By Rev Roberto Ochoa
“When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan.” Proverbs 29:2
My Friends of the Iowa Nebraska South Dakota Conferences of the United Church of Christ and beyond:
May the blessings of God be upon you and yours through the love of Christ and the comfort of the Holy Spirit as we enter a season of crossroads and new possibilities. Let us find the time to take a collective breath, breathing in the Divine strength of Hope and Faith and breathing out all that brings us anxiety and fear. Let us lean into the promises of all that is good by our Creator.
These are my own thoughts alone and not representative of Iowa Nebraska South Dakota Conferences of the UCC and the Tri Conference Ministries.
I have to admit I am so done with what seem to be endless campaign advertisements, many of them so vile and toxic, trying to influence my vote in this year’s midterm elections. They’re everywhere, not only pounds of printed material through the mail, but I get unsolicited cell texts, phone calls, and through all my social platforms. I’ll be so glad when November 4th arrives.
Like so many of my clergy and pastoral peers, I find myself walking the fine line between the separation of religion and politics, especially as I am called to preach to our diverse UCC congregations in our polarized state of minds. I always try to find that common ground as UCC’ers.
There is one thing I have learned though when considering the “separation” of church and state. For me, there is no such thing. As Christians, I believe we are called to live out our lives based on how we understand our faith. Jesus calls us to serve the marginalized, the oppressed, and the vulnerable. Jesus calls us to speak truth to power when it is cruel, oppressive, motivated by greed, self-interest, and injustice. The Church and pastoral leaders are expected to preach with prophetic courage against systems that attempts to silence our freedom of speech through violence and death.
Our faith expect us to speak up when access to medical care to treat our own bodies are being denied and threaten with arrest and incarceration, or when the denial of dignity of our Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Queer siblings for living their authentic lives, or the immigrant, especially those being rounded up and caged up as criminals, whose only crime was to dream a better life for themselves and families in what they thought was a promised land.
As followers of Christ, I believe we are called to defend those that choose to worship the Divine (or not) differently than we do and stand up to antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of religious harassment. And as people of faith, we cannot ignore genocide in Gaza and other places in the world, or our present-day Viet Nam called Iran or stand by as Ukraine, an ally, seems to have been abandoned by our country.
Sometimes our faith calls us to the streets as I did earlier this year in Minneapolis during the subzero degree of January during the metro purge of ICE. Our freedom to protest injustice as people of faith is something our ancestors have done for centuries.
Yes, all these are political, and life is political where we are called to live fully in. It is interesting to note that according to Religion News Service (Oct 14) eleven clergy/seminarian trained candidates are running for congress in the U.S. – two of them in Iowa, which are being closely watched.
We are called to live out our faith as citizens of the “State”. The difference, I believe, is that I do not have the right to enforce my beliefs onto others. Our constitution guarantees that no one religion would be enforced upon any of us.
I think it is a mistake, as a person of faith, not to be engaged in the civil and political life of our communities and ignore our right to vote. People of faith, women, Black and Brown church and young folks (the voting age was dropped from 21 to 18 in 1972) struggled hard for our right to vote. Let us honor them by exercising our right to vote.
The journalist Scott MacFarlane stated “my concern is the coarsening of our political rhetoric. How we treat each other in political spaces. How candidates address other candidates and their supporters. We deserve better than this. Our votes should go to those that model humanity and humility.” (Scott MacFarlane Reports – You Tube -10/26/26).
I will be casting my vote this November 3rd and my prayer for this midterm election is that our humanity and humility will be restored again.
Bendiciones y Paz,
Rev Roberto