Grace in Politically Charged Times

Showing Mercy to Trump Voters

showing grace

In February, the Washington Post highlighted a story of Ryleigh Cooper, a 24-year-old woman from Michigan who lost her job with the National Park Service as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE “cuts.”

Some people might feel a sense of sadness and anger that this young woman lost her job as a result of such callousness. That is, until they learned that she voted for Donald Trump last November.

Cooper had reservations about voting for Trump, but decided to vote for him because of promises that In-vitro fertilization would be free under his administration. She and her husband had been trying to have a child and thought this might allow her to have the child she wanted.

In the end, IVF isn’t free and she is out of a job.

The next state over in Wisconsin, Bradley Bartell is talking to his new wife Camila Muñoz over the phone to see how she’s doing. Munoz is in a detention facility in Louisiana, picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Puerto Rico as the two were returning to Wisconsin from their honeymoon because she isn’t a US citizen even though she is in the process of getting her green card. The money they saved up for a home is used to pay for the fees of immigration attorneys. Like Cooper, Bartell voted for Trump in the hope that he would crack down on illegal immigrants. He never expected that his Peruvian-born bride would be picked up.

Stories like Ryleigh and Bradley repeat themselves over and over as people who voted for Trump in November realize this was not what they voted for. The response on social media regarding these two people has been less than charitable. “You voted for this!” Is the summary of the response.

But did they vote for this? I don’t think so.

Many people who voted for Trump, and that includes people from all walks of life including people of color are not like me- someone who follows politics closely. Many didn’t vote out of hate for immigrants (indeed, Bradley married an immigrant), but they did want immigration under some control.

Some 77 million people chose Trump over Kamala Harris. It’s easy to think every one of them is some kind of true believer who hates trans people, immigrants and Ukraine instead of regular voters who might have looked back on the years of Trump version 1.0 and thought it would be more of the same.

Over the years whenever I said we needed to listen to Trump voters, I would get responses about how terrible these people are and that the only thing you can do is defeat these people. They believed anyone who voted for someone as terrible as Donald Trump has to be of bad character. I’m guessing many people looked at the headlines of these two people and didn’t bother reading the full articles. All they saw was that this person voted for Trump and that was all they needed to know. If they had read the articles they would have seen the sheer hope that Trump might make IVF free so that Rayleigh could finally have the child she wanted. They would know the pain Bradley felt as his wife took off her ring and handed it to him in order to not lose something so precious to her. They would not have seen how she worries about her new stepson and if he is eating, knowing he loved her Peruvian cooking.

Looking at the state of our politics these days, I see a lot of “high anthropology.” This phrase, which I first heard about from David Zahl, is an optimistic view of humanity. We can make the right choices and do the right things. If we don’t, well, you should have known better.

Low anthropology, on the other hand, is a more sober assessment of humanity. I like to think of it as a nice way of describing what John Calvin called total depravity. It means that we are limited, tempted to sin, and prone to making the wrong choices.

We all make wrong choices even when we try to make good choices. Many good Trump voters thought they were making the right choice and now realize it was a mistake. And lest liberals get drunk on high anthropology, remember how many leaders and even regular Democrats wanted to believe Joe Biden could run again when there were clear signs he shouldn’t?

The fact is, we all make mistakes, sin, and fall short in everything we do, even in the voting booth.

Speaking of Zahl, he starts an essay sharing a quote from his brother, John: “The way you hold a position is oftentimes just as important as the position you hold.” Zahl then shares a memory from his time in New York City:

His words reminded me of a hot July day ten years ago, sitting in stand-still traffic outside New York City and watching in amazement as a church van a few lanes over decided to “redeem the time” by getting out a megaphone and reciting scripture to the rest of us. As you might imagine, there were no sudden conversions or hallelujahs; people were annoyed and, this being New York, they made their feelings known in a colorful way.

The lesson I took from it was that you cannot communicate the gospel confrontationally, i.e., you cannot convey a message of grace in a non-gracious or overbearing way.

We can say we have problems with the Trump administration and oppose his policies. But if you treat Trump voters who are in pain with disdain, we might- as recent podcast guest Gretchen Purser said- end up with these same people doubling down on Trump.

Grace in politics means seeing the other as a human being, a fellow human being who makes mistakes. It also means that we see ourselves in that same way; an imperfect human being who is capable of making mistakes. Maybe in this day when we want to otherize each other, we need to have a bit of humility and empathy for the Rayleighs and Bradleys of our world. Because what they need right now is our concern, not our contempt.