From a leadership studies point of view, political parties, even when healthy, aren’t ordinary organizations. They become notoriously dysfunctional when they are unhealthy.
Similarly, churches aren’t ordinary organizations. When they follow the patterns of leadership modeled and demonstrated by Jesus, they thrive. Therefore, it is a big mistake for them to attempt to collude with — or commit with unbridled allegiance to — a political party.
Unfortunately, a significant portion of American evangelicals now collude with and commit to the current iteration of the Republican Party. Genuine Republicans denounce this as unwholesome, unhealthy, unreasonable and even insane.
Unlike most organizations guided by a single key leader, political parties are not monoliths with a single monarchical leader or chief executive officer. In that regard, healthy political parties are counterintuitive. They are made up of many leaders.
These leaders — unless their party is anything ranging from autocratic to cultic — do not necessarily take their marching orders from their political party boss. They listen to many other sources — constituents, voters, donors, lobbyists and, of course, their own selves, by way of their ambition to be that ultimate party leader and leader of the executive branch of government.
We saw these dynamics at work in the Democratic Party as various leaders urged President Biden to “pass the torch.”
Political parties possess many moving parts, many ambitious people and multiple interpretations of their raft of policies and ideology, if any.
The current Republican Party is not healthy. Neither are the Christians and Christian organizations who collude with it and are totally inseparable from it.
In healthy organizations, leaders share power. In the Republican Party, a monarchical maximum leader and functional autocrat vows to be a dictator on his first day in office, should he regain the White House.
It is incredible that people who name themselves Christians embrace this unflinchingly, for this is totally incongruent with Jesus, who shared power all the time.
This is not healthy; neither is it Christian.
Michael Friday
The Republican maximum leader praises dictators and little men across the world who like people misnaming them “strongmen.” It is incredible that people who name themselves Christians embrace this unflinchingly, for this is totally incongruent with Jesus, who shared power all the time. Jesus empowered others; he called disciples alongside him to serve, later sending them out as apostles who served, who shared power, and who made disciples of others to serve and share power.
The Republican Party, as observed earlier, is not healthy. But more than that, it is not good. Similarly, the Christians, Christian churches and Christian organizations that collude with and have become inseparable from the current Republican Party are not merely unhealthy; they are not good.
Can a Christian be consistently devoid of goodness and yet be Christian? Let the reader answer.
Author and leadership guru Barbara Kellerman names seven types of bad leaders — incompetent, rigid, intemperate, callous, corrupt, insular and evil. Multiple reports, accusations, court cases, court verdicts, documented behaviors and declarations from and about the leader of the Republican Party undoubtedly establish him as guilty on all seven counts.
It would be bad enough if certain Christians extolled this man only as their national hope. No, they also extol him as their Christian hope.
It would be bad enough if they did not know how bad a man and leader he is — but they do know.
This is the worst kind of badness — to know something is bad, and to know someone is incompetent, rigid, intemperate, callous, corrupt, insular and evil, and yet embrace this person as the passageway to an objective of not merely goodness, righteousness, peace, joy and justice — which should be the aim of Christians — but also as the catalyst to spirituality!
Jesus said a bad tree cannot bear good fruit (Matthew 7:18) and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored in his heart (Matthew 12:35). Are the Christians who support this bad leader so grotesquely deluded as to fail to recognize what they seek is untenable and unsustainable, unwise and unhinged, and totally indefensible, inane and fraught with immense folly and betrayal of the Christ whom they say they claim?
For Christians who view the Republicans’ leader as a kind of Cyrus, they had better go back and read their Bibles and their history. Cyrus was not a bad man or a bad leader. Moreover, Cyrus was not a racist or averse to immigrants!
The American Christians who are more Republican Party than Christ’s church … are allowing themselves to be used and fooled.
It was Cyrus who, upon taking power in Persia and finding Jews there, not only welcomed their presence, but also affirmed their right to exist as a people. It was Cyrus who created the synagogues in the name of welcome and affirmation. It was Cyrus who enabled the Jews to return to their homeland. Cyrus was not some evil man whom God used.
The American Christians who are more Republican Party than Christ’s church are badly mistaken. They are allowing themselves to be used and fooled. They are in an incestuous relationship wherein they, having failed to retain their prophetic voice toward a powerful bad man, have encouraged and enabled him to become worse.
He, in turn, has moved them to become bad themselves — incompetent at interpreting the Bible; rigid in their woefully faulty theology; intemperate toward any who do not believe as they do, unlike Jesus; callous toward immigrants, Muslims, sexual minorities and liberals; corrupt, by embracing a corruptly bad leader even if they do nothing corrupt; insular, proven in their religious narrowness, myopia and exclusiveness; and evil, the sum total of all the above.
Although it appears that the “Repubristians” (or “Christublicans?”) — from Franklin Graham down to a close relative of mine — are locked in, dug in, steadfast, unmovable and unreachable.
But it’s worth a shot reminding any still open to wisdom that good leaders are beneficent, while bad leaders seek to be retributive dictators. Good leaders expect and welcome opposing ideas; bad leaders rule with fear and expect even experts, far more intelligent than they, to embrace every nonsensical position to which they hold.
No one seeking to honor Jesus should give bad leaders the light of day. It should be embarrassing and horrifying for a Christian to awaken one morning and find himself or herself aligned to the likes of a man like the Republican candidate for president — and the party he has so monstrously corrupted.
Michael Friday is executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of Greater Indianapolis, and author of And Lead Us Not Into Dysfunction: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Church Institutions and Their Leaders. He has served Baptists in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and the United States. He earned a postgraduate degree in organizational leadership.
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