Dear ELCA: It's up to you. Again

Dear Beloved Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and beloved lovers within and without its loosely set boundaries: I bring you greetings from a good God  who would never leave you a false dichotomy, broken communication, and running for our chains as the only way forward. I bring you grace, peace, and mercy from the one who saw Hagar, responded to Habbakuk, that topples the tower of Babel, the God who exalts in the exodus of the enslaved, the power of woman, who baptized the Ethiopian Eunuch while Paul was still working as a cop, and snatched Phillip away before he could mess it up. I greet you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, amen.   

ELCA. It’s up to you again. 

I write to you again leaving you with plenty of time to actually do something about it. I have been called histrionic, “crazy,” infantilized as a Black queer trans autistic person who experienced trauma during the 2020 uprisings, and  labeled just another wild neurodiverse voice in this church. Those are the nice things. 

But ELCA I say unto you with all the love I can still muster that it’s up to you: you can “save” democracy, or at least salvage a democratic victory for the now Harris campaign*.

When I mentioned that the electoral map after the 2016 election was clearly shifted to areas where we had an incredible amount of influence over this election similar to what evangelicals exerted , say comparatively over Florida, or other former “swing states” I was told we were basically “too good” for that and we shouldn’t be the church of any particular party. I agree. 

It’s the year of our Lord 2024 and it  does feel a slight bit different than ethereal points about two kingdom theology and how it intersects with modern politics right?

This feels like the natural result of a church body that would rather spend most of it’s spiritual life in the realm of its own head and internal intellectual utopia. I’m not knocking it, I love our capacity for rhetoric, and debate. 

This feels different. This feels like an emergency. 

This feels like this church body has an opportunity to avert one kind of tragedy for a lot of people who may never darken our doorsteps. But isn’t that  exactly why church bodies exist? Isn’t that why we gather to be a salvific force in a troubled world? To be the cold fresh drops of water on the feverish head of this world and to bring those baptismal promises into being? 

I believe in my baptism. I believe in you. I have one more  pitch for you. I have one more “plan” as it were, and you ELCA, every person who reads this are key. 

So if you stick with me in this article I'll show you exactly where, and how you can help. No nebulous spiritual practices  or principles you can live up to, but real practical things you can do right now.  I argued my entire time as a rostered minister these were one in the same thing and was basically run off by my “betters” for my political organizing. The irony isn’t lost on me. 

Let me take care of some business first for my real ones, then we will get to it. 

(*Dear real ones. I am an abolitionist. The Harris campaign won't “save” democracy. It will stave off some of the most noticeable and overt consequences of a 20 year slow slide to christo-fascist populist politics at best. ACAB includes Kamala and I don’t think America is ready for its first LEO to the core President. I also know the office has different effects on the person who sits there, for what it’s worth. I don't think anyone could have seen Eisenhower** warning us of the Military Industrial Complex at the end of his term, a warning the Rev. Dr. King and Malik Shabazz and others heeded, nor could anyone predict the arrogance of Nixon would be outweighed by his respect for the office and he would resign. We know what 4 years of another Trump term will reap. I am tired of burying comrades. This is harm reduction. Voting is harm reduction. I do not endorse the Harris platform or her campaign, but this particular group of people actually could make a difference in this election, and I think they should know.)

1. BY THE NUMBERS: 

Polling is bullshit. But electoral maps, a good diversity of polling, the general attitude of major media, combined with  the talking points both parties are touting, and a muddy picture becomes somewhat more clear. As we all know but will be reminded of by Wolf Blitzer endlessly after the DNC convention: it takes 270 electoral votes to become President of the United States. 

Harris Trump 2024 Electoral Map Based on Polls - 270toWin

As of right now on any of the aggregate sites you can find, and the over pop-up strewn one I  have linked is an example of one these haphazard sites, Vice President  Kamala Harris has roughly 184 electoral college votes, to Donald Trump’s 236 votes. I’m not the only one to notice during the three fundraising zoom calls that will be used as fundraising fever dreams and example at NGO’s  over the next decade, the pushback on holding out Harris’s record as an LEO as something worth examining, the clearly widely disseminated social media talking points, and the almost immediate party compliance to the Harris ticket with no calls for an open convention. It’s clear out there you either get on the Harris train, or get out of the way. But the truth is we are almost in the exact same electoral vote position as we were with Biden at the head of the ticket. Which if you are paying attention is the exact same scenario the Clinton campaign ran into. Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other either solidly or lean blue states during the presidential campaign of 2016, the same fault lines we discovered as organizers during the Obama campaign. The same problem Howard Dean pointed out in 2008 and addressed as the head of the party with his 50 state initiative. There is a large group of Americans, mostly white suburban bedroom or rural communities, that feel left behind by capitalism, that feel they have been politely defanged, thrown aside, and left in the waste basket of modernity. They aren’t wrong. 

