Anabaptists Navigating American Politics — Brandon Byler

Brandon Byler, of Shippensburg Christian Fellowship, traces his own journey "from a typical American vision of voting to a more kingdom-focused understanding" of navigating American politics. Opening provocatively ("the best nation in the world, and our leader is the best we’ve ever had"), he presses the question of which nation and which leader truly claim us. He recounts his long Amish heritage (the Byler line, the ship Charming Nancy), a patriotic Bible-college era shaped by 9/11 and talk radio (Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity), and a decade pastoring a Brethren in Christ church during which he registered and voted—until a "watershed" election loss exposed for him "the uselessness of political involvement." Drawing on Donald Kraybill’s idea of the Amish "negotiating" culture and on data from researcher Edsel Burdge (only ~4–5% of Amish vote, and declining), he cautions that even small habits like voting and steady media consumption quietly reshape identity and blur our primary, kingdom citizenship. His central thesis: we navigate American politics best when our kingdom perspective is clearest. Practically, he urges honoring all authority as from God, guarding our inputs and our words (media all carry an agenda), and above all recovering the neglected weapons of prayer and fasting—praying for named leaders and that God would "bring to nothing the counsel of the ungodly" and let his kingdom come. He closes on the beauty of the Anabaptist witness—truth, goodness, and beauty—and a Q&A affirming that not being politically aligned actually opens doors to share Jesus.

Key Points:

– Thesis: we navigate American politics best when our kingdom perspective is clearest—kingdom citizenship must remain primary over American citizenship.

– Byler’s testimony: a patriotic, talk-radio-shaped, voting season as a Brethren in Christ pastor ended at a "watershed" election loss that revealed the futility of political involvement and led him to stop voting.

– Even small, subtle habits—voting, steady news/media consumption—reshape our thinking and blur kingdom identity "without us realizing," like discovering you’re out of shape only when the house has stairs.

– On the Amish: voting isn’t part of the Ordnung (so it isn’t excommunication-worthy but is generally discouraged); researcher Edsel Burdge reports only ~4–5% vote, a figure that has declined since George W. Bush’s second term—habitual, multigenerational voting is offered as a cautionary tale.

– All authority comes from God (John 19; cf. Pilate), so honor leaders and officials; but guard your inputs and speech—all media carry an agenda, and phrases like "my president/nation/military" subtly shape identity.

– The recovered weapons are prayer and fasting: pray for named leaders, for God’s kingdom to come "in America… as in heaven," and that God would "bring to nothing the counsel of the ungodly" (Psalm 33:10)—not being politically aligned also opens the door to witness.

Scripture References: John 19:11; Psalm 33:10-11

Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. Hey, good morning, everyone, and welcome to Hope for Wondering Amish. We’re so glad you were able to join us here this morning. This morning we have Brandon Byler with us from Shippensburg Christian Fellowship. Brandon and his family are part of Shippensburg Christian Fellowship here in Shippensburg. Yeah, if you check out Shippensburg Christian Fellowship’s website, you’ll find more messages from Brandon Byler there, along with a lot of other good messages. Also, at the end of August here—August 23rd, 24th, 25th—there’s an event at Roxbury Holiness Camp called Kingdom Fellowship Weekend. Brandon will be sharing a message there also. Thank you for that.

I think this morning you’ll find Brother Brandon’s message both inspirational and liberating. He’ll be speaking into the subject of politics, and what our place would be, our involvement in the political realm. So we’re really happy and excited to have you this morning, Brother Brandon. I’ll have a prayer for you, and the time will be yours. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for this beautiful morning. Thank you for Brother Brandon, and his heart and his burden to be willing to come and share this message with us. And we just pray that you’ll bless our time, that you’ll give us open hearts, open minds. And we pray that your Holy Spirit could work in our lives and hearts, and prepare us to be further equipped to advance your kingdom and to bring glory to your holy name. Be with us all. Bless us all. Thank you for everyone in the audience. Thank you for everyone that will listen later on to this recording. Just bless each one of us. You’re worthy. May your name be glorified. Thank you, Jesus. Amen. Brother Brandon, the time is yours.

