Doug Pagitt on how to vote for the common good

Doug Pagitt is an author, pastor, social activist, and the Executive Director of Vote Common Good. A leading voice for progressive Christianity, in this episode he addresses the midterm elections, the rising influence of Christian Nationalism, and why voters should make faith, hope and love their guide for their voting criteria as opposed to their party choice.

Watch the video, here.

GEORGE: [00:00:00] Welcome to Good God, Conversations that matter about faith and public life. I'm George Mason, your host, and today we're gonna be talking about the upcoming elections. It's the midterm. And it's a time of contention again in our country as we can't seem to figure out how to find one another across the dividing [00:01:00] lines of politics, whether Democrat or Republican, and find that place of the common good where we all really want to be together in increasing our neighborliness and seeking to make room for people who disagree with us.

This is a challenging. And what do we do? Well, we can keep working at it. We can keep talking about it. We can keep refusing to remain in our silos and try to understand people have empathy with them. And to that end we're talking in this episode with Doug Pageant, a pastor for 20 years.

He is the co-founder of Solomon's Porch, a an evangelical church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And now he is executive director of Vote Common Good. Also the co-founder. They are taking a bus trip around the country into [00:02:00] key areas, trying to help people to think in terms of faith, hope and love of how to overcome.

Fear and hate and lies and those sorts of things, and to bring faith into practice in the voting process, in our democratic conversation about how we do life together. This is challenging work. He recently was in Dallas, in fact a couple of times and held rallies here, and some of us at Faith Commons participated in those rally.

So pay attention to what Doug is up to. He is trying to help us understand the challenges that we face with the growing Christian nationalism and insurrectionists, what the roots of that are in faith and how the answer to that is not to tell people to take their faith and be quiet about it, but rather more conversation about faith, more [00:03:00] alternatives to that faith perspective and how we can navigate those waters together to have a more civil society.

So, welcome Doug Paget. We look forward to this conversation on good God. 

Welcome Doug to Good God. We're glad to have you with us. Doug is standing in front of his bus for Vote Common Good. And it says there, faith, hope, and love. Tell us about the bus and the tour You're on, Doug.

DOUG: Yeah. So thanks George and good to be on. Good God. With Vote Common. Good on Good God. It's faith, Hope and love, Not Insurrections and Christian Nationalism tour. We ask voters to make faith, hope and love their guide for their voting criteria as opposed to their party choice. But we're not asking elected officials to use only their faith as their guide for law making.

Right? Laws have [00:04:00] to be made by something more than just our reading of our faith. That's part of what it means to live in a civil society. So there's this important work that we're trying to do of saying to faith voters, Hey, you should have your own motivation. And then legislators need to have their own guide for how they establish laws in the United States, which is something.

You know, really caused this rise of insurrection in the United States where a lot of people feel conflicted between the role of their faith in their own motivations and their own civic engagement, say through their churches or other organizations, versus what should the government do that has a responsibility for all people and that, so that's some of the work that we're doing.

But we travel the country we hold rally events we hold training events on how to talk about Christian nationalism. We support all kinds of other social causes that are happening when we're out on the campaign trail. So we've been out this fall for almost two months, and we'll be out through November 6th in a bunch of states.

We had the great [00:05:00] privilege being, of course in Texas, and we were in Arkansas, in Kansas and Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, where we are right now Ohio. And we're going back and forth through those Midwestern states over the course of this year. 

GEORGE: Wonderful. Now, Doug, you talk about bringing faith into. The decision making process for voters and also for politicians themselves when it comes to making public policy and judgements about the common good. You know we, have a long history in our country of people doing just that. And for much of the history of our country, that was sort of, I suppose, oh, I don't know taken for granted as it was mostly mostly mainline Christian tradition that dominated the faith conversation in America.

But that's has, that has shifted and it shifted in a pretty big way now. [00:06:00] Those of us who are involved in Faith Commons my organization that sponsors good. We do encourage people to bring their faith into the public square. And yet right now one of the problems with insurrection and Christian nationalism is people bringing their faith into the public square. So what's the right way to do that? And what's the wrong way, if I could put it that way? 

