How Pastors Prepared for the Sunday After a Bitter Election

Rev. Jes Kast started planning for the Sunday after the election in midsummer, before her three-month sabbatical. She’d timed her leave intentionally, wanting to return to her congregation well-rested, right before one of most contentious elections in U.S. history. “I had a sense in my spirit that this next phase in ministering, whatever the outcome of the election, would require me to be as spiritually grounded as possible,” said Kast, who pastors Faith United Church of Christ in State College, Pa.

This Sunday will be her first service back, and fortunately, she said, she doesn’t have to plan it alone. In an effort to care for herself as she strives to care for the congregation, Kast asked another minister from her denomination to deliver the homily. “The reality is I am a lesbian minister, and I want that added support for me, too,” she said.

However, Kast is planning the rest of the service. “When people are grieving,” she explained, “rituals are really important. We need to tactically do something.” That’s one reason why she opted to serve communion this coming Sunday. 

During our phone call, Kast said the communion table is a place where Jesus meets us in our brokenness and vulnerability. So on the Sunday after the election results rolled in, “my people need to hear, ‘The body of Christ, broken for you,’” she said.

Kast is also thankful for the assigned Bible readings for Sunday. “The lectionary, in all of its brilliance, gives us Psalm 146 this week.”

The psalm reads: “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish. Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry” (3-7).

Pastors across the country will be reading this passage on Sunday, Kast said. And by doing so, she said, they will be reminded, “My hope is not in any party, any governance. Our hope is in something bigger than even the realm that we’re living in right now.”

Grief, hope, and action

I reached out to pastors from Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Virginia, and Illinois, asking them what they wanted to offer to their congregations at this time. A couple pastors expressed what they hoped not to offer to the members of their church. Rev. Hayden Paul of Jubilee Episopal Church in Austin, Texas, said he wanted to avoid platitudes about the “hope of God’s eternal kingdom.” Rather, Paul wants to present his congregation “with words to strengthen and encourage them to continue shining their beautiful light to the world; reminding them that we are from a long line of marginalized and sidelined Christians who have been targets of empire and yet, nevertheless survived and persisted.”

Similarly, Rev. Cynthia Hale of Ray of Hope Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Decatur, Ga., plans to tell her congregation that they don’t need to “default to spiritual platitudes such as ‘God is good,’ or ‘God is in control.’ We must trust God,” she said, “but first, we must sit with our pain, grieve, and lament. We are experiencing a deep sense of loss and betrayal, particularly as African Americans and African American women. We must trust God with our feelings.”

However, Hale plans to caution her congregation against getting “stuck” in that pain. “We have work to do to make sure that the newly elected president, Supreme Court, Senate, and Congress do not follow through on their threats to dismantle and destroy our democracy and the hard-won freedoms that are ours,” she said.

Kast explained that worship — rituals, prayer, singing — is a “spiritual way of helping our emotions move and be seen …  I’ve  been really focused on  how the liturgy can hold us.” That’s why her worship service will start with the hymn “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” “I think it’s important for us to remember, the people of God have a long history, and when the people of God have been hurting before, God has been their help,”

Hale said that she’d like her congregation to sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Often known as “the Black national anthem,” “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was commonly sung during the Civil Rights Movement, and more recently, recited during protests over the murder of George Floyd.

Other pastors were thinking carefully about music selections, too: Pastor Caleb Campbell said that in his church in Phoenix, Desert Springs Bible Church, they plan to sing “Weep With Me” by Rend Collective. Down in Waco, Texas, Rev. Malcolm Foley hopes his non-denominational, “intentionally multiracial church” Mosaic Waco will sing “Revelation Song” and “Alpha and Omega.”

And in Alexandria, Va., Emmanuel Episcopal Church will sing “God of Grace and God of Glory.” Rev. Jen Leahey explained that the hymn is “a call for Christians to free our hearts from the evils of this world, to focus on the goal of God’s kingdom, and a plea to God to grant us the courage and wisdom to do so.”

Choosing songs and prayers and writing sermons has extra weight the Sunday after a bitter election, explained Rev. Michael Woolf of Lake Street Church in Evanston, Ill. His church had already planned to have a post-church panel of activists speak on issues of immigration rights, LGBTQ+ justice, climate action, and religious anti-discrimination, but he hadn’t started to think about his sermon until Wednesday. “[It’s] like I had just had a Christmas Eve or Easter added to the calendar with a week’s notice,” he said. “There just feels like a lot of pressure to get this right, since my entire congregation is in deep mourning,” he said.

Ultimately, he wants to find a way to advise his congregation — after they have had time to process their grief — to think of how they can help their community. 

“Jesus says that it’s small things — a cup of cold water, visiting a sick person or someone in prison — that are most important,” Woolf said. “That seems like a call to focus on how there can be some real opportunity for building the beloved community locally, even if nationally things appear hopeless.”