All right. Well, thank you very much. It’s good to be with you today. And I want to say thank you to the Hope for Wondering Amish for inviting me to speak and to be with you. The subject that we’re looking at is a live issue, of course, and it’s a very important one. The subject that we’re looking at is: the best nation in the world, and our leader is the best that we’ve ever had. Now, you can probably tell that I’m being a bit purposefully ambiguous in my statement there, and provocative. It should generate the question: what nation is our nation, and who is our leader? The topic title today is Anabaptists Navigating American Politics.

And I’m grateful for our time here. I trust that it will generate some questions in your mind, and some discussion as well. I certainly don’t come to our time together with all of the answers. I come with experiences, both good and poor on my part, in political involvement. It’s a little bit of a long and circuitous route, but it has been a good experience. And so my interest today is to share with you what it has been like for me to travel from what you might say is a typical American vision of voting to a more kingdom-focused understanding of navigating, or negotiating, the political environment that we find ourselves in. And so my focus is more the American experience, but it can certainly broaden out to the North American context as well.

When we talk about navigating—you might be curious about that word, navigating American politics. I think of it as making one’s way. When we navigate something, whether it’s a rapids or a walk through the woods, we are seeking to find our way. We have a vision or a goal of where we would like to go, and what it will take to get there. And I believe that God has put within all of us a desire for the good life. And so often, really, politics is about achieving the good life together. And that certainly includes us as Anabaptists. We have an idea of what the good life is, and how do we navigate life well so that we can arrive at our goal.

I think of navigation as involving constant course corrections. Life is not one of those things—and political life especially is not one of those things—that you can set and forget. It’d be sort of nice if you could, maybe. But God has not designed life that way. And even in highly defined cultures, like the Amish, the Old Order Mennonites, other Old Order groups, they make course corrections as to how they’re going to deal with social changes, technological advances, or not, depending on your view of technology—regularly evaluating the surrounding society, and how they, and we, will relate to culture.

I like the word navigate, and it relates closely to something that the researcher Donald Kraybill has termed negotiating culture. He argues that the Amish are surviving and thriving in most cases because of their way of negotiating with culture—the things they decide to admit and the things they decide to desist, or not do. And he argues that the Amish negotiation with culture has allowed them to work with modernity, work with the modern times, to survive and thrive to the extent that they have. And I really think that this sort of evaluation—I’m not just holding up the Amish here, but there’s a lot that we can learn from the Amish lifestyle and the Old Order mindset—I think that all of us who want to live this good life will have to make these sorts of evaluations and this sort of navigation, if you will.

I really believe that the good life for which all of us desire, or are striving, ultimately is the kingdom of God. That everything within our hearts that longs for justice and truth and beauty and goodness is related to that internal kingdom that God has put within us. I’m mentioning the Amish, of course, because of the name of this discussion group, but it would include the mindset of all those who want to be careful, kingdom-minded people. My main thrust today in our discussion is this: that we navigate American politics best when our kingdom perspective is clearest. We’re clearest on who we are as kingdom people, and what methods God is calling us to—how to live, how to interact. And so I’m speaking primarily to those of us who would call ourselves kingdom Christians. We want to take Jesus seriously. We do believe the Sermon on the Mount. We try to follow it as carefully as possible.

In sharing these thoughts, I’d like to share with you my own journey and what that has entailed. I grew up with the last name, of course, Byler, B-Y-L-E-R. That’s an Amish name. And indeed, my grandfather—my father’s father—grew up as an Amish boy in Mifflin County, in Big Valley, which is central Pennsylvania. Jacob Byler, which was spelled B-E-I—that’s the original spelling, and still is in existence today. He arrived on a ship called the Charming Nancy in Philadelphia, October 8, 1737, if I have my dates correct. So I do come from a very long Amish heritage, which I’m very grateful for, even though I’m not Amish myself.