DOUG: Well, look, this is a really important question. It's something we've been talking about as a country from our founding, right? So we see ourselves in 2022 and asking this question. My congressional representative is Elon Homa Omar, and she's Muslim.

Now I want her to be driven in her life by any faith. She holds her Muslim faith, and I'm a Christian. I vote for her, not because we share the same faith, but because we have a shared commitment to the common good. So I want her to be driven toward the common good and then to find [00:07:00] her legislative rationale for something outside of the Quran.

And I want Christian candidates and legislators to find some rationale for their work outside of the Bible and Jewish representatives outside of the Jewish text, or any faith we need to find these other places. So this conversation, right, something we've been wrestling with from the founding of the country.

In fact, you know, in the 18 hundreds while we'll sometimes say like, Oh, there was a shared narrative of faith and politics in the country. Well, Catholics were really. Prejudice to guest, right? In fact, some of the early no prayer in school movements in the 18 hundreds were to limit Catholic prayers from getting into public schools, right?

So, while it's easy for us to think, hey, we've always been a part of the same, you know, broad. Christian or Judeo Christian narrative, that's not even true. There's been a lot of discrimination between, from one group to the other. So we have some history of this, and partly the history isn't very [00:08:00] good. We haven't been very good at it.

And as we perfect our union, as we perfect our ability to live well with one another in a globalized society, this is something we also have to be working on. So we find ourselves in a good tradition. We find ourselves in a tradition that we have to have to navigate. And we know that it's it's important and, we need to get after it.

You know, as soon as we, I'm in Pennsylvania. And so when the United States decided to form a union as opposed to live as colonies under the British rule, they had to adjust their narrative to say, Okay, now Pennsylvania is going to live with the rest of the states differently. And the religious preference narrative has to be set aside.

And frankly, in 246 years, There's a lot of people in Pennsylvania that weren't totally happy with that. They, might want to go back to a previous period, Right? There's some of that happening. I believe the person running for governor as the Republican nominee has some attitudes that feel much more like old Pennsylvania, 

GEORGE: Ah, 

DOUG: than, feels like the, modern period.

So it, it roots [00:09:00] us, right? It reminds us that we're living in in a dynamic experience as a nation and it's not entirely clear how what, our future is gonna look like. I think there's a path for us. I think there's a path that we want to follow. But this is real work that we're out here doing.

And, I gotta tell you, George, in all my 30 years of being a 

pastor in a congregational setting, I used to say, Don't worry about Christian nationalism, like it's fringe. Don't give it any fuel. Let's not take up any time. They're kind of harmless. Well, either I was just dead wrong about that, which is quite possible.

Or things have changed. And we now have a new variance of Christian nationalism, and it might be a combination of the two. Maybe I was a bit misguided and, didn't take it seriously enough. And I really do think something has changed. So we're living in a really unique moment now in our nation's history around this question of what's the role of faith, hope and love for all of us as citizens?

Because like, you know, I wanna speak for you, but as a pastor, I mean, when you're a pastor, I want people to live out their faith in [00:10:00] every area of their life, including how they think about their voting, right? I wanted to have a commitment to faith, for faith in others and hope for others and love of others all the time.

But that doesn't mean I want my religious doctrine to be the rule of the land. And that's a distinction that for a lot of people, it's hard to. 

GEORGE: I, think it is. And let me pick up here because I agree. You and I both grew up in an evangelical culture where we heard a lot about Christian nationalism.

It wasn't the label we put on it back then. Yes. But it, was we, know about Rush Doey and about, you know, Gary North and about all those folks that we considered kind of to be fringe figures in American Christianity who wanted a kind of biblical theocracy in America. And now here we find ourselves with them being mainstream politically and it's shocking to us.

Cause we, really didn't [00:11:00] consider them to. Voices that were legitimate conversation partners about the American religious experiment. And, so here we are, but at root I think Christian nationalists today who are owning a title and who are boldly saying that they wanna bring their faith into the public square.

