Lent. 2020. The upcoming liturgical season and this momentous political year. How do these two things connect?
Spiritual disciplines are always timeless, but they also can be powerfully timely in our personal and public lives. Many of us would say that the 2020 presidential election may be the most important in any of our lifetimes for the future of the country, and a sign of whether genuine and inclusive democracy in the United States even has a future. At the same time, calls for prayer, fasting, and repentance are centuries old — they continually demand that Christians go deeper in preparation to worship a risen Christ.
So today we announce a new Lenten call by the same elders who released the Reclaiming Jesus declaration. This is a clear call for church leaders, pastors, and local congregations to engage in daily prayer and weekly fasting beginning on Ash Wednesday and continuing through the November elections, engaging in repentance that leads us to action. We invite you to prayerfully read this letter from the Reclaiming Jesus elders, answer its call by adding your name, and consider how you can spread this message in your life, family, and faith community this Lent.
*Answer the call by adding your name below, and we’ll send you a daily reflection from the elders and other voices of faith to sustain your practice.
Lent 2020: A Call to Prayer, Fasting, and Repentance Leading to Action
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. — Romans 12:21 NRSV
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. —Ephesians 6:12 KJV
We can no longer pretend otherwise: The United States is in the midst of a struggle for its very soul. Are we merely collections of self-interest and partisan identities or are we “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all?”
This is a moment of spiritual peril and decision. Nothing less than the soul of our nation is at stake.
On one level, the outward and visible form of the divisions and tensions among us as a nation are political, social, and even ideological. Yet, the deeper and invisible causes are spiritual and moral. When selfishness is exalted above sacrifice for the good of each other, the soul of a nation is at stake. When falsehood is exalted and truth is slain in the public square, the soul of the nation is at stake. When toxic politics manipulates public faith, the soul of the nation is at stake. When fear, hate, and violence shape our politics and anger governs our speech, the soul of the nation is at stake.
In another time of national spiritual crisis, President Abraham Lincoln issued an appeal to leaders and people of the nation to summon “the better angels of our nature.” As elders in the churches, we believe that we are in a spiritual battle between our better angels and worst demons.
Now is not a time for playing the superficial politics of the right or the left. Now is a time for the deeper spiritual engagement with the realities that are beneath our conflicts in order that God might help and heal the “soul of the nation and the integrity of our faith,” as our Reclaiming Jesus declaration called for.
The season of Lent is traditionally a time for deeper soul searching, reflection, and repentance that leads to renewed commitment and action to living out the teachings and the way of Jesus of Nazareth.
As elders who have called the church to reclaim Jesus, we now issue “Lent 2020: A Call for Prayer, Fasting, and Repentance that Leads to Action.”
We invite individuals, clergy, national churches, and local congregations into a Lenten season of prayer, fasting, and repentance built around practices of daily prayer, weekly fasting, and reflection with spiritual discernment that can lead to more faithful action.
We covenant together to repent from both our personal and social sins, to pray for our nation and all nations, and to fast as a reminder to discipline self-interest, idolatry, and division for the good of living God’s love in the world.
Prayer
Prayer calls us to give up control.
We pray to return to God’s two commandments on which hang all the law — to love God and love our neighbor.
“Love God with your whole heart, whole soul, and whole mind” — which means to repent and remove any national, racial, or political ideologies and idolatries that have replaced loving God with our whole selves.
“And love your neighbor as yourself” — which means to love all our neighbors that we have forgotten to love (no exceptions), including those who are different from us, who disagree with us and, especially, those of another race or nationality whom we are directly instructed to love by the words and example of Jesus.
And we should also reach out, in particular, to those who are different from us or disagree with us politically, even in our same congregations and local communities.
Fasting
Fasting calls us to re-direct our attention.
We will fast in ways commensurate with our health, situation, and communities on one day per week — on Wednesdays beginning with Ash Wednesday.
Fasting weekly can help us to stop, pay attention, wake up, interrupt our schedules, go deeper, and listen for God and the Holy Spirit in new ways that might lead us to new places in our hearts and minds. This weekly fast will begin in Lent and could continue until the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
Repentance
Repentance calls us to change our hearts.
