Writing and Reading in our Political Moment

And the attempt to frame better questions

I began writing this letter late on Saturday afternoon as I eavesdropped on animated political conversation in my kitchen. Ryan’s college friends gathered together for the weekend, as they do every year, to share intentionally about the last 12 months, and this year, they gathered at our house.

In my kitchen, there were a variety of political commitments represented. Three men voted for Harris, three men for Trump, and two men either did not vote for president or voted third-party. The debate, as I overheard it from my desk in the living room, was vigorously centered around the issue of immigration. What stance should America take at its southern border? What Christian values inform that stance? There wasn’t shouting, and there certainly was no name-calling. These men were brothers, and they knew it. They were practicing the lively art of thinking aloud and thinking communally. They didn’t simply air opinions for them to remain fixed, but they shared them to consider how they might be honed or reconsidered.

It’s not my goal here to keep writing about politics. But I did want to share this week how I have been honing more salient questions for my work as a writer and my life as a Christian. This process has been helped by others in public conversation around these topics, and I want to share their work as it’s been helpful to me. So here goes, for the first question:

In what spaces is political discussion fruitful?

George Saunders wrote a particularly helpful Substack post that helped me to frame this as a question I hadn’t previously articulated to myself. In his Substack post, “A Slightly Altered Course” he articulates his vocational impulse as a writer. “It seems natural to me that a writer would have views on his culture and time.” Still, Saunders realizes that what he has built and intends to maintain, in his Story Club community, is something hospitable and apolitical, a place for contemplating “the inner workings of stories.” He would reserve his Story Club space for stories, not politics, though this didn’t mean abdication from political writing. “I am going to work hard to write politically for other venues . . . as I feel the urge. . . [But] this way I can just say: ‘We’re not doing politics on Story Club. Period.’”

It can be easy to frame the decision as either we are talking (or writing) about politics or we’re not. But maybe the better question is, “Where will I talk about politics? Where do questions about public policy and political commitments seem fruitful for civic good and spiritual formation?” I don’t think my policy will be George Saunders’s policy here in this space. Yes, I’m probably going to write about politics as they are relevant to habits of faith. I’m convinced one primary feature of Christian faith is its coherence, not its compartmentalization, and politics—as a way of locating our hopes and our fears—is not an a-spiritual, a-moral enterprise.

This doesn’t mean I have to talk about it everywhere. Maybe not over the Thanksgiving meal.

When is political engagement a civic obligation—and when is it a capitulation to the 24-hour news cycle?

Here, I want to commend Jeffrey Bilbro’s 2021 book, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News, as it demonstrates this is hardly as new of a question as we think. (I always say that the test of a really good book is how many times you pick it up again, after that first reading. Bilbro’s book is often plucked from my shelf.) As he explains, Thoreau was dealing with these questions in the 19^th-century, as railroads were being built around him and telegraphs brought news from faraway places. I was happy to see Bilbro published in The Dispatch yesterday, where he demonstrates how perceptive his work is: “The ultimate goal of information is not some kind of gnosis—intellectual knowledge—but metanoia—the transformation that occurs as our lives conform more fully to truth. Discernment is never an end in itself; it should always lead to loving action.”  Here I begin to gain a vision for seeking news that will help me to love my neighbor well. It is not constant news for the sake of being informed, but judiciously selected news for the sake of being formed.

More recently, Russell Moore’s newsletter, “The Cost of Apprenticeship,” published on November 13^th, was also incredibly helpful to me. (I would like to link to this, but I think it is only published as a newsletter to subscribers.) Two things seem simultaneously true, says Moore in his newsletter. “The passivity of Americans in their own civic order is always a problem.” Second: “One of the things you owe your country is your attention. But that, I do not mean your constant focus. I mean, quite literally, your attention: your ability to think and to reflect apart from the roar of the mob.” I’m seeing that disengagement entirely is not an option, as this would be a capitulation to our acedic national spirit and a continued unwillingness to be bothered. And yet I cannot pay the news my constant attention because then I will cease to be the kind of person who interprets it well.

I’ve personally decided that I need to set a limit on political media, whether podcasts or newspapers (which tend to be my primary sources). No more than three hours a week (30 minutes/day, 6 days/week) feels about right. If it can be less than that, I will happily choose less.

What habits of faith seem most urgent in this moment?

Let me quote Russell Moore again because he’s precise and profound: “You will need the Bible—and more than just the devotional cherry-picking or doctrinal proof texts to which modern American Christianity is accustomed. You will need to immerse yourself in the stories there until you gradually start to sense they are your stories. You need to plunge into the poems and songs there until you find they are telling you the story of your own life too.”

I think there are a variety of ways of engaging with the Bible, and all these seem necessary in some shape or form. First, daily Bible reading. Longtime readers will know that I’m a fan of Bible reading plans, which get us immersed in the whole of the Bible, not just our “cherry-picked” psalms and epistles. My favorite is the NLT’s One Year Bible because yes, I do believe in reading from a printed, rather than digital, text of the Bible. Second, communal conversation around the Biblical text. Get into a small group or Bible study for the purpose of discussing the Bible together. It always surprises me how much I miss or either over- (or under-) emphasize, when others bring their very different questions and conclusions into the shared space of communal discussion. This has been true of my church’s fall study of the first half of the Book of Acts, which I’ve attended to great benefit. Finally, preaching of the Biblical text. All my life, I’ve been sitting under authoritative preaching of the Bible, and I could hardly try to understand the depth of my own formation apart from this weekly habit.  

What questions are becoming most salient for you, in this political moment? Feel free to share in the comments!