Reviving and Surviving Election Day Sermons

Election Day sermons represent a venerable but long extinct New England tradition. What are they, and might we dare to preach them today? And, if so, how might ministers do this – and still keep their jobs?

In their day – and this stretched from the early colonial period through the later 19^th century in Massachusetts – such sermons depended on assumptions that no longer make much sense to us. Ministers could still presume that the Scriptures were the authoritative text governing how the “public” discerned its way. These occasions also displayed the gendered nature of authority among elected officials of both church and state: male minister stood before a gathering of male elected officers together with male citizens having the right to vote. These sermons presumed that the “public” of the colony and later nation, while eventually tolerating a minimal pluralism, was understood to be exclusively Christian. Toleration and inclusion were unheard of virtues at this time, at least in the political arena.

But what were these sermons, after all? The name is somewhat misleading. These were not occasions for the clergy to inform citizens how to vote. The great themes that weave their way through preaching in this genre emphasized how those governing should fulfill their duties in office. Imagine the scene: the gathering in the Meetinghouse included those holding or aspiring to office together with citizens with voting rights. These sermons focused on how communities were to fulfill God’s mandate of public faithfulness. As one contemporary observer remarked, these sermons gathered “the heads of our tribes together in a solemn assembly to give thanks to the God of heaven for the many great and distinguishing privileges, both civil and religious, which we are favored with; and to ask direction and a blessing from on high, upon all the administrations of government in the land.” It was a time to rehearse public responsibilities as were inspired by and expressive of a properly Christian (and public) witness.

This pulpit tradition reminds us that our responsibilities as Christians who are also citizens involve engaging political issues as these give public expression to our faith. They call us to invigorate the corporate discernment of congregations and wider church bodies in this calling. In the long and rich trajectory of Reformed theology and polity, this remains one of the core commitments: religious life presumes the appropriate need to engage political issues in order to safeguard the individual and promote the common good. What Thomas Jefferson famously described as a “wall of separation” between church and state did not presume to divide religious life from political convictions; the question is not whether but how we are to shape such commitments, not individually but in communities of discernment.

Many ministers might find the notion of an Election Day sermon distasteful or impracticable. For good reason they might avoid taking explicit political stands in their congregations, at least in controversial matters, because of the fear that their views might offend – and, if carried too far, unsettle the fragile consensus within their congregation on which their professional credibility (and salary!) depend. But Election Day sermons were not about the specifics, and were generally not prophetic utterances in concrete terms. They focused on principles related to matters of public justice and peace, and left the legislative particularities to those charged with governing – who, after all, faced regular (re)election and could be ousted from office if in the public mind they failed to discharge their duties. Politicians, too, know of the importance of this “fragile consensus.”

What might we learn from this particular tradition of pulpit oratory?

First, that our faith is a public matter, and not a private opinion. This is easier said than done, at least within congregations that increasingly mirror the pluralism of the wider society. But what we can say is that believing in the God of the prophets and of Jesus, and committing ourselves to their ways of justice and compassion, has much to do with the kind of society we wish to live in – and secure for generations to come.

Second, how we express our views should always be seen as part of a broader discernment. We may make resolutions within the gatherings of the wider church, but these become the arena for conversation and enactment within our congregations. We are, for better or worse, a church of debate and decision, and not simply one of pronouncement and enforcement. This is to understand our witness, the shape of our proclamation, as process rather than product.

And, third, how we engage political issues requires an attention to multiple authorities. We continue to read and interpret the scriptures within our churches, of course, but we do so in order to discern how God is still speaking to us – sometimes in ways that further complicate the long conversation between humanity and the divine to which the Bible bears witness. Within a pluralistic society, we also need to learn how our contribution is to be offered for public conversation, and how we are to receive others whose convictions, authorities, and opinions differ from our own.

What would an Election Day sermon look like in our time?

It would honor the various spheres of influence within which we live out our vocations, and give body to our faith and substance to our piety. In this sense, it would refuse to divide the religious and secular, and uphold the integrity of our political commitments as expressing our faith.

It would invite conversation and action regarding what living in a “commonwealth” entails, to recall a central idea inherited from our Puritan forebears, a model of society where sharing by all might come to mean scarcity for none.

It would remind us that the primary covenant governing Christian life in community extends Christ’s hospitality as an expression of his extravagant welcome of outsiders and his call to love even our enemies (cf. Rom. 15. 7; Mt. 5. 43 ff.). Our congregations and wider church are contexts to live out the difficult burdens of such a covenant, as a witness to the wider political community of the nation.

If we were to revive this venerable tradition, Election Day sermons would offer instruction to all candidates, not seek to support one or another. They would challenge those committed to specific political platforms to rise to the high responsibilities of office – as if they were, as happened in Puritan New England, sitting in the front row. As such, these sermons would be about much more than an election. They would explore the responsibilities falling to all of us in the conduct of public life, and how such things give concrete and political expression to the church’s faith.

The revival of this sermon genre would emphasize what it means to live this faith publicly, and suggest what it means to believe in the God who “so loved the world.”

Mark S. Burrows
Theologian-in-Residence at Old South Church (Boston) and
Professor of the History of Christianity at Andover Newton Theological School