especially true when we expand our understanding of participation beyond simply voting, or attending a rally. In their classic Voice and Equality, Verba et al. (1995) show that the ability of individuals to participate in politics is influenced by the availability of time and money to take part, the having the skills to engage, and being recruited to be involved by others.

As Brady et al. (2018) argue in their reassessment of the participatory landscape, religious institutions often provide individuals with opportunities to gain civic skills that they might not otherwise have. Participation requires a level of confidence in one’s own abilities; confidence in your ability to speak to and engage with diverse others; confidence in your ability to present yourself and your ideas; confidence in your ability to carry complex tasks out to completion. Religious institutions, particularly ones utilizing a Protestant congregational model of church polity in which each member is considered part of the priesthood.

The average member might be asked to help plan and put on a holiday pageant, organize meal preparation and delivery to homebound members, raise money for a new building, analyze a budget, present on a new church-school curriculum the church is considering purchasing, resolve staffing problems, or the like. All of these are opportunities to practice the basic tasks that go into effectively organizing with others (and go far beyond partisan political activities and attachments). As skills develop, congregants gain confidence in their ability to undertake and accomplish major tasks. This confidence extends to other realms. No longer do the parliamentary procedures of a typical city council meeting seem unfamiliar or intimidating. There is less anxiety in speaking up at these meetings. Questions of fundraising and budgetary politics are easier to understand. In other words, as churches develop the skills of congregants to govern the church, it becomes more likely that congregants will have a sense of confidence and efficacy to take part in the government of their polity.

Significantly, religious institutions cultivate these skills in an equitable way. While most factors affecting political participation are distributed disproportionately to the affluent, religious intuitions are equally accessible to individuals from across the socio-economic spectrum. As such, they frequently serve as a place for individuals who would otherwise not have the opportunity to gain such skills—people with lower educational prospects or attainment, or with jobs that do not require presentations and organizing—to do so.

The lesson here for political activists and organizers is two-fold. First, when looking to recruit and organize in local communities, religious institutions are a ripe field. Partnering with religious institutions gives access to individuals who are likely to be competent and confident in their organizational abilities. Examples here might include anti-abortion candidates contacting and partnering with extant religiously affiliated anti-abortion groups to build their campaign apparatus. Democratic candidates focused on food insecurity and poverty issues might reach out to religiously affiliated food banks or homeless shelters. Rather than seeing these as simply voting coalitions to potentially capture, these groups might harbor individuals or even networks of individuals who can help carry out both campaigning and governing tasks. At the outset, when mobilizing around a particular issue, political organizers should ask:

• What faith-based networks already exist in this issue space? Is there a way to partner with them that will enhance my organizational capacity?

The second take-away is that if one is interested in building a durable and self-sustaining political movement, particularly among groups that are otherwise resource deprived, religious organizations serve as an important model for organizational structure. Rather than deploying a hierarchical, corporate structure of leadership and organization, the congregational model could be the key to developing a long-term stability. Delegating leadership and responsibility to the membership itself, tasking them with diverse activities ranging from fundraising to drafting statements or lobbying to identifying priorities to staffing decisions, will help rank-and-file members become more capable and confident in their participation. This, in turn, can help build an organization that is not exclusively dependent on national or state level parent-organizations for funding and staffing. Moreover, it creates an organization that can endure beyond the episodic cycles of elections.

The effect of religion on political participation thus goes far beyond simply encouraging voters to adopt specific issue positions or align with one party over another. Religious institutions cultivate the critical skills that make democracy a living practice, rather than a simple means of preference aggregation. They give individuals knowledge and confidence in their own ability to collaborate with others and carry out complex collective enterprises. Moreover, religious institutions supply a model for self-sustaining, durable organization that political parties and movements can borrow from to deepen and strengthen themselves. Thus, organizations seeking long-term, sustained political action and investment might ask:

• Have I structured my organization in a way that trains and cultivates necessary political and civic skills among my staff and volunteers?
• For example:

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  Do individuals have an opportunity to speak up and articulate their concerns and views in a way that encourages the development of civic skills?

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  Is the organization’s basic budgetary structure transparent and accessible to our workers and volunteers?