My grandfather was raised Amish. He was led to the Lord by his mother when he was a boy, and he chose not to join the Amish. And I’m not entirely sure what all those reasons were. I think largely it was because he wanted to go into mission work, and he somehow had that vision. And so as a young man in his early 20s, he sailed to Africa, and he was engaged in building clinics and schools and things like that in Tanzania and Ethiopia. He met my grandmother there, who was teaching school. She was a Mennonite from Indiana. She was a Hartman. And they actually got married in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, in the 1950s. And then after a couple terms of service there in Africa, they returned to the United States, and ended up settling in Big Valley, after a time in Indiana, and living on the home farm there.

And so I was born in Mifflin County there, in Lewistown. And by then, my dad was a Mennonite. And in the course of his teen years, he began running with the Brethren in Christ—a mix of pietist, Anabaptist-background people. And in the course of him and his brother being with them, the whole family joined the Brethren in Christ Church there in Belleville in Big Valley. So my dad eventually married a Brethren in Christ girl, and they had me. I was the firstborn.

When I was four years old, my parents moved to Northwestern Ontario to serve under a conservative Mennonite conference, which is a Mennonite mission—a residential school for First Nations, or Indian, young people, who would come in from various reservations to receive education, grades one through eight. And so we lived there for seven years in Northwestern Ontario. And me interacting with various Anabaptist people—everything from New Order Amish to fairly liberal Mennonite—but we all had to conform to a conservative Mennonite standard as far as black hanging veils for the women who were serving, and buttoned-down church, things like that. So it was a very formative experience for me, from the time I was four years old until I was 11 years old.

And then we moved back to Big Valley to take on the home farm when I was 11. And I don’t recall in my early years that politics was an issue. We didn’t necessarily talk about it. We didn’t talk against it. We listened to the news—or at least my dad listened to the news. And I think there’s something within all of us as men that we like the news, because we get a sense of what’s going on in the world. We can navigate. We can negotiate with what’s happening. Even if there’s not much we can do about it, at least we can kind of brace ourselves or prepare ourselves for what’s next. And so I’m not anti-news at all. But I would offer the caution, the caveat, that too much news, of course, is not healthy.

I’m not even sure that my grandparents were involved politically. I’ve never voted. As a teen, I began listening to Rush Limbaugh, the radio talk show host. I was at that time driving a wheel loader at a Nebraska Amish sawmill. And if you’re familiar with Nebraska Amish, those are the white top buggies. In Big Valley, where I lived, we had three different Amish groups. There were the Black Buggy Amish—and I’m not even sure what the official name of them is. We had the yellow top buggies, which are the Byler Amish—I guess there’s some connections there. And then we had the white top, the Nebraska Amish. So I was driving a wheel loader at this Nebraska Amish sawmill, and my loader had a radio in it, and I was tapping into talk radio with Rush Limbaugh. And I would say that my political interests were really fueled by what Rush had to say. I found Rush to be a very engaging person, very interesting. He was a very bombastic and, arrogant, person. I felt like he was a confident person. And of course, people were looking for leadership, they’re looking for insight, and Rush seemed to offer that sort of thing.

Then in my late teens, after I had graduated from high school, I had interest in mission work myself, and I decided to go to a small Bible college for four years of missionary training. Now, this Bible college is part of what’s called the conservative holiness movement. The conservative holiness movement would have a lot of similar values to the conservative Anabaptist movement, but there would also be points of great divergence as well. Just for some examples: the ladies in the conservative holiness movement would not cut their hair, just as I believe most of our ladies would not—I hope that stays. However, they would not wear a separate covering. For them, the long hair, typically worn up, was the covering for their women. Another major difference is that they tend to be a very patriotic people. Perhaps you would think of it as a conservative Baptist style. And so the four years that I spent there at this Bible college in Penns Creek, Pennsylvania, were formative years for me, and very good years in many ways.

