After the Elections: Two Things We Know

As I write this, we don’t yet know the outcomes of the mid-term elections. We don’t know whether they will set us on a new path as a country or promise more of the same. We can’t see with any clarity what the future holds. But with all that we can’t predict or know right now, there are two things we do know with utter clarity.

We are a nation painfully divided.

Whoever ultimately emerges as victors from this election, we cannot ignore that the campaign season itself revealed yet again a nation that is deeply and painfully divided. That should concern all of us. That division impacts policy-making and the ability to effect any substantive change. It harms relationships, inflames rhetoric, and sullies the national mood far beyond this single election.  It reflects a lot of serious truths we must reckon with more honestly as a people, ugly things that are hard to stare directly in the face. 

That has direct implications for us in the United Church of Christ, too. Those same divisions are a factor in the communities where our churches reside.  Many of our pastors preach each Sunday to congregations that are politically diverse, or serve within communities where their church represents a clear minority of thought and theology.  Our Conferences and church communities, like our States and our nation, are often divided along urban and rural lines (to name only one example). It’s paramount that we as a church find a way to reckon with our own reality, too, and consider how the polarization that surrounds us might also be seeping into our own congregational and denominational life.

God is still with us: today, tomorrow, and forevermore.

That simple and profound truth is the blessed balm we need for our souls.  The world around us is chaotic, and so many things we thought we knew seem to be slipping from our grasp. But this central pillar of our faith holds firm: “…neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

Whatever the results of this election, however it may either encourage or discourage us, God still is who God has always been. A God who created us to be God’s partners in the creative, redemptive, sometimes agonizing work of justice and peace and mercy.  A God who goes to the greatest lengths to deliver & liberate God’s people.  A God who grants healing in the most unexpected of places and ways.  A God of Resurrection, who wrestles new, abundant life out of desperation and death. A God who works in God’s own time and way, and bids us to be faithful.

Whatever we may learn as the polls close and votes are counted, let us put our trust in the God whose presence with us remains steady when all else falters, whose all-embracing love forever holds fast. And may we join with God in the daunting work ahead of us all to learn, listen, reckon, and pray together for a future transformed by hope.

The Reverend Shari Prestemon began her service with the national ministries of the United Church of Christ in January 2024. As the Associate General Minister & Co-Executive for Global Ministries she has the privilege of overseeing several teams: Global Ministries, Global H.O.P.E., Public Policy & Advocacy Team (Washington, D.C.), and our staff representative to the United Nations. She previously served as pastor to local UCC congregations in Illinois and Wisconsin; the Executive Director at the UCC’s Back Bay Mission in Biloxi, Mississippi; and as Conference Minister in Minnesota.