Have a hard time with, something you said earlier. And that is that you want your Muslim congressional leader. To be rooted in her faith tradition, but not to take the Quran, into her voting booth, so to speak, and into her policy making Similarly, to leave the Bible in a sense for Christians and Jews and, not to leave it, but to recognize that we live in a pluralist setting.

So what do you say to those who, like for example Christian nationalists believe that it's impossible for a Muslim to do [00:12:00] that very thing. And therefore it's a contest between a, Christian who will take their Bible seriously into the Democratic process and a Muslim who will do the same and we have to win.

Or is it unfaithful to ask a Muslim or a Christian to then enter into a more secular setting and effectively say, I'm privatizing my faith and I'm in public. I have to set it aside for the common good. How do we put these things together, Doug?

DOUG: Well, I think that's the right question, right? I think you're really getting at the question that we're all, that we're all struggling with, and I am not at all suggesting that someone can't be motivated by their faith, even in the legislation that they draw, but they can't simply have the rationale.

The book of Romans chapter 13 as the former, you know, Attorney General said when giving justification for family [00:13:00] separation policy. Yeah. Or we can't say second Chronicles because we wanna establish a day of prayer. If we want there to be legislation, If we want there to be legal demand put on people by the government, we need to find additional support to those things that our text or our faith might bring to us.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that we should set, establish a law that tells us how and when to say, have communion or perform baptisms or to decide who can be married. Well, now there's where it gets interesting, right? So some people do want to take marriage laws and connect it to their faith, but they don't wanna do it with communion or other sacraments that the church might hold as significant, important.

So we're already doing this work, right? We're already know that. Nobody wants there to be sort of a one to. Correlation between a Levitical law and the United States law, but they think, well, these things are kind of rooted [00:14:00] and it's the space we operate in. And I think we're, they're right about that. It's rooted in our nation.

It's part of our narratives, but we have to have an additional reason when we're gonna establish public policy to what our faith commitments are. And this is what often becomes troubling to some voters, is they want their representatives to represent their own particular convictions for the same reasons that they hold that conviction.

Yes. Right. So it's this, abortion is a really important issue on this. Now the Christian tradition says very little, if anything about. But there's a lot of ways that we think about the issue of abortion and how we're gonna make sure that women are respected and cared for. And that, you know, the development of a fetus is something that's being honored in our society you know, to a certain point and who's gonna make those decisions.

But the scriptures don't go far enough to tell us what to do about that. There's a lot of people, you know, calling for [00:15:00] human, viability to be declared at the point of conception. Well, you're not gonna get that out of a text, but there's a lot of people who hold it deeply in their faith. So we kind of work both directions, right?

We don't want to take direct correlation from the Bible about how one should serve communion in churches, not gonna establish a law about that. And then the, we're not gonna go only to our text when it comes to our thinking about other moral and social issues. So we're already doing it, and we shouldn't fool ourselves somehow into thinking that the purpose of any of our.

Of our faithful and sacred texts is to help us establish laws. It just doesn't work that way. I mean, frankly, even what you find in the Jewish Text for Jewish law has, is only one portion of the establishment of Jewish law, you know, in, in ancient, Israel. So there's kind of a maturity that we need to have when it comes to how we establish laws, where they come from, where they're rooted in what their rationale is, as well as thinking about our own text and our [00:16:00] own scripture.

That's right. We're saying to people who are in churches and other faith communities, look, use this as a chance to disciple your people into a greater understanding of civic life and even their text and their scriptures and how they function in the world and the, value that they actually offer to us and motivate us to be involved in, civic life.

Because if you're gonna be involved in civic life, you're gonna take your faith into the public square with others who also have a faith, and you don't want their faith to override yours, nor should you expect that your faith is gonna override, theirs. 

GEORGE: And I think it, I think your point is, well taken about you, you mentioned abortion for instance.