But I wrestled with my identity. Who am I? Am I a Mennonite? Am I a Brethren in Christ? Am I a holiness man? And during my time there—this is from 1998 to 2002—of course, during that time, the whole attack on the Twin Towers happened, 9-11. I have personal memories of that. But that was a very formative experience for the nation here, for America, and for those of us who lived through it. And particularly the school that I was at, being a patriotic school—I remember, actually, we sat in chapel on 9-11. The chapel usually started at 10 in the morning, and that was right over the time that the towers were burning. It was happening in New York City. And as we sat there, the first tower fell. And so you can imagine that that sort of thing fueled the patriotic fervor. There were, I think, nine patriotic chapels that year. George W. Bush was the president at that time, and there was a lot of support for him. But all of these things caused me to wrestle with my identity. Who am I?

Pastoring a small church, a Brethren in Christ church—and typically the Brethren in Christ, actually to this day, are considered peace churches. But it’s more of a sense of a social justice peace. It’s not necessarily a nonresistant peace. And definitely not a non-voting type of position. And so I don’t remember exactly when I registered to vote, but I did register as a voter. I think I registered, first of all, as an independent, because I wanted to be a middle-of-the-road person. And then I found that the local elections—just certain things aren’t open to an independent voter. And so, as I recall, I switched my voting identity to Republican. And so I was pastoring this church. I pastored the Brethren in Christ church in Perry County, Pennsylvania, here, for 10 years.

It was considered part-time. So I had a salary for preaching, but I also was doing other things to supplement my income. I had time—or at least I used my time—to purchase the Harrisburg Patriot, which is a newspaper. I would purchase that maybe once or twice a week to stay up with the news, stay up with politics. I would often listen to Glenn Beck sometime in the morning. Rush Limbaugh came on at noon on talk radio. And Sean Hannity would come on in the evening. And not that I was listening constantly, but daily almost—driving in the car, sitting in my study—I was imbibing a lot of this political rhetoric. And so it certainly was shaping my thoughts about America, about involvement.

Of course, as a pastor, as a Christian, I wanted to be available to all people. I tried not to take strong stands. I certainly didn’t preach politics from the pulpit or anything like that. There was a restaurant in town, just not far from my church, New Bloomfield—the county seat—a restaurant where I could go. I usually went there maybe once or twice a week in the morning. It had a U-shaped counter where I could meet with the local guys. Just a great way to meet local people and interact with the people there, mainly guys. And I remember meeting one of the county commissioners there. He was a Democrat. And I chose the opportunity to ask him about the state of the county, and how I could pray for him and for the other commissioners and things like that. So I felt like I was trying to be honest in my involvement, and not be heavy-handed or push some sort of an agenda. But, you know, every election cycle, it felt like was the thing—you know, you’ve got to get out and vote, you have to do your thing, or everything is just going to go down the tubes.

And so it was during this time of pastoring that I was introduced to the teachings of men like John D. Martin about the kingdom, David Bercot about the early church and what they believed about things. And as I wrestled with these teachings, with these new inputs, you might say, I began to develop a fresh appreciation for my heritage, and for what I had been given—and things that had just been lost, or just weren’t talked about, not because there was anything against them, it’s just it wasn’t part of my understanding. So this caused me to have a real wrestling with my identity. Who am I?

And I think it was in 2004 that, again, this was the election to end all elections. If we didn’t get this one right, we would lose our freedoms. There probably would never be another election again. I think, as I recall, this was the potential second term for President Barack Obama. And the challenger at that time was Mitt Romney, who is a Mormon. And it’s interesting for me to look back on it now. But I was listening to Rush Limbaugh. He was giving these insights. And of course, things had to go a certain way. So I went to the polls on voting day. It doesn’t take long—you know, it just takes 10 minutes. You walk in, you identify yourself, you push the buttons that you want to push. And, you know, of course, I cast my vote for Mitt Romney. I mean, that’s the right choice. And I felt good about it. I felt good about where Romney was at in the polls. And I went home. I listened to Rush. He was very positive. And things seemed to be going in a really good direction. You know, we were going to win.

