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Commentary
COMMENTARY: Keeping the faith after ‘the election of hope’ Bradley Burroughs, Jan 28, 2010
Bradley Burroughs
By Bradley Burroughs Special Contributor
During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama captured the imagination of younger Americans like no politician in well over a generation. Exit polls suggest that nearly 60 percent of voters under the age of 44 cast their ballots for Mr. Obama.
What was the secret to his success among this group? In part, it was his ability to kindle hope, particularly the hope that he could lead the nation in creating a new kind of politics not beholden to party lines or special interests, but instead which, as he put it in the weeks leading up to the election, “calls on our better angels instead of encouraging our worst instincts.”
Throughout his campaign Mr. Obama’s message of hope clearly sparked something—especially among the stereotypically cool Generation X. Many were soon aflame with great expectations for a potential Obama presidency, which they hoped would extend affordable health care to every American, extract our military from Iraq and Afghanistan, close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, place stricter regulations on the financial industry, reform the excesses of contemporary capitalism and take decisive steps to curb global climate change.
As we mark the one-year anniversary of Mr. Obama’s inauguration, however, it is clear that these hopes have proven rather elusive, to say the least. Mr. Obama has no doubt brought significant changes, especially within the executive branch, and he has made progress in turning some of these hopes into realities.
Yet even on these issues, progress has been more difficult to achieve than imagined, and has often required compromising those hopes in order to gain political support.
Meanwhile, many other hopes have languished, remaining largely unpursued. Time and again, the year 2009 illustrated the truth of Max Weber’s observation nearly 100 years ago, when he described politics as “a strong and slow boring of hard boards.”
For those who blazed with hopes for swift change, such a realization can be like a cold gust that extinguishes that flame and leaves the part of the soul that once burned so ardently with expectation cooled and hardened into the ash of despair.
If politics is so recalcitrant, so difficult to change, then what hope can we have? Are we not left simply to despair about the fate of politics? Would it not be best to flee to the nearest exit from the political realm and place over it the same sign that Dante saw at the gates of hell—“abandon all hope, ye who enter”?
Perhaps it would, if our hope is solely in Mr. Obama or in other politicians. But despite how effectively the Obama campaign used the language of hope, his administration is not where we place our ultimate hope. For Christians, the true basis of our hope is in God. And this fact should encourage Christians to take a different view of political matters.
While it may appear that the most important political realities in our world are governments and political parties, Christians instead proclaim their faith in a God who became incarnate in the midst of the world’s political life—during the reign of Augustus and the days of Herod, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. In doing so, God laid the foundation of a politics that we call the Kingdom of God, a kingdom that provides for the common good of all, where the hungry are fed, the naked are clothed and the sick are given care (see Matthew 25:31-46).
This is a kingdom of justice, peace and joy (Romans 14:17), where by the power of the Holy Spirit the better angels walk among us even now, giving themselves for the sake of others. This kingdom is the truest and most significant political reality; it is the reality that God intends and is working to create.
We are called even now to make that kingdom present in the world by caring for the poor, comforting the afflicted, freeing the oppressed, binding up the brokenhearted and embodying God’s love. These are the most politically important acts, and it is in them that we find the Christian hope, which transcends all politicians and all political parties.
This does not mean, however, that Christians must flee from all other forms of politics and devote themselves singularly to the Kingdom of God. Christians can and should participate in the political process in ways that beckon other politics to become more like the Kingdom of God, calling politicians to seek the common good of all, particularly the least, the lost and the last.
But even when it appears that such calls fall upon deaf ears, Christians can still have hope, secure in the faith that God is indeed working to bring the true change we can believe in.
Mr. Burroughs is a member of Napoli (N.Y.) UMC and a doctoral student in ethics and society at Emory University.
Bradley Burroughs
Yet even on these issues, progress has been more difficult to achieve than imagined, and has often required compromising those hopes in order to gain political support. 