And, you know if you're going to say that there is a Christian point of view, which there is not a, Christian point of view on this matter especially when life begins you, also have to be willing in the public square to acknowledge those who are bringing their faith tradit. On the same subject because now what seems [00:17:00] to have happened is, you know the, Christian viewpoint that the Supreme Court has prevailed, and the assumption is that life begins in conception.

But Jews are quite surprised that conclusion can be reached based upon their own reading of scripture since they read scripture. And the consistent tradition among Jews is to view life as beginning after birth when the first breath is taken apart from the mother. Muslims as well do not hold generally to cons.

The, conception being the moment of life. So what, we have here is a matter of learning how in the public square to bring our religion into conversation and, to the issue is not church state separation. Be it because that still works. In this case, we are not asking people to separate God and government [00:18:00] or religion and politics.

We're asking them not to presume that one position of the church can be enfranchised legitimately in, in, law, and and imposed upon others. That is the church state separation issue, and that is being contested today.

DOUG: Yeah. Yeah. And look, there's a lot, It's not clear where the boundaries of the states and of the citizenry stop and begin.

It's something we wrestle with. I'll tell you what's driving a lot of this. We're hearing it on the road as we travel, and we hear it in the conversations that we're having, and that is the nation's response to the covid. This is what's really sits at the heart of the new Christian nationalist movements.

There's a lot of people who just felt like churches and religious communities should have been seen as essential elements in our society. If the Walmart needs to be open, why can't the church be [00:19:00] open? And they were saying to themselves, this is as essential an element to our lives as our ability to get the needs, our needs fulfilled.

Right? So you can see how someone would make that, Someone could make that argument and we should have that argument.

GEORGE: I can see that argument. But here is where the, nuances are so important, right? Because you can go into a store and you can be separated and a store keeper can say, We're only gonna allow certain number of people in, and you have to keep certain amount of distance and you must wear masks and all of that.

Restaurants can do the same. But in a church where intimacy and congregating is the very essence of the idea you know to, say that those are the same is not to think nuanced fashion. And the state does have a right to protect public health. [00:20:00] So so again, we're arguing back and forth on these things, but this is the point.

Nuances are being lost in our. Right? Yeah. The, ability to think carefully about these matters. So what is it about Vote Common Good and your work in, this effort that is contributing to bringing people together or helping them to think differently in this highly conflictual, seemingly binary time when people have established two different points of view and it's very hard, it seems to bring people toward the center.

What hope do you have of this effort, Doug? 

DOUG: Well, our hope is that what will come out of all this work is greater empathy and greater engagement. Okay? We don't operate around a metaphor of coming together in the center. We operate around a metaphor of engagement. So in other words, engagement is something that you [00:21:00] can.

It doesn't have to be permanent, is one way to think about it, right? You can engage with someone without having to sort of move positions to another position, right? And to do that through deep empathy is really important because it's every person that we meet and every person in the United States has a right to hold the beliefs and the assumptions and the passions that they have.

And none of us should be going about trying to dissuade someone who doesn't want to be dissuaded. So our work is we try to get people who have felt dislodged from their voting identity because their voting identity came with them with a faith identity, and then things changed. Often republicans are experiencing that these days.

They feel like the Republican party doesn't fit them anymore and they don't wanna lose their faith. But they too used to be something that came together and a package. And now they're separating. We're not out trying to convince people to change their relationship with the Republican party. [00:22:00] We're out trying to help people who've realized that relationship has already shifted.

Something has already changed. We're not out trying to convince people to worry about Christian nationalism. We're out trying to help people who are worried about Christian nationalism to know how to engage in it. We're not out trying to talk to people who hold Christian nationalist views and tell them they're wrong.

We're out trying to engage them to make sure they know that there's another viewpoint they can have. Because ultimately, human respect and human love is the key to empathic engagement. So what we need to get to in our society is the recognition and then the practices that we can engage with another person who has views that we actually find to be.