Repentance in all of our traditions means much more than shame or guilt and feeling sorry; it means to stop, turn around, and go in a whole new direction. These spiritual disciplines could help take us all out of our strategies and control, by admitting that we don’t have all the answers, and to go deeper together to hear the voice of God that needs to be heard, often in the still, small whispers of the Spirit — leading us to better places that we cannot conceive now.
These spiritual practices can help us to answer questions like: What are we called from and what are we called to? Who are we called from and who are we called to? Spiritual disciplines can even be targeted: Who and what are we praying and fasting for, and what might our praying and fasting open us to do?
Action
We confess that as church elders who have often engaged in action, we are not fully sure what to do in the growing national crisis in which we now find ourselves. We therefore hope that the disciplines of daily prayer and weekly fasting will clarify and draw all of us to the decisive, prophetic, and reconciling actions required in this time of great crisis. Because, as the New Testament teaches us, “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26).
Through praying and fasting together, particularly with people who disagree politically, we hope to find actions that might bring more people together — even across the margins of previous voting blocs — so that we can find and pursue what is best for the country.
Regular spiritual disciplines can deepen our faith, inform our citizenship decisions, and lead us to find the courage to stand up for the most vulnerable and if need be to protect our very democracy.
We see this Lenten call to fast, pray, and repent as a time of purification for ourselves and as a time of preparation and expectation for the kinds of action that can lead us forward instead of backward. How can we anchor ourselves in the kind of love that is not safe, but saving?
Going to God
Going to God means tuning out the constant tumult crowding our heads in order to tune our hearts to quieter voices revealing God's holy intentions for this time.
As U.S. church elders, we confess that we don’t consult with God seriously and frequently enough. This Lenten call and these spiritual disciplines are meant to take us to God with regularity during this time of national and faith crisis. Regular conversation with God can be transforming in any culture and especially those in crisis — and it can lead to better conversation with each other. And we must go to God with choices and decisions that are political, social, racial, and economic — these are not just personal decisions.
We offer a summary of our Reclaiming Jesus declaration here. More than at the time since it was released in 2018, it is time to renew it now. In 2020, it is time to reclaim Jesus.
In a time of moral, political, and theological crisis, let us go to God.
Signatories,
Bishop Carroll Baltimore Bishop Global Alliance Interfaith Networks
Dr. Amos Brown, Chair, Social Justice Commission, National Baptist Convention USA, Inc.
Dr. Walter Brueggemann, Professor Emeritus, Columbia Theological Seminary
Rev. Dr. Iva Carruthers, General Secretary, Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference
The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry Presiding Bishop and Primate, The Episcopal Church
Marie Dennis, Senior Advisor/Co-President (2007-2019), Pax Christi International
Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, General Secretary Emeritus, Reformed Church in America
Rev. Dr. Cynthia Hale, Senior Pastor, Ray of Hope Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Rev. Dr. Richard Hamm, Retired General Minister and President, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Dr. Otis Moss Jr., Pastor Emeritus, Olivet Institutional Baptist Church
Senior Bishop Lawrence Reddick, Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
Fr. Richard Rohr, Founder, Center for Action and Contemplation
Dr. Ron Sider, President Emeritus, Evangelicals for Social Action
Rev. Jim Wallis, President and Founder, Sojourners
Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins, Minister, Bethany Memorial Church (Disciples of Christ)
Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner, Co-Convener, National African American Clergy Network
Rev. Dr. Tony Campolo, Co-Founder, Red Letter Christians
Dr. Will Willimon, Professor, Duke Divinity School and Bishop (retired), United Methodist Church
Rev. Dr. James Forbes, President & Founder, Healing of the Nations Foundation and Preaching Professor, Union Theological Seminary
*Editor's Note: This form for submissions is now closed, but to receive daily Lenten reflections, please sign up here.
Jim Wallis is the founder and former president of Sojourners. He is the inaugural holder of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair in Faith and Justice at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and director of its new Center on Faith and Justice. His latest book is The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy.
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