And, of course, if you know history, you know that we—me—didn’t win. It was a surprising turn of events. President Obama came back for a second term, a pretty strong vote in his favor. And I didn’t know what to make of it all. It was a watershed moment for me. I was brought face to face with what felt to me—and it definitely still feels like—the uselessness of political involvement. Maybe I’m carrying a chip on my shoulder yet. But the next day, after the results were in, I listened to Rush Limbaugh. And, you know, my hero, who was so insightful—he had nothing to say. He had nothing to say. It was what it was. And the results were what they were.

And, of course, now here we are, all these election cycles later—we still have election cycles, they’re still rough. And so, I think it was something that Dan Martin talks about different times—how back in the 60s, when you had Kennedy running against Nixon, you had this Catholic. Kennedy was a Catholic. People thought that this was just the most awful thing, that a Catholic person might become the leader of the free world. And so this inclined a lot of Anabaptists and Amish people—maybe especially Amish people—to get out the vote, to go out and actually vote for the first time. And in the end, Kennedy won anyway. And Dan talks about how—William, I can’t recall his last name right now, but the Anabaptist writer, William—wrote a tract after this all went down, and he asked the question, did God lose the election? And it was interesting, as I thought about it. Here I was, all these years later—people were so concerned about this Catholic in the 60s winning, they didn’t want him to win the election. Here I am in 2004, but I’m sure a Mormon must win the election in order for things to go well.

And so it was a real wake-up call for me. And I felt like it was a defining moment where I put away that sort of involvement. And I’m not here to bash people who vote. I feel very strongly that we ought not to be voting. And yet I realized that in our context, in the Anabaptist world, especially among the Amish—and I’m not sure about some of the other Old Order groups—voting is something that does happen on a small scale. In fact, I was curious about it, because in my mind it seems to me, and maybe in yours as well, that maybe the Amish are starting to vote in even more increasing numbers. I’ve heard more and more of the last number of election cycles about Amish really getting out there. They’re getting concerned. They are wanting to see things changed. They’re afraid about the way the nation is going.

And so I took time to talk with Edsel Burdge—and probably many of you know him. He is a researcher there at Elizabethtown College, the Young Center, and his full-time work is evaluating and analyzing what’s happening in the Amish world. And I said to Brother Edsel, I said, what is happening with the Amish people? You know, they’re growing in numbers—there’s over 300,000 of them now. Are they really getting out the vote? And it was fascinating to chat with him. He said, no—he said, actually, not necessarily. Now, part of the reason why there are Amish who do vote, and it’s not a huge issue—those of us from more of a conservative Mennonite, or other parts of the spectrum, it’s a bit of a puzzle how it can be that there are Amish who vote, but they aren’t shunned or excommunicated. And those of you who come from that background can correct me if I’m wrong. I’m just going to share my understanding of how this works in the Amish world. And I find the Amish fascinating, and I appreciate them a lot.

The thing is that voting has never been part of the Ordnung, or the expected way of life, for the Amish lifestyle. And since it’s not, it’s not one of those things that is excommunication-worthy. In other words, if it’s not part of the order, to go against it is not to bring down censure necessarily from the bishop or the church leaders. And so it’s one of those things that they have simply chosen not to take a stand on—other than, in most communities, Brother Edsel would say, it’s discouraged. It’s not promoted. It’s not encouraged, definitely not holding office. And those who vote would tend to do so under the radar. They are definitely not to be stumping for political candidates, not to be promoting certain people, agendas, and things like that. There were times in the past, in the early 1900s, when certain Amish men would actually be on school boards for the one-room schools. And so maybe that minor political involvement sort of just kept the door open for voting to be an okay thing. Those of you who know more can perhaps elaborate on that.

And so I think that can provide some of the question marks for those who are Amish, or those who have come from the Amish, about this matter of voting: since it’s not part of the Ordnung, what’s the big deal, or is there a big deal? Should we care? Should this be a matter of concern? And so I’m saying this to say, I think I understand the Amish position to a degree, and I can appreciate what it is. My concern is that if we continue down this path—and let me just give the stats that Brother Edsel gave me. He said that probably not more than four or five percent of the Amish overall actually do vote. And as far as thinking that that number is increasing, that the percentages are going up cycle by cycle—he said, actually, the high point was George W. Bush’s second term, just before he was elected for that second term, it seems likely that that number actually hit maybe between six and seven percent. So it never was a real high percentage, and it has continued to decrease since that time.

