Welcome back to Bitter Scroll, where we decode the culture swaying American Christian identity. We’re a growing community of readers, with about 3,500 subscribers. If you’re one of the folks who read for free, you can become a paid subscriber for $6 a month if you’re able. Your support keeps the coffee pot full as I write this monthly labor of love. Thank you, and onward!
Some people speak a true thing into you and it cuts clean through. There are few people in my life who can say something hard that I welcome. I don’t know what quality a person possesses that helps them speak plainly in a way that does not read as judgmental, but these people have gifts.
Take Travis, a refreshingly honest friend. Travis came over for dinner last year and was met with our dog Fern’s barking. But unlike most dogs, Fern did not stop barking, and the issue had become a real barrier to us hosting people. “So, what do you think of Fern?” I nervously asked Travis. “I think Fern has a barking problem,” he said bluntly. We all needed someone to say what we knew. It sparked action, this single sentence from Travis. A plan: a bark collar (buzz not shock, relax), training, and a year later a lot of progress. Now, people come over and Fern typically barks for a few minutes instead of an hour.
My friend Foxy also has the gift of telling it like it is. She was in town from New Orleans the weekend Trump was grazed in the ear by a bullet. I chatted with her after church, mentioning that I was anxious about politics and could not stop refreshing the news, which was ironic because I was writing a book about how to manage political anxiety. “Oh, so you’re addicted to politics,” she said plainly.
I didn’t try to talk my reason out of it. “Yeah,” I told her, “I guess I am.” Thinking about it later, I realized the problem with political overconsumption for the Christian is that we can easily become susceptible to being more formed by politics than the way of Jesus.
There are less than two months before election day, which means we’re in “statements season”. Two examples shared in the run up to the election: A Statement of Christian Faith and Democracy
shared on Substack and a Confession of Evangelical Conviction that Skye Jethani wrote.I appreciate how statements like these can offer unity around common values. They are outward-focused by design, projecting strength in numbers.
Personally, in this season I’m more drawn to inner work that better prepares us for whatever is to come in November and beyond as we pray for a peaceful transfer of power. I’ve been asking myself: how can we be well-formed spiritually in anticipation of any outcome the day after the election?
has written beautifully about forming a political rule of life. Take rule #6:“I will not prioritize fears for the fate of my nation over participation for the flourishing of my neighbor. When I am tempted toward an unhealthy, imbalanced preoccupation with the election news cycle, I will remember my call to love my enemy, my brothers and sisters in Christ, and my most vulnerable neighbors.”1
A way to address any anxiety we feel from what is happening on a national scale is to focus our effort on what we can control—our actions in our neighborhoods. For example, if we’re worried about Trump and Vance’s hardened policies about immigration, we can volunteer locally with an org serving refugees in our town.
Eugene Peterson biographer
wrote about Peterson’s call to active prayer-as-action in politics, referencing his 1985 book Earth & Altar:“Eugene insists that politics (properly understood) is crucial to being human and living responsibly as God's image-bearers in the world. But everything hinges on prayer, on a life awake to God, listening to God, responding to God. This is the starting point for what it means to be a political Christian. This posture is the furthest thing from disengagement and “spiritual” aloofness. But just as much, this expansive conviction will never neatly accord with the cacophonous, parochial, self-infatuated powers of our age. Our normal politics are far too small.”2
Is it lazy, disconnected, or even dangerous to spend time on inner postures when there is work to be done? This close to the election, shouldn’t Christians who stand against the Trump campaign spend concerted time speaking out? Like Tim Walz says, we’ll sleep when we’re dead.
Knocked Low
In the days that dragged into announcing the winner of the 2020 election, I was knocked pretty low. Depleted and harried. Firing messages to friends on anxious text threads. I had poor news hygiene (old habits die hard) and let my anxiety feed off of frequent scrolling. I consumed content to feel a sense of order or control. It didn’t work.
This time, whatever the outcome of the election, I am much more interested in being well-formed with a healthy interior posture toward politics so that I can model being non-anxious in my family, church community, to co-workers and neighbors. Because we affect each other, what we sense in another person trickles down.
You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet
In researching Nervous Systems I took a deep dive into the late rabbi, therapist, and family systems theory expert Edwin Friedman’s idea of non-anxious presence.
About ten years ago, I became aware of non-anxious presence when our rector John started talking to congregants about Friedman’s systems work while exploring dynamics within his family of origin. Five years ago, a pastor friend started researching non-anxious presence for his doctoral thesis. I continued to be curious about how the concept, which I found appealing but broad, could be helpful in the church and politics today.
Friedman first talked about the idea of being non-anxious in his 1985 book Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue. He further developed thinking around non-anxious presence in Failure of Nerve, published 25 years ago in the run-up to Y2K. The world was clearly anxious when the book was published. But in that era, churches like Willow Creek and Mars Hill were gaining steam, and celebrity pastors were making names for themselves.
In 1999, the malignant spread of abuse and misuse of power committed by priests and pastors remained largely covered up or yet to be committed. From our current vantage point, it’s no wonder that Friedman’s thinking around non-anxious presence is experiencing a new resonance.
“My thesis here,” Friedman writes, “is that the climate of contemporary America has become so chronically anxious that our society has gone into an emotional regression that is toxic to well-defined leadership.”3 When I read that, I thought, “Sir, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Black Lives Matter protests, the January 6 insurrection, and more recently the multiple assassination attempt against former President Trump. The frenzied, collective anxiety about our country’s instability I tapped into during those moments were siblings to personal worries about people I love in my own life.
Friedman focuses on how chronic anxiety metastasizes within systems. By non-anxious presence, he is describing how a leader can experience calm, and offer it to others, in a time of panic. I began to understand how, in the same way our anxiety can make others around us disregulated and uneasy, non-anxious people bear peace and calm in a way that we can sense and begin to absorb.
To model being non-anxious collectively, we need to go deep, get quiet, ask ourselves a question: what is my political liturgy? Is the craving to refresh news pointing to something deeper and wider?
This is not a question to answer once between now and the election. This gentle checking in with ourself, with our appetites and posture towards politics, is ongoing.
I agree with my friend Winn, reflecting on Peterson’s call to begin our political framework with prayer, and choose to hold an “expansive conviction [that] will never neatly accord with the cacophonous, parochial, self-infatuated powers of our age. Our normal politics are far too small.”
On A Personal Note
I sent the manuscript for Nervous Systems to my editor earlier this month in anticipation of a Sept 1, 2025 release. The next year will include copy edits, cover design, and ramping up marketing. I’m also having a blast planning two new projects with friends and I’m eager to announce details soon. Stay tuned!🎧
Edwin Friedman, Failure of Nerve, p 35.
This is why I'm writing Election Season Soul Care!! We need people in our communities to be that non-anxious presence and to overcome those temptations to fear and anxiety. We need good news hygiene (love that phrase, BTW), we need to cultivate personal silence, and we need to make sense of our differences. For me, right now, I'm trying to listen deeply to others and be a non-anxious presence in one-on-one relationships.
Get deep, go quiet, and ask ourselves questions. This post fits in well with Michelle Van Loon's this week about walking on eggshells. 💜