Raj Nadella

ELECTIONS ARE UPON us. The electoral choices we make, or do not make, have far-reaching implications both for this country and others, for us and future generations.

Four years ago, I gave up my Indian citizenship and became an American citizen to vote in the U.S. general election in 2020. At that time, it seemed like the most important election in my life — and I wanted to have a say in it. Astonishingly, the stakes for elections this November feel as anxiety-inducing and consequential, if not more, than four years ago.

Such fears notwithstanding, as people of faith we vote from a place of hope, not despair. As Christians in a powerful nation, we have a particular responsibility to vote, not just for ourselves but with sensitivity to the Body of Christ around the world. Voting in democratic systems such as ours models a nonviolent transfer of power. We vote for ourselves and for our neighbors. We vote because elections afford us an opportunity to pursue a just and fair future for our communities and country. Elections can give legislative framework to a full range of our faith commitments; ensure that our public institutions serve the poor rather than exploit them; and shape our country into the multiethnic, multireligious, economically equitable democracy it is intended to be. Our votes can contribute to the transformations we envision.

This election season, all people of faith and good conscience must reflect deeply, organize effectively, and vote diligently to elect competent and compassionate leadership. May we choose our leaders wisely.

IN HIS INFLUENTIAL book Orientalism, Palestinian literary critic Edward W. Said articulated the symbiotic relationship between knowledge and power. Said observed that people in power often get to produce knowledge, and they produce it in ways that justify and enhance their privilege. Such a symbiotic relationship between knowledge and power plays out in books, movies, art, and other cultural venues. In the context of European colonialism, Western artists and intellectuals did the empire’s bidding by caricaturing cultures in the global South as barbaric and inferior to European culture. Empires employ such caricatures to justify conquest and advance political and economic interests. Such distortions promote narratives that deflect attention from the mechanisms of conquest and, in many cases, pit colonized communities against each other.

It matters who gets to tell whose story. How they are told and to what end matters as well. Empires continue to manufacture modes of knowledge — in the form of caricatures, false narratives, and single stories devoid of nuance — and weaponize them against the oppressed. This phenomenon of promoting single stories occurs in biblical interpretation too and in the scriptures themselves. As Christians, charged with being “good news” among the oppressed, we can unveil the mechanisms by which dominant groups produce knowledge to advance their own interests. How are we perpetuating single stories or false narratives to the detriment of ourselves and others? It’s a task that requires intellectual acumen as well as intellectual humility.

IN HIS 2013 book The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality and What We Can Do About It, Timothy Noah notes that the personal income of the top 1 percent in the United States began to increase exponentially beginning in 1979, a peak year in what economists call the “Great Inflation” (1965-1982). While there has always been economic stratification in the U.S., the “great divergence” in American’s incomes began at the end of the 1970s, and the wealth gap has continued to grow. In 2019, people in the top 1 percent of income distribution held more than 33 percent of the total U.S. wealth — up from 27 percent in 1989, according to a Congressional Budget Office report. Families in the bottom half held only 2 percent of the total wealth. The U.S. has policies that protect wealth and others that depress wages and hinder affordable housing. This combination increases poverty. Unfortunately, false narratives still circulate about the causes of poverty, blaming the poor and pitting communities against each other.

From another point of view, acceptance of wealth disparity, and the policies that cause it, is a result of failed imagination: We accept increasing wealth disparity because we cannot envision another way. As people of faith, we are called to be God’s prophets and seers — to see the possibilities of God where others cannot. The church’s task is to challenge empire’s narratives about what is possible, to actively cultivate what biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann calls a “prophetic imagination” for a different reality and empower communities to embrace it.

DURING THE COP 28 climate change conference in Dubai, participants deliberated at length on the climate crisis and rightly set ambitious goals to address the challenges. As may seem natural, much of the conversation centered on securing a planet habitable for humans. But as Christians we must wrestle deeply with sharing God’s covenant with other creatures. Seeing creatures and the natural world as having no meaning other than how they serve human interest is a failure of human vision. The 2007 documentary Earth poignantly highlighted how an anthropocentric worldview and the human-caused environmental crisis have imperiled other creatures in a miraculously delicate system.