George W. Bush had a way of interacting—he came to Lancaster and interacted with the Amish. And of course the percentages are going to change community by community. Obviously every Amish community has its own little flavor, its own thing. In Lawrence County in Western Pennsylvania, there’s a high number apparently of Amish who vote. And that has to do with the historical connection they had. There was some litigation with the government that happened, and out of appreciation for free help that they received, they helped to get a lawyer into office as a judge, if I understand that story correctly. And then, because of that, generations since then—from the sixties or seventies when this happened—have just continued to vote. To me, that illustrates how something as small as voting can become habitual. It can become a multi-generational thing where this is just what we do. And so I would offer that as a cautionary tale. I’m not de-Christianizing them. I’m not demeaning them at all. Simply offering this as something for us to include in our evaluation as we seek to navigate politics.

So my interest is for us to think about what is happening when we think about something as small as voting. And it is small. It only took me 15 minutes to drive from my house to the polling place, cast my vote, and go back to the parsonage, you know, where I lived as a preacher. And so, time-wise, it wasn’t a big thing. But what I came to realize after I stopped voting, after I put away talk radio and all of that, was how much it had shaped my life. And that’s the subtle thing about this. The subtle thing about political involvement is, even though we might not vote, we just listen to the news, we just tune into Fox every now and then, we just check out what the latest conservative thinker has to say. And I’m not opposed to those things. What I’m cautioning against is the slippery slope that that can present, where suddenly we start to think in ways that we don’t even realize we’re thinking.

It’s a bit like the experience I had moving from where my wife and I first lived. We lived in a house trailer for the first three and a half years of our life. And we moved from that into a two-story house. And I considered myself—I was working carpentry at the time, construction—I wanted myself to be a person who was in pretty good shape. But you know, moving from a trailer where everything is on one level, to a two-story house where there’s steps all over the place—I realized, by having to take those steps, how out of shape I was. It just happened, without me realizing. And I feel like voting is just one of those things where, without realizing it, it shapes our identity. It also tends to blur that kingdom identity.

And that’s why I’m saying that the best way to navigate American politics is to be clearest in our kingdom perspective. The clearer I got on kingdom perspective, I felt like the better I was able to navigate the political cycle that I found myself in, and that we all find ourselves in. And so my encouragement is for us to think about ourselves in that kingdom context. I think that it happens in the Amish and the Old Order Mennonite, the Old Order settings—it happens a lot more unconsciously, because of how defined the lifestyle is. Those of us who are not living a lifestyle that is quite as defined will have to be more intentional about creating that kingdom perspective, and maintaining that, and passing that on. And so, you know, one of the dangers of an Old Order culture is that it can go on and on mindlessly. But one of the great values of that is that it also preserves the seeds of things that are very important and useful. And that’s why I think we often see renewal movements, refreshing movements, coming out of Old Order settings—because they have all of those basic building blocks for the kingdom. You know, it’s just waiting for the Spirit of God, or something, to come in. And again, there are those in the Old Order who are certainly born again, and I bless them. And I think that they’re doing a great thing.

So, my interest is to emphasize the fact that we need to maintain and continue to clarify our kingdom identity. I think we will serve the nation the best when we are most clearly a kingdom people. And so this is not about denouncing American citizenship. It’s not about renouncing American citizenship. We all have to be citizens somewhere in the world. God has placed us in nations. We have to make sure that our citizenship is the kingdom citizenship, which is our primary citizenship. And then we don’t get those two mixed up, that suddenly the American citizenship becomes my primary identity over top of my kingdom citizenship.

