Stop Expecting Politicians to be Pastors… and Vice Versa

Politicians and Pastors Should be Different

Pastors and politicians have very different jobs. This is obvious on its face, but more and more people keep confusing the two. They look to politicians to be the stalwarts of morality, fighting injustice and never wavering in their convictions. Then, they look to pastors to be morally flexible and accept all types of sin so that nobody ever “feels bad.”

Both of these outlooks are wrong and naive. We need to stop expecting our politicians to be pastors, and vice versa.

Politicians Need to get Elected

Politicians are not pastors. By definition, a politician is a person who has sought to gain power. Historically, this has not attracted the most morally upright. Any specific politician might be good, decent, honest, and moral, but the job does not require that. Yet, people continue to look to politicians to be the moral arbiters of society, and they are shocked when a politician is plagued with a scandal.

A politician needs to have enough wide appeal to get elected. An effective politician needs to be able to gain even wider appeal so that they can push legislation in the direction that they want to go.

And that is where the difference needs to be. A pastor must have unwavering convictions and not be worried if where they are standing is unpopular. Even if everybody in the congregation disagrees with them, it is the pastor’s job to stand firm and teach the people. A pastor needs to have impeccable moral standing so that they can be the ideal that the people in the congregation can try to emulate. The Apostle Paul even tells the church in Corinth to “be imitators of me, just as I am also of Christ.”

A pastor needs to be a stalwart, “all or nothing” person. But an effective politician cannot be that. They can recognize the ideal, but they need to push society towards it, little by little.

Pastors Need to be Called

An effective pastor is one who God has called to serve Him in an unflinching, unwavering way. It is perfect for a pastor to say that all abortions need to be illegal. That is the standard, and they are right to do it. Unfortunately, that is not currently the majority position. Is it wrong, then, for a politician to push for limiting abortion after 12 weeks?

Many conservatives would criticize a politician for doing so. They would say that the politician is “selling out” or is not standing up for what is right. But this is conflating a politician with a religious leader. The primary purpose of the politician is to push in the right direction, not to make moral high ground stands that go down in flaming defeat again and again.

Political Parties Should Drive This

The Democrats understand this. They pushed for the Green New Deal, and it failed miserably. Nobody wanted it. But they kept trying and eventually got most of what they wanted in the Inflation Reduction Act.

They wanted gay marriage legal. Many state propositions legalizing it were defeated, but they kept pushing anyway. Then, the Supreme Court decided that it was legal. But they didn’t stop pushing there. With the help of some Republicans, they moved forward with a bill that would enshrine gay marriage even if the courts ruled against it in the future.

This is a politician’s cardinal sin. If a politician’s job is to push in a direction, then it is unforgivable for them to put up barriers in their own way. They need to push forward and put barriers behind them so that they cannot be pushed backward.

If pro-life legislation can only pass if it allows abortion up to 12 weeks, then push it forward. Later, new legislation can be introduced to reduce it to 8 weeks or 6. But don’t add in guarantees for abortion or call it a “right” in the legislation or any such nonsense. That would only hamper the attempts to continue pushing in the right direction.

What Does a Successful Politician Look Like?

We need to stop evaluating politicians based on how much they stick to their convictions. Instead, we should evaluate them on how effective they are at pushing legislation toward those convictions. If concessions are made here and there, but overall, they are pushing in the right direction, then they are doing the job correctly. If, however, they are unmoving in their stances but get nothing accomplished, then they have failed.

Pastors and religious leaders are the people to look to for unwavering conviction. That is their job, and unfortunately, too many are abdicating that with the goal of having more broad appeal. Politicians, especially on the conservative side, have filled that void by stepping out of that role.

This is why we keep seeing conservative politicians as heroes, taking a moral high ground but failing legislatively. Where the liberal politicians keep pushing little by little, and they keep having success.

This election season, we need to elect politicians who push our country toward our ideals instead of ones who stand on them and fail to get elected.