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  Are we fostering a climate and culture of independence and confidence in our workers of the sort that may enhance their ability to step forward and participate in other areas of their life?

3.2. Transformational Politics and Religious Coalitions

Religious organizations also harbor potential to be a source supporting grassroots political networks that seek durable, transformational changes to the polity. Rather than relying on external power, such as the President or Congress, or top-down models of political leadership, effective political change often appears out of the efforts of local communities to change their own circumstances. Both religious groups and political organizers do well to attend to examples such the early days of the US Civil Rights movements in the 1950s and early 1960s.

While invocations of civil rights movements bring up images of charismatic leaders—including religious leaders—such as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and Gandhi, and of mass mobilizations such as the Salt March or the March on Washington—this perspective obscures the foundational role that small groups and local organizing plays in such movements. It is the connections between networks of local groups, often organized around basic issues such as food security or responding to local violations of rights that are vital in both diagnosing and implementing the calls for change. We highlight the historical example of local organization in the civil rights movement as manifested by all-to-often overlooked organizer, Ella Baker, pairing her work the current organizing efforts by Democratic activists in Georgia.

Ella Baker is one of the undervalued heroes of the US Civil Rights movement. Baker was a field-organizer for the NAACP in the 1940s, served as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s (SCLC) first—and for much of its early days, only—full time employee, and acted as one of the chief architects of the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC), among many other affiliations and actions. For Baker, vital to the civil rights movement was leadership with a group focus as opposed to a charismatic leader model. This distinction, as well as King’s own sexism, may explain why—despite their close working relationship, King and Baker never quite saw eye-to-eye (Ransby 2003).

According to Baker, group-centered leadership was vital to avoid the inevitable disappointment of finding out that the chosen charismatic leader did not live up to public expecations and to ensure that movement participants could carry on effectively. For Baker, the leadership needed energy and direction from below, from the pews, not the pulpit. Critically, people like Rosa Parks, who ignited the Montgomery Boycott were already staff members on local NAACP chapters that Baker had helped organize in the 1940s—or were organizing themselves independently and spontaneously—as was the case with the Greensboro Four.

The Group-Centered model of organizing stresses that these individuals and their local networks provide the impetus and the opportunity for building towards large-scale social and political movements. National movements are dependent on the local, not the other way around. Rather than depending on any one leader or on the overarching vision of a national organization, this model of organizing focuses on the power and potential harbored within local communities. It is here, of course, the extant religious institutions play a vital role. While charismatic leaders such as King and the Rev. (and now Sen.) Raphael Warnock emerge from the pulpit—in this case, the same pulpit, that of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church—Baker’s focus on the local group stresses that power also resides in the pews.

For it is the everyday congregants who carry out the day-to-day actions of bringing meals to other members of their community, of driving people to and from worship, of organizing coat-drives or distributing back-to-school packages, of providing pre-school opportunities or after-school care. It is these intimate, small-scale connections that can be activated when it comes time to organize alternative modes of transportation to sustain a bus-boycott or support a sit-in. While there is no doubt a role for charismatic leaders and national level organization, the success of those efforts largely depends on their ability to be informed and sustained by tapping into the on the ground local networks.

Indeed, a new generation of political organizers and activists recognize the necessity of activating these local networks—including faith-based networks—first in their efforts to organize and mobilize citizens. Stacy Abrams, a Democratic politician and activist in Georgia has organized groups to combat voter suppression and to support efforts to mobilize traditionally disenfranchised voters, particularly in southern states. While her leadership and organization is valuable and necessary, it is significant that its recent electoral successes—securing a Democratic vote for President from Georgia and the election of two Democratic Senators there—is built on and through smaller, local organizations, many of whom focus on reaching out to local communities. It is through such connections that broader, state and nationally focused organization becomes sustainable.

Religious organizations have an opportunity to play a pivotal role here. For example, Southerners on New Ground (SONG and their political arm SONG Power), is an organization active in the South since the 1990s as an LGTBQ+ inclusive movement for equality around issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, and class. Describing their recent engagement in Cobb and Gwinnett Counties in Georgia around the 2020 Elections, SONG Power activist Robert John Hinojosa noted the importance of transformational, rather than transactional, relationships with local communities. Instead of simply promising resources or programs in exchange for votes, such organizations focus on creating partnerships with local communities organized around, for example, the distribution of Personal Protective Equipment during the COVID pandemic or ensuring children have the necessary supplies for the new school year.

