This is the 11th in a BNG series of articles on Christianity and democracy related to the celebration of America’s 250th birthday. The series has been curated by Carol McEntyre, senior minister at First Baptist Church of Greenville, S.C.
One Sunday after a major election, I stood in the pulpit looking out at a congregation that felt emotionally exhausted. Some people arrived looking visibly relieved and triumphant. Others arrived appearing anxious, grieving or angry. A few avoided eye contact altogether. Conversations in the hallway were careful and tense, as though everyone instinctively knew one wrong comment could open a wound.
By Monday morning, social media was flooded with outrage, panic and declarations that the country was either finally being saved or permanently ruined. Every election now seems to carry the emotional weight of apocalypse.
Caroline Smith
We have forgotten how to lose.
Yet democracy depends upon citizens who can accept disappointment without despair and disagreement without dehumanizing one another. It requires people who can lose an election without believing they have lost their country, their dignity or their hope. Christians certainly should be capable of this. Our faith teaches us that no political victory is ultimate and no election can carry the weight of salvation. Yet many of us struggle to believe that anymore.
Democracy requires humility
Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr understood something essential about both human beings and democracy. Human beings are fully capable of compassion, courage, sacrifice and justice. But we also are all too vulnerable to pride, fear, self-interest and the dangerous temptation to believe our own side is always righteous.
And that is precisely why democracy matters. It is not built on the assumption that people are always good. It is built on the recognition that no individual, party or movement can be trusted with unchecked power. Niebuhr captured this tension in his observation that “man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”
“Democracy depends upon the character of the people living within it.”
But perhaps our current moment requires us to extend Niebuhr’s insight even further. Democracy does not survive through constitutions and courts alone. It also depends upon the character of the people living within it. Democracy requires citizens who can accept limits, who understand they will not always win, who can disagree without hatred and who remember that no political party is the kingdom of God. In other words, democracy is not only a political system. It is also a spiritual challenge.
The real crisis: Losing reveals what we worship
Why is it that elections feel so emotionally overwhelming for so many people? Why does political loss so often feel less like disappointment and more like disorientation, something closer to grief, even fear? Part of the answer is unsettling: Losing reveals what we worship.
When politics begins to carry the weight of our identity, our security or our hope for the future, every election begins to feel ultimate. It is no longer simply about policy, leadership or competing visions of the common good. It becomes a verdict on whether our world is safe, whether our lives are meaningful and whether justice itself will survive.
That is why compromise so often feels like betrayal rather than prudence. It is why opponents are so quickly described not merely as wrong but as threats. And it is why political defeat can feel, at times, like personal collapse, like something essential about the moral fabric of reality has been torn.
And yet, to say this is not to minimize what is at stake in public life. Political decisions matter. Policies shape whether people can access health care or remain in their communities. Decisions about immigration, detention and global aid can mean the difference between safety and suffering, even life and death. Christians who care about justice cannot pretend otherwise.
But precisely because politics carries such real moral weight, it becomes even more dangerous when we ask it to carry ultimate weight. Some Christians now experience elections not only as civic transitions but as cosmic verdicts, judgments on whether good or evil finally has won or whether God’s purposes can continue in history at all. That is too heavy a burden for any election to bear.
“The Christian confession never has been that history rests safely in the hands of presidents, parties or nations.”
The Christian confession never has been that history rests safely in the hands of presidents, parties or nations. It rests in the hands of God. And when that truth is forgotten, even our most urgent commitments to justice begin to harden into fear, desperation and despair rather than sustained, faithful hope.
When faith becomes possession
Theologian Willie James Jennings offers a critique of the modern church’s imagination. In simple terms, he warns Christians can quietly begin to confuse faithfulness with possession — possession of influence, possession of cultural authority, possession of political power and even possession of the assumption that we are meant to be “in charge.” When that happens, faith begins to shift. It is no longer primarily about following Christ in the world but about maintaining a recognizable place of control within it.