Perhaps out of species self-interest, much environmental work focuses on how climate shifts impact current and future human generations. But as people of faith, we can take a more wholistic view that also demonstrates commitment to the well-being of all God’s creation — animate and inanimate — because all are interdependent. In the context of the climate crisis, corrective justice requires addressing the concerns of communities disproportionately affected by climate collapse, as well as ensuring the welfare of nonhuman creatures. It is incumbent upon us to challenge the anthropocentric lens and champion biocentric approaches that affirm the sanctity of all life and creation. Our scripture readings this month present nonhuman creatures as equal partners on God’s planet and speak forcefully about their right to exist and thrive alongside our human communities. They feature animals dancing in open spaces, frolicking in the sea, and celebrating life in its fullness. Everything in nature reflects God’s glory, participates in God’s salvation, and reminds us of the divine presence.

RARELY DO YOU see powerful people advocate for the benefit of others outside their “own” political or economic group. There is a tendency on the part of the elite to leverage their privilege for their own benefit while disguising it as public good, as the concept of “elite capture” has exposed. And the state is often complicit in reinforcing policies and practices that concentrate resources into the hands of those who already have enough. In a 1962 sermon titled “A Knock at Midnight” (see Luke 11:5-6), Martin Luther King Jr. diagnosed the state of the nation and church saying, “It is midnight in the social order.” He urged the church to respond to the oppressed who “knock on the door,” even when it’s inconvenient. “How often has the church left [people] disappointed at midnight, while it slept quietly in a chamber of pious irrelevancy,” preached King.

Despite decreasing numbers, the U.S. church wields enormous political and economic power. This month’s readings showcase people — the powerful and the not so powerful — who exercise their agency for the good of those who seemingly have little to offer in return. The texts highlight the church’s moral and theological imperative to employ its power to open the door to the ones who desperately knock. Will the church that gathers in the name of Jesus ignore the state’s complicity in oppressive structures or will it act as the “conscience of the state,” as Dr. King urged? Does the church privilege its own comfort or does it attend to the vulnerable, even at the risk of its own interests? King concluded, “the greatest challenge facing the church today is to keep the bread fresh and remain a Friend to [humanity] at midnight.”

THERE IS A saying in Telugu, my mother tongue: “The fence has devoured the garden.” I find it a useful phrase in this year when the United States embarks on a federal election cycle that will test the strength of our democratic institutions and may well damage their integrity. The same leaders entrusted with the power to safeguard the interests of the people (“the fence”) have instead undermined them. Growing economic inequality continues to dehumanize individuals and entire communities. Women, Black, brown, refugee, and LGBTQ people increasingly feel at risk in light of recent court rulings. Leaders expected to provide vision in times of crisis, whose mission is to “protect the garden” of democracy and civil life, appear to be actively “devouring” it. And accountability has been in short supply.

How do we facilitate transformative changes that allow individuals and communities, especially those at the margins, to realize their dreams and flourish? At a time when scriptures (such as Romans 13) are used to prescribe uncritical loyalty to authorities, what are some strategies for holding those authorities accountable? This month’s texts invite us to identify and nurture leaders who can see things differently, offer a generative vision, and undertake radical changes. They exhort us to empower a new generation of leaders who are working collaboratively and serving the people with integrity, and who privilege the interests of the community over their own.

The accelerated pace of climate change deterioration in recent decades is highlighted in the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that was released in December 2013. This report highlights the alarming rates of carbon emissions in recent years and the massive disruptions to the nature that occur as a result. It warns that the disruptions could affect all areas of life and endanger the world’s food supply itself. The worst is yet to come. All this might sound a bit apocalyptic.

Acts 2:14-32 posits a similar scenario. Luke’s Peter predicts the signs that will occur in the last days (vv. 19-20). The Sun will turn into darkness and the moon into blood. There will be blood and fire and smoky mist. Joel 3, Luke’s source text behind these verses, was intended as a warning about potential disturbances in the natural order. Joel posits such calamities as consequences of human wickedness and calls on the people to alter their ways. Peter warns that such last days are about to arrive. They will be marked by disturbances in the natural order and terrible signs that will precede the day of the Lord. Interestingly, people in Jerusalem have already witnessed such (un)natural phenomena during the death of Jesus (Luke 23:44-45).

Acts 2 parallels the account of disruptions in the nature with the account about the death of Jesus (2:19-24).