Disturbing and problematic, not just people who disagree on unimportant things, like that's, a great place to start, right? Like, I don't know, start having a disagreement about sports franchises or, you know, Yeah. Fast food restaurant preferences or something that kind of doesn't matter, but still can [00:23:00] cause a little bit of a curve levelle before you move on to things that feel like they're rooted in someone's identity.

Because for a lot of people, their political imagination and their religious imagination, those are not things they feel like they just believe. Those are core understandings of how they see themselves in the world and who they are, and how they operate in the world. And when you're playing with that, when you're starting to deal with those issues, you really have to recognize why a belief matters to someone before you start asking them to change.

Or to consider another viewpoint. So what we're trying to do is to create more moments of this kind of engagement, more moments of consideration for people who are looking for it. And here's the truth, George. Everybody's looking for it. Like I have talked to hardcore Christian nationalists, hardcore Republican only.

I mean, I've been screamed at and bars by proud boys telling me that Donald Trump is the savior of America. And after a few minutes of conversation with them, they [00:24:00] start to say things like, all the rest of us like, Yeah, I know. It's not that clear. I know there's some complexities here, right? The first pass and the first blush in the first defense of who we are and how we operate in the world is not always fully telling about what's going on.

So if he can hang in there long, With people, it starts to become evident that a change could be a foot. Can, I tell you one brief story about that? We yeah. I, wish I could find one of our yard signs, but we have these yard signs that say, I will vote faith, hope and love, and it's faith over fear.

Hope over hate. Yeah. And love overlies. Okay. Right. So we were doing a rally in Pittsburgh and there was an anti-abortion protestor group that showed up at a rally. We were supporting a, the election of a congress person to the Democratic democratic Congress person. And they were there counter protesting around this.

And so our rally went on, they were protesting at the end, we were talking with them, and I said to one of [00:25:00] the people who was sort of a leader of this group, I said, Hey, if you because you're pro-life, we might not agree on policies around abortion, but we can certainly agree if you're pro-life, that we should.

The death penalty in this country, and we should stop our wars and we should make sure that poverty is not causing, you know, premature death for people. And we should make sure that guns are not violence used in violence situations in our society so we can agree on those things, right? And she said, No, none of that has anything to do with me being pro-life.

And then she, we had these Black Lives Matter signs that we also had along with our faith not fear, hope, not hate, love, not lives, signs. And she said and if you or any of your black lives loving, black lives, loving friends ever came into my house without my permission, I'd shoot you with my gun myself.

Okay. And then she said, But I do like those faith open love signs. Can I have one of those for my yard? And I said, Well, actually, those come with a donation. And she goes, Okay. Went to her car, got $20, came back, gave us $20, and took one of our yard sides home because [00:26:00] she said, I think you are the ones with fear.

You're the ones with with lies. And you're the ones who are pedaling hate, right? So we shared this sense that we both wanted to be faith, not fear, hope not hate and love not lies. Just these brief moments where you realize, Okay. That kind of true messaging, that's where people find themselves and the more we can have these kinds of true engagements, and for some of us it's easier with strangers than it is with family members.

And for others it's, you know, it goes better if you talk to somebody who you already love than somebody you really don't care much about. So, so that's the work I think that really has to be done. And we also have to do it in the media. I'll just say the reason we travel in a bus and sleep in a bus, and I'm in a Hampton Inn parking lot.

It, is because we know that the media wants to tell the broader range of stories about faith and politics in America. So [00:27:00] the Michael Flynn crowd are up here in Pennsylvania holding these Reawaken America Christian nationals and rallies. They get a lot of attention. And then we come pulling in with our bus and we run an event out on the street or in a park or at a church somewhere.

And we've got this thing that looks like a media. Attraction. Right, Right. Because we're working hard to be in the spaces that help to shape and form the conversations that people are having. So the front page of the New York Times app today is us standing with a person running for Senate the Democratic Senate candidate here in Ohio at one of our rallies with our vote Common Good Sign.