Economically they were left behind, decimated, and used. By corporations, politicians in both parties, and by the liberal mind. Americans too often make our rural siblings the butt of our jokes, associate them with the worst of their neighbors, and continue to this day to not honor the deeply seeded rural radical resistance movement. Many of us in this country have never spent time in all 50 states.  Capitalism is designed in such a way you may never venture off to see the wilds of this land, or see firsthand that when it comes to culture here in the United States there are multiple highly complex and incredibly different ones. With incredible incompatibilities, linguistic nuance, and almost entirely separate ontologies. 

The last part being key. I have talked about this endlessly to anyone who will listen. We have at least 3 highly developed ontological constructs emerging out of the consciousness of America. 

Ontology as I use it here is the meaning of, well, meaning. What do we “mean” when we use the words like “the saving power of Jesus'” when we talk about LGBTQIA+ peoples? Are we talking about a liberating spirit that when enfleshed in Christ preached freedom to the captives, that walked in solidarity with the poor and oppressed, who had street protest mocking the rulers of his time riding into town on an ass? The one who after robbing the Temple, or the bank of the “state”, then confronts its rulers, threatens to come back in the three days and tear the temple to the ground with thousands at his back, gets away, then when the police come to arrest him that night he steps up so his boys can get away? 

Yeah that guy is probably very ok with my beautiful queer trans life. Unfortunately that is not the Jesus of the Grand ol Party. Or at least not the one they talk about on national media, or at their convention. Ontologically there are effectively at least 2 “Jesus Christs of Nazareth” walking around this country. With completely different narratives, goals, and followers. They may meet on the same day, at the same time, maybe on the same block. But you are attending not just two different churches, but two different realities quite literally, and in case you start to wake up, social media is there to shove you back in your corner until the next round of the fight. 

We must as people of God resist our lives becoming an algorithm with our whole being. 

This ontological decoherence as I call it is my new book I am working on ( Black Power and Black Magic: A Hidden History of the United States, tentative title. Call my agent https://www.hyponymous.com/) is an inevitable consequence of history and actually doesn’t have to be the end of democracy, or freedom, or liberty. 

It may end the United States of America. Or at least the version we grew up with. 

Harris is a band-aid on a bullet wound. But she has a narrow path to victory and it once again runs through the heart of the Evangelical Lutheran Church In America. Just like 2016. That’s how you all met me. Remember: https://wetalkwelisten.wordpress.com/2016/11/14/the-road-to-270-was-through-the-elca-vicar-lenny-duncan-st-marks-lutheran-church-conshohoken-pa/

In that article I stated then a few things but here are some salient points that became the book Dear Church:

“Here is your wake-up call .The area’s that won this demagogue the day were overwhelmingly ELCA Lutheran strongholds. The path to 270 and beyond marched right through the heart of the Augsburg Confessions and wore the red cover of an ELW as it marched up to the voting booth. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the crumbled “blue firewall.” 

Remember this map? This is 2016. This is what happened to the Clinton campaign. And it’s about to happen again ELCA. 

2. WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT: 

Referring back to the terrible but free  website I linked which does a decent job of tracking electoral counts based on polling there are several  states in play right now. Most notable are MN, WI, IL, MI, PA, NC, VA, and GA making a total of 118 electoral votes in play. Even with current counts ranging from 168-186 for Harris this is a winnable race. 

And the ELCA is perfectly placed to help in the most razor thin margins, and locations. 

In Michigan the Trump campaign beat Clinton by 0.3 percent! 

https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/michigan

In Minnesota-Clinton only won by the slightest of margins 1.5 %-

https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/minnesota

Pennsylvania Trump Won by just 0.7 %

https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/pennsylvania

Wisconsin  Trump won by the same margin 0.7%

https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/wisconsin

So when people say: Harris will win the popular vote but lose the electoral college they aren't wrong, That’s possible: just as possible as winning it. 

It is very winnable. And we will talk in part 3 about what kind of “america” we could win. The prize aint great but it’s better than a losing hand. 