The connections made in these small-scale partnerships allow organizations like SONG Power to create their own voter database that includes individuals standard databases leave out, to mobilize voter registration and get out the vote efforts that reach those individuals around local issues such as sheriffs races, and to, ultimately, link such hyper-local connections to state-wide and nation-wide political movements.

This focus on building relationships and community with local organizations places a premium on listening and responding to the needs of the individuals in those communities. It is here that religious institutions are central. As noted, religious organizations and everyday congregants are often some of the most visible and important centers for providing the kind of social services and community outreach that trans-local political action networks like SONG attempt to use as entrees into larger mobilization efforts.

One important lesson here is that the ability to build sustainable, trusted, effective political movements depends on tapping into the already extant community networks—including and especially those provided by religious organizations. For, as our overview suggests, religious organizations train a cohort of skilled individuals. They help diagnose the ongoing issues afflicting local communities. And they serve as one of the primary means of addressing those issues. If political organizers seek to inspire a politics that generates genuinely effective change, rather than simply seeking to win and hold power, engagement with local religious institutions one of the most direct, most effective, and enduring paths to do so.

With this perspective in mind, we close by asking a series of questions that we hope both organizers and religious practitioners would ask themselves at the outset of and throughout the duration of such partnerships. Critically, of course, this will potentially involve compromise and making peace with ambiguity. We ask both religious and political actors to keep in mind the practitioner’s temperament that we spelled out above in determining whether these kinds of partnerships are healthy for them or their organizations.

Again, these questions are intended to be clarifying and inward focusing. They do not definitively tell you if a partnership is right or if a method of engagement is preferred. They are designed to probe and refine your commitments. There is no right or wrong answer to any of these questions. However, asking them should help you better understand how you might access the tremendous democratic energy harbored in religious organizations, and—if you lead a religious organization—what kinds of partnerships might be best for you.

• What does a successful partnership look like to me?
• Am I interested in transactional or transformational relationships?
• Am I genuinely invested in the life stories and conditions of the people I am connecting with?
• Am I willing to sustain those connections over time?
• Am I willing to settle for small successes?
• Am I willing to forego my immediate goals in favor of developing long-term partnerships?

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  Am I willing to adopt the perspective of what Tocqueville called “self-interest well-understood?”

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  Am I committed to listening to the groups I partner with and working to address the needs and concerns they identify?

• Am I willing to work with organizations and groups that may not share my overarching goal?
• Am I willing to partner with groups on individual issues regardless of their broader positions?
• Am I willing to partner with groups that support my broader goals, but that differ from me on crucial issues—for example—do not support my calls for LGTBQ+ equality or may have different views on abortion rights, but which nonetheless share a broader vision of liberty or equality?

4. Conclusions

The questions surrounding the roles and relationships of religion and politics in liberal democratic society defy simple answers or pat solutions. Rather, they pose a constellation of issues that calls forth demanding and sincere efforts at citizenship.

We acknowledge not everyone will be satisfied with this stance. Some will no doubt remain convinced that, for example, politics should be subservient to basic theological aims and espouse a theology of Christian Nationalism. Some will continue to frame their political engagement narrowly around a religiously motivated single issue, such as opposing abortion or supporting expansion of healthcare access. However, we believe that the history and theory we have all-to-briefly canvased councils against such simplistic solutions. We end by making explicit what we have been suggesting throughout; the combination of religion and politics has been responsible for some of the most powerful emancipatory moments in world history, and also some of the most oppressive and violent. The potentiality harbored within this mixture of earthly power and divine inspiration is volatile and transformative. The success or failure of the combination, the benefit or suffering it brings to our communities, is not centrally a reflection of the purity of belief or the fervor of one’s faith. Rather, this success or failure depends on a willingness to confront and interrogate one’s motives and desires. It depends on a willingness to re-evaluate and re-visit assumptions and priorities. And it depends on a willingness to place connections and community over immediate power or flashy successes.