And so, are there things that we can do? Absolutely. As far as political involvement, God has given us a number of things. I think we need to be clear on where authority comes from. All authority, according to Jesus, comes from God. He said to Pilate, you would have no authority unless it was given to you from above. And so, all authority comes from God. Therefore, all who are in authority deserve to have our respect, deserve to have whatever honor the world calls for. If we’re called in for jury selection—when we go to make our appeal to not be on the jury, and I don’t think we should serve on juries—we need to address the judge as "your honor." We need to be respectful to them. I had that experience just a year and a half ago, where I was called in for a grand jury selection. Obviously, of course, I did not want to serve. But I wanted to respectfully make my appeal. And so when it came time to do that, I stood, and I said, hello, your honor. And there was a young lady who was the judge, and she was very gracious. She said, well, hello. And, whoa—I did not have to serve.

But I think there are a number of things we need to think about. We need to be careful about what we see and what we hear, the inputs that we are receiving—you know, whether that’s right-wing media, left-wing media, center-of-the-road media—all media has an agenda. And one of the common adages is that when something is free, you are the product. And so we need to be aware of the fact that every media outlet out there, every person who has a podcast, everybody who’s saying something about politics, they have an agenda. They have something that they’re pushing. And oftentimes it’s a financial thing. In the case of Rush Limbaugh, his program was surrounded by advertisements. He was advertising for people. And, you know, I think Rush had a lot of altruistic reasons for what he was doing, but there was also the financial side of it that he was gaining from. And so, being very wary—when you hear people bashing the Republicans, when you hear people bashing the Democrats, everything’s going to go south, you know, this next election we’re not going to have any more freedom if it happens this way—we’ve heard that for 20 years now, maybe more. And so, just taking everything with a huge grain of salt, being skeptical about everything that you hear that’s coming from the kingdom-of-the-world perspective. Be careful of your inputs. Who is shaping the way you see the world? Who is shaping your thought processes? Is it Scripture? Is it King Jesus? Or is it the kingdom of this world? And there’s a lot of fine people out there who care about America, who care about the world, but they’re coming at it from the kingdom-of-the-world perspective. And so we need to be clear: there are two kingdoms—it’s the kingdom of the world, it’s the kingdom of God—and where is our input? Where’s the greatest input coming from, as we navigate? And in reality, we can hear a lot of stuff, but how much can we do about it? Of all the things that we hear, all the doom and gloom, how much change can we affect? We’ll get to that.

And then, be careful what you say. Be careful how you talk. I think we need to be a people of honor, of respect. But I also think we need to be careful that we speak in ways that remind us of our identity. And that’s why I started out by saying what I did—that I think that this is the greatest nation and our leader is the best. America as my nation, my country; the president is my president, or "not my president" if I don’t like him at the moment; you know, "my military," "our military"—those little things, those subtle phrases, have a way of shaping what we think. And so, I’m not perfect at it, but I have, over the last, I would say 10 years, been very purposeful, when I talk about America or I talk about the president—I talk about "the nation." And I’m not saying that he’s not my president, in the sense that I’m a citizen of America, and so he is my leader. But I am using those little things to remind me of my identity as a kingdom person. That’s my primary identity. And so I just encourage you to think about that.

And, a third thing—then, what can we do? I think we need to be purposeful in what we pray. We need to be praying for our leaders. One of my little peeves with the broader Anabaptist world is oftentimes we don’t even know who our leaders are, other than the president, maybe the vice president. But who’s my governor—who’s the governor of the state in which you’re living? Who are the county commissioners in your county? Do you know the names of any judges, and the Supreme Court judges, the representatives, the senators? And so, I realize we can pray for the leaders without knowing their names—God knows their names. But to me, it’s important to pray. And that’s one of the most valuable things, I really believe—we tend to downplay the power of prayer, because we think that our political involvement, that involves voting and calling people and signing people up to vote. And I really think—you know, if I were the devil (and that’s a terrible thought), but if I were the devil, one of my biggest tactics would be to distract kingdom Christians from the greatest weapons that they have, and offer them a cheap substitute that’s not going to accomplish anything in the end. And so it’s been very subtle, very deceptive, but very effective. And so we must not—we dare not—downplay the power of prayer, the power of fasting.