But in 2016 this is what happened taken directly from a well cited Wikipedia article: 2016 Presidential Election

“Data scientist Hamdan Azhar noted the paradoxes of the 2016 outcome, saying that "chief among them [was] the discrepancy between the popular vote, which Hillary Clinton won by 2.8 million votes, and the electoral college, where Trump won 304–227." He said Trump outperformed Mitt Romney's 2012 results, while Clinton only just matched Barack Obama's 2012 totals. Hamdan also said Trump was "the highest vote earner of any Republican candidate ever", exceeding George W. Bush's 62.04 million votes in 2004, though neither reached Clinton's 65.9 million, nor Obama's 69.5 million votes in 2008. He concluded, with help from The Cook Political Report, that the election hinged not on Clinton's large 2.8 million overall vote margin over Trump, but rather on about 78,000 votes from only three counties in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Clinton was the first former Secretary of State to be nominated by a major political party since James G. Blainein 1884.” 

78,000 votes. 

There are 5,115 Congregations in ELCA regions 3,5,6 and 7. 

1,868,252 members, the bulk of what we call the Lutheran church. 

1,868,252 of us have to sway the opinion of about 100,000 people, and guess what! Some of them are in your congregation. They are in your context. They care about the same issues you do locally and nationally and they trust you a hell of lot more than they trust me.   

Harris would have to secure all four states listed, and maybe take a VP candidate from PA or another swing state, although I think she should just ask Abrams. America won't forget she is a Black woman because there's a white man on the ticket. This election has the added feature of not just misogyny, but misogynoir: the particular hatred internalized by most Americans specifically saved for Black women. As a Black trans femme I only feel maybe the iceberg tip of what Black Women are beaten with everyday. It is a racist and anti-woman campaign on the GOP side. 

But that actually can help you. 

3. The Prize-

Vocal Americans have made their choice, but there are a lot of people out there who are reachable. People who are marginally connected to church, who are embedded in your community, who are just as confused by the changes we have seen in our country as you are, who don't believe in a vision of america where women and trans people are without bodily autonomy, who don't much care about the world believing what they believe, but want a world that makes sense. Most Americans think there should be a revolutionary change, but what the heritage foundation and militia nerds forget is that most Americans want revolution, but it better not be too inconvenient. People want their lattes, papers, vapes, sodas, little shops, and restaurants. 

Americans are rough and tumble for about a week without food. Trust me. I know. Americans like reliability more than change. Nothing right now is more reliable than what Harris will do in office. She will enforce federal law like a fucking broadsword, she will probably spend her time harrasing activists like me, and she will use the political violence we are sure to see as a means to do it, she proudly worked for and headed a law enforcement office that criminalized me as a Black trans queer autistic houseless twenty-something and yes, during the years she worked there. 

ELCA: you should still use your vast network to help Harris win the Presidency, even if only to stave off temporarily a federal government that will actively work against its citizens and commit mass deportation. As a historian when a lutheran church stands by and says nothing while mass deportations take place it has not gone well for humanity. 

We are positioned in our communities. We are the people these folks know. We are being given a second opportunity to be a church that steps into the breach and can think beyond party politics and can move in directions that best serve everyone. 

Close to 40,000 dead in Gaza (by official counts), mostly women and children and while the VP and President said nothing, Harris is still the better choice. Sandra Massey being murdered by a system Harris did little to change on her way to the Senate, nor has she indicated she is even willing to move towards reform, a thing I believe is a waste of time for policing and I still would be grateful for. Harris is still the better choice. 

Phonebank. Write old friends. Tell them why you are thinking the way you are or doing what you are doing. Call former pastors in the area. Invite people over for a covered dish and some tea. Talk to one another. Ask each other as Lutherans are we not uniquely positioned to notice totalitarianism, and to answer it as Christians with a third way?  Finally: don't be afraid to talk politics with people in your congregations and lives and the consequences of political choices and how that should affect the Christian conscience. 

Democracy is in peril. Neither party has a solution for the times we find ourselves in. That's why we need each other.

I believe and have stated the Trump campaign is built on planned obsolescence, grievance, holding the american political system hostage to violence and coercion. That will happen whether Harris wins or not. But the best way through that upcoming nightmare of america post peaceful transition of power is for a clear Harris victory to guide us through a possible bid for formal succession which I have always felt was the plan. 

America 2.0 by Trump Inc. 

Good luck, look at the numbers, and if you agree with me: build a small team in your community, start hosting conversations and get to work. 

We have a pretty nice chance of helping the world and history. 

Rev. l. dunc 

**an earlier version said Truman. Even historians get war criminals mixed up.