It's the, framing, framing photo. And what we're trying to do is to be in the spaces and places to help other people also have these convers. It's, what we call in our work, the gift of going first. And I'll just say to pastors and other leaders, like take the opportunity to go first on some things and to get out there and to let people see and hear that people [00:28:00] are trying to have another conversation.

Cause it's really easy to just go through your newsfeed and watch something on television and think why are these the only people that are out there that, the media's paying attention to? And George, as you know, I mean the reason that press pays attention to things is cuz you write press releases and you go out and you do things that can become interesting enough for it to reach a level of being newsworthy.

Right. And I will say that the, media and the press that I have found all across the spectrum, even on the very conservative side, for the most part, really does work hard to share a range of views. So we should be out in the public spaces sharing their views. Especially as, you said, we're trying to have a nuanced conversation in a less than nuanced world.

GEORGE: Well, you know the, old saying is that the answer to free speech that you don't like is not less free speech, but more speech more free speech. And so getting these voices out into the public square is [00:29:00] crucially important. And I think about the trajectory of your own life, Doug, and your, work in ministry years ago, I know you and I were paired up in a story about preaching in which you may not remember this, but it was a story about where preaching is going.

And when you were at Solomon's porch, you were doing more dialogical preaching. You were doing more preaching that would you know, engage the people. And I was in a more traditional pulpit. But this whole idea of, being able to use empathy, compassion in, in, in dealing with people is something that is longstanding for you as a pastor.

And I, find this to be an interesting trajectory where now you're moving it into the political sphere. Not so much getting out of your own lane, but extend, expanding your lane so to speak. And here I find myself doing the same thing with you now, and I, that's kind of a delight as our PAs [00:30:00] are coming together.

DOUG: Yeah, that is really fun. It's fun to look back and see how, you know, this highway has been paved over the course of our lives. We spend a lot of time on the highways driving around, and I'm always amazed that there are roads that take us to all the places we need to go to in this country. Like we've literally built asphalt and concrete pathways to get the right that weren't there before.

Now they didn't come without severe, you know ecological effect in cost. So I'm not trying to be flipping about 'em, but we built them, right? We found a way to get from here to there. The 1950s, the big government project to build an in a national highway system. I'm really quite remarkable when you think about it, and I think, you know, for all of us, like what we're up to now, it's, I don't know about you, but it wasn't all that clear what I was gonna be doing, right?

Like, I'm on this pathway that we're sort of making as we're traveling, right? We're kind of scouting out. I'm scouting out for [00:31:00] my own work what the next piece is. And yeah, when I was in a pastoral context, what I wanted to do was to make sure that preaching was an action held by the community, right?

I thought that preaching is best when it's a communal practice, not an individual practice, or that the communal practice is something more than a speech making delivery. Right now, ironically, we now do these trainings and I run the trainings and they're like two hours long and about an hour and 45 minutes of it is me just talking to people, just, you know, full on switch making you know, which I'm like, Okay, I'm just here once.

This is a one time thing. And, you know, it's not a long term relationship, so maybe this is a, you know, this is, maybe this is fine, but trying to use different tools and tactics where in a church setting, week in and week out for me, for over 20 years in the same community, I wanted us to feel the responsibility to not only take preaching seriously as a community, but also to recognize all the preachers amongst us.

We, we have this rule in our training that we do on [00:32:00] lots of our work that really came outta my preaching life. And it's what I call the one word, 10 word and 100 word frame that some things are better said in one word. Some things are better said with 10 words or some things you might wanna say it in a hundred words.

Or give or take a number in there. Like I often joke when someone says to you, but dear, do you love me? The 100 word answer is not the, best one at that moment, right? It's yes or no. So sometimes people have a word, sometimes they'll have 10, Sometimes they'll have a hundred or thousands people In our community, people in our country, they might not be able to talk as about issues even as long as we have on this podcast, or as someone like you so eloquently can do in a constructed sermon, but they could say a sentence that's really powerful or they could.