This helps name something many churches are experiencing in different ways. Across the theological spectrum, many Christians seem more afraid of losing cultural influence, losing physical property or a declining budget than of losing Christlike character. The deeper anxiety beneath much of our political panic is not simply concern for justice, but fear of displacement — fear of no longer being central, dominant or decisive in shaping public life.
Perhaps, then, the panic surrounding the loss of Christian influence says less about democracy itself and more about the spiritual formation of the church. And if that is true, a harder question emerges: What if losing influence is not the end of Christian faithfulness but an invitation back to it? It may be that cultural diminishment, painful as it is, becomes the very space where the church relearns humility, witness, service, compassion and dependence on God rather than political power.
“What if losing influence is not the end of Christian faithfulness but an invitation back to it?”
The Cross: Christianity’s central symbol is not the throne
Christianity’s central symbol is not a throne. It is a Cross. Jesus refused domination. He rejected coercion. He did not save the world through force, political leverage or the accumulation of power, but through self-giving love that moved toward suffering rather than away from it.
To the Roman Empire, the Cross looked like weakness, humiliation and defeat — the end of influence, not its beginning. Yet Christians dare to confess that resurrection emerged precisely there, in the place where power seemed to have been lost.
That is the deepest challenge of this entire conversation. A church that cannot endure the loss of cultural power may have forgotten that its Savior does not conquer through domination, but through love that refuses to coerce. And that confession matters for democracy as well. Because democracy asks citizens to practice the same kinds of difficult virtues the Cross forms within us: restraint when we want control, patience when we want speed, shared power when we prefer certainty, peaceful disagreement when we feel anger, acceptance of limits when we long for victory, coexistence with people we do not fully agree with.
These are not signs of weakness. They are moral and spiritual disciplines that protect us from idolatry and remind us that no political victory, no matter how meaningful, is ultimate.
Learning how to lose well
None of this is an argument for Christian withdrawal from public life, nor for indifference to injustice. Christians are still called to speak, to act, to resist what dehumanizes and to work for the good of their neighbors. But the posture matters. Conviction without panic. Engagement without hatred. Courage without domination. Hope without triumphalism.
Democracy survives only when people believe losing an election is not the same thing as losing everything. And Christians should be capable of believing that, not because politics does not matter, but because our deepest hope was never meant to rest in political victory alone, but in the God who holds history even when we do not.
Caroline Smith is a pastor and scholar with extensive cross-cultural experience including work supporting people living with HIV in South Africa. She holds a Ph.D. in preaching, a master of divinity degree and master of social work degree from Baylor University.
Discussion questions:
1. Where do you most notice “losing” becoming emotionally difficult in your own life? What kinds of losses (political, personal, cultural, relational) feel hardest to carry, and why do you think that is?
2. The article suggests that “losing reveals what we worship.” What do you think people are most tempted to place ultimate trust in today: politics, security, identity, faith or something else? What makes that so compelling?
3. How do you notice political or social conversations shaping your emotional life? Do they tend to form fear, hope, anger, compassion, righteousness or something else? What shapes that response for you?
4. The article argues that democracy requires the ability to lose without hatred or despair. What practices (spiritual, relational, communal) might help people learn to disagree or experience disappointment without dehumanizing others?
5. The Christian tradition centers the Cross rather than the throne. What might it look like for a church community to reflect that in its public life, especially in how it speaks, votes and engages those it disagrees with?
Previously in this series:
What is democracy? | Caroline Smith
The church as school for democracy | Emily Hull McGee
Democracy as the practice of loving our neighbors | Mary Alice Birdwhistell
Democracy and religious freedom | Carol McEntyre
Democracy as a moral practice, not just a system | Jason Edwards
Love of neighbor is a democratic ideal | Timothy Peoples
Democracy offers a way for Christian’s to express God’s will | Kyle Reese
Democracy: A political response to human sinfulness | Austin Carty
Why coercive religious politics undermine Christianity and democracy | Juan Garcia
Democracy and prophetic witness | Preston Clegg