Mennonite Weekly Review

I’ve been hesitant to admit it publicly, but I was one of the millions of U.S. Christians who voted for Barack Obama.

Stephen Kriss is a teacher, writer, pastor, student and follower of Jesus living in Philadelphia.

As a credentialed Mennonite pastor, I’ve tried to respect Mennonite practices of the past, the differences of perspective in the present, and the mixed messages of church-and-state involvement that we’ve espoused and practiced.

Though I haven’t posted it on Facebook and haven’t talked much about it in mixed political company, I have been an enthusiastic onlooker in the midst of Obama’s ascendance.

I watched the election results come in with Anabaptist friends in Philadelphia who voted as I did. I went to bed with the sounds of celebration ringing a block away from my house on Germantown Avenue, just up the road from the historic Mennonite meetinghouse. A gentle rain was sprinkling that night as people in the City of Brotherly Love sought out ways to celebrate the historic moment of electing a black president.

Many of us who voted for Obama have been reluctant to confess our vote in evangelical settings. Some evangelicals can’t believe we were willing to elect someone who is pro-choice, with a religious perspective that seems unfamiliar and suspect.

At the same time, I know that in settings where Obama is heralded, including some Mennonite congregations, it’s tough to confess a vote for McCain, or that one’s conscience calls for not voting at all.

After the election, there was a seeming willingness to consider a new American identity, defined by some as a post-racial identity. An article in a Philadelphia newspaper thanked the voters in blue-collar, mostly Euro-American neighborhoods for voting across the color barrier even when it was suspected they wouldn’t.

It’s an interesting analysis and alliance, one that represents a historic moment and that creates a precarious potential. It’s an alignment of the young, the educated, the urban, the unionized and the multi-ethnic.

It’s not an alliance that sounds familiar to Mennonite communities, traditionally uncomfortable with labor unions, cities, universities and people of different ethnicities.

I am not writing this to gloat that my side won. I am wondering how the Anabaptist message might be relevant in this changing world. Who are we becoming, and who might we become, in an America that elects Obama as president? Will we have more “Esther moments” of speaking truth to power? Or is it a time to renew the tradition of separation from the world?