To the 200 words, which is the length of time that, you know, Lincoln's famous Gettysburg address was less than two minutes in delivery, but something of real power or the, [00:33:00] attitudes of the Sermon on the mount, not very long, but really carry a lot of implication for them. So finding spaces for all the preachers and preaching of all the lengths to be able to join together in this beautiful mosaic.

So that, that's what I thought the Christian Gospel called for in the society that we're in, and it's really what our nation also is begging for, right? As you said, I came over here so you can see the back of our trailer, which says, Wake up, speak up, and stand up on it, which is our, other bit. We never want to tell anyone to be quiet.

We just want other people to turn up the volume or as we like to joke Hey, faithful people. Your mute is on. Take your mute off and say it. You know they, can't hear you right now. It's like we're in a constant zoom meeting in our society. Right. So, so, so that's the that's, the work we're up to.

GEORGE: All right. So we need to wrap this up. And I feel like you've already answered this question in more than a hundred words. So maybe this is a a, Ted word answer. Get ready for the Ted word answer. But as these [00:34:00] these conversations I like to finish them by asking our guests, What are you learning from your own faith tradition right now that is helping you to promote the common good in this current climate?

DOUG: Wow. That is such an insightful question. Thank you for that. The, commitment from, my faith tradition is that we make no distinction. Between our neighbor, our God, and our enemy with our love. And while a lot of us don't wanna say that we, have enemies, we don't like to think of others as, like, I don't put you on an enemy's list.

Sometimes we're viewed as the enemy by others. We certainly hear that out here. And to intentionally take seriously the love that we're gonna have for people whose desires and passions feel opposite of ours. [00:35:00] That's where the real struggle and work is. And to truly listen as deeply to the passions and the reasons and the function of their beliefs.

As we listen to those, of the people that are on the bus with us, as the people that host the meetings that we go to as the, sweet little grandchildren that we have at home, or children that we have at home. That, that, that commitment to really see. No functional distinction between loving our God, loving our neighbor, and loving our enemy as we love ourselves is really that's the trick.

And boy, when you're in the politics world and faith, it's easy to get binary. Like you gotta walk in the voting booth. You pick this one or that one, that's all you get. Or where I'm from, you get ranked choice voting, but still you only get some, and there's only one at the top of your list. But then when you walk out of the voting booth, you can't keep doing the only this or that.

Like that binary thing has to stop and you gotta circle it all back in together and realize everyone has something to contribute. [00:36:00] And we're all in this thing together. I believe we're all on the planet together. We all share our humanity. We're all children and beloved by the same, divine God.

And we're all in this country together. And we have to figure out how to live with one another in a way that doesn't just create binaries between, you know, random enemies. 

GEORGE: Doug Paget, it's wonderful to have you on. Good God. And thankful for being faithful to your Christian faith and also a promoter of the kind of democracy that will heal us and renew us as a country.

And we're grateful to be in conversation with you and in partnership with you and in the work that you're doing. God bless you. Such an art. Thank you.

Thanks for joining us in this episode of Good God with Doug Paget. As our guest elections are coming up this coming Tuesday, November the eighth. Of course, we are now in the early voting period and we certainly at Faith [00:37:00] Commons urge you to vote that is one of your civic responsibilities.

It is a great privilege to do so. And not to vote is to take away one of the most important liberties that you have. It may be even that you are concerned about that liberty being threatened. And the best way to protect that is to vote. We hope that you will find a way, whether through early voting or on the day of November the eighth, to go to a voting booth or to mail in a vote, vote and make sure that your voice is heard.

How should your voice be heard? How should you make decisions about these things? Well, I hope this episode was instructive to you and you were able to think about how you bring your faith to bear on voting. But in doing so, you recognize that you don't have a right to overcome anyone else's faith perspective.

You are contributing [00:38:00] to that faith tradition of being engaged in public life without expectation that you have to win and everyone needs to agree with you. Instead, bring your faith, but also do so with a recognition that there is a common life we share that is good for everyone, and think about how to vote in a way that promotes the common good.

Thanks again for being with us on Good God. Until the next time. I'm George Mason, your host. Thanks for joining us.