Casting a Daily Ballot for God’s Spirit

Like a riptide, the brutal polarization we are experiencing can pull us under as a country, carrying us far out to sea where the dangers of hate and misunderstanding leave us all adrift and desperate for rescue at any port that claims to offer us refuge. 

But I believe we are stronger swimmers than that, and we know deep down we should heed the warnings to stay away from the perilous undertow of disunity and head back to shore where collective ethical, national responsibilities await. 

Let us, as believers and followers of the living God, be courageous enough to assert our vision of peace over discord, faith over fear. We must not be afraid to make these declarations publicly. So many need to hear us speak to them, to speak for them.

The truth is, after casting our ballots, we once again have another equally important decision to make: whether we will choose a common vision of prosperity and peace for everyone, or continue to be rended by the rhetoric and vitriol that has come to define our national discourse. These choices are both individual and collective, but make no mistake, they are indeed choices. In the crucial period after an election, we face a “vote” that is as pivotal as any we will ever make as a country. After we select leaders at every level of government, will we choose to create a sacred space as a nation, one in which we decide to share values of security, prosperity, and fairness for everyone—or not? 

God’s Extravagant Dream

The question should matter to our faith. It matters to God. Elections compel us to reflect on our nation’s triumphs and tragedies and reckon with policies of cruelty and violence towards God’s children that should never, ever be repeated. We can choose to align ourselves in a powerful commonality that announces we are all God’s children and we will coalesce around the values of God’s grace: justice, safety, security, and forgiveness. 

Of course, we can certainly choose to continue to live in our fears, doubts, and narrow ways of knowing our country and the world, as if God is irrelevant to our lives. But God offers us so much more. The urge to be greater than our limited understanding of the world is God’s voice, speaking to us to embrace an extravagant dream of unity and abundance for everyone. 

God can imbue this in us with even the smallest sign of joy and hope, a small crack in the door of reinvention of a nation with arms wide enough to hold all God’s children and drop not even one. 

Sacred Spaces are Waiting

There is a path to be forged where we address the division that we find so wearying and disillusioning and turn it into collective renewal. Every faith community holds a stone to be laid on the path to that hope. Wherever the doors to the church, synagogue, mosque, temple, and meeting house are open, there is a space waiting for dialogue to begin, or to serve as simply a place where a soul can find refuge from the onslaught of media messages now so common. 

In these spaces, a spirit of healing and reconciliation can happen, a place where, as YDS Prof. Willie Jennings describes it, “Christian imagination” can create expanses of thought and mutual understanding that might not be possible elsewhere.[1] Certainly, we each enter these places with our own limited perspectives and life struggles. People of color, poor, and low income people, as well as those who were formerly incarcerated, experience life differently from those whose lives are not shaped by such circumstances. But in a house of faith, the kind of conversation about the equality and compassion that God wants from us can at least—and at last—be had, and that is an enormous step to take in the direction of discovering a shared belief in our humanity. 

Congregations of all faiths have been given a unique moment in time to refocus our nation’s attention on who our God has called us to be, people of love, grace, and hope. Doing so need not be complicated. We simply open our doors and invite communities in that are weary of strife, and offer them a place to rest. It is within the reach of every house of worship to create spaces for listening, conversation, and most importantly, compassion, by opening our doors and welcoming weary and yearning souls, the work of healing hearts full of fear and concern can begin almost immediately.  

More than Enough Room 

The spaces we hold for rest and peace need not be grand community gatherings. In quiet, contemplative and safe areas, we can reflect on our commonality as God’s people and our resiliency as a nation. Despite what we may hear today and the days to come, God is ever present, especially in those moments when we recommit to the belief that our country has more than enough room for our differences without causing irreparable harm to our country and each other.   

Whether we are clergy, lay leaders, historians, community activists, longtime members of churches, or people who care deeply about our communities, peace must be more than our deepest wish for our nation. We must be prepared to do the work of having difficult conversations with our brothers and sisters in God’s family. This will not be easy. Many may hold beliefs and viewpoints that diverge greatly from our own. Even so, our capacity for understanding and tolerance is greater than we believe. The work to help mend our nation starts first with a vision of conciliation with all of God’s people, one that our God has taught us and models for us every day through encounters large and small. 

To begin our work, let us, as believers and followers of the living God, be courageous enough to assert our vision of peace over discord, faith over fear. We must not be afraid to make these declarations publicly. So many need to hear us speak to them, to speak for them. So many need to understand that they are not alone in their desire to move away from division and rebuild our nation, neighbor by neighbor, one house of worship after another, one day at a time. The most fervent prayer that our God can answer is that the cumulative effects of our work will transform and heal our nation.   

God hears us wherever we are—in the voting booth, in our homes, schools, and places of work and worship. And in each of these places and in every moment, no matter the season of discord or discontent, we can cast our daily ballot for unity, hope, and humanity for all. 

Andrea Barton Reeves ’26 M.A.R. is the Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Social Services and the founding CEO of Connecticut’s Paid Family and Medical Leave Authority. A member of Faith Congregational Church in Hartford, she was awarded the Donald A. Wells Preaching Prize earlier this year by the Massachusetts Bible Society and the United Church of Christ Southern New England Conference.