And I think there are specific things that we can pray that are very important. One of those is a common prayer that we tend to maybe pray by rote, but we ought not to. And that is for God’s kingdom to come. Pray for his kingdom to come, his will be done in America. And this is something I try to pray regularly—in America, in every nation on earth, as it is in heaven. Every place where the kingdom of God comes, everybody benefits. And so this is a powerful prayer for us to pray. We should pray for the leaders regularly. I don’t know the names of all the Supreme Court justices, but typically I’ll just pray for President Biden, Vice President Harris, the Supreme Court justices, the governor, the county commissioners, the township supervisors—just praying for the various leaders.

And of course, as people living in this nation, we are interested in what’s going on. We are concerned about bad policies. It’s not that we’re not concerned. And so I think it is quite well for us to pray that God would bring to nothing the counsel of the ungodly. I really like what Psalm 33 says in verse 10. It says, "The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing. He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect." And then he goes on to say, "The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations." And so, one of my common prayers is that God would bring to nothing the counsel of the ungodly. You know, even when I was voting, I didn’t feel like I was able to accomplish very much. But when I pray for God to bring to nothing the counsel of the ungodly, I feel like I’m really doing something, because I’m taking it to the highest authority. God knows everything.

There is so much political intrigue going on. When we find out about all the backroom deals that were going on in Washington, D.C., and in Moscow, and in London, we’re going to be shocked. People that we thought were fine, upstanding people—the things that they got into, the shenanigans they were involved in. Well, there’s nothing that we can do about that as American citizens, but there’s something we can do about it as kingdom citizens. We can take it to God, and we can ask God to bring to nothing the counsel of the ungodly. I ask God, please let truth prevail. You know, the three transcendentals, people call them, are truth, goodness, and beauty. People long for these three things. And to me, the beauty of the Anabaptist lifestyle, the beauty of the kingdom way, is what we offer to the world in these three things—truth, goodness, and beauty.

To a certain extent, the conservative Anabaptist lifestyle is so intriguing, and so enticing even—people really admire it. I think it’s because, by God’s grace, we reflect in many ways those three things: truth, goodness, and beauty. When you look at the broader political spectrum and landscape, it’s littered with everything but that. You talk about falsehoods. You talk about wickedness. You talk about ugliness. It might be right to call the Capitol the swamp—I don’t know. It’s just a very swampy situation. But when you look at the kingdom of God and what we’re seeking to offer, it’s such a beautiful thing. And so, my encouragement is, in order to navigate, to negotiate American politics well, the best way to do that is for us to be clear, and to become clearer, on our kingdom identity. Thank you.

Perhaps you’d have some questions or input. I have more questions than I’ve answered. So I’m looking forward to your pushback, dialogue, feedback, clarifications on my understanding of Old Order culture. We have a few minutes here where we can discuss this.

Well, good morning, Brother Brandon. Thanks so much. It was really refreshing to hear you speak into this situation. Thanks a lot. And thanks to our audience for joining us this morning. We’ll give you the ability to unmute yourself, and then you can ask Brandon, make comments to Brandon, anything you desire here this morning. You were trying to think of who wrote the tract, Did God Lose the Election? I think that was William McGrath.

Thank you. Yes. And yeah, as far as being politically involved or caught up in news, I do really agree with you—that really blurs our vision for the kingdom of God. I think it was back during Bush—was it Bush and Romney? It was at a point when politics seemed to be heated up a bit, and I would hear people talk about it a lot. And that was probably the most that I’ve ever encountered where people ask me if I vote. One day I was on a job, and there was a very religious individual there on the job that I knew for many years. And yeah, somehow the political subject came up, and I was talking to him about advancing God’s kingdom and telling people about Jesus and stuff like that. He’s like, people don’t want to hear anymore. And he was in a very bad—seemed like quite a bad mood. Then I asked him—I’m not quite sure how the question was asked, but basically the idea, how much time have you spent reading your Bible and praying? Or, maybe it was more like the question, how much time did you spend watching TV or news last night? And here he was honest, and admitted he spent probably several hours watching the news and stuff. And I told him he needs to put that TV away and start praying and reading the Bible. So there’s an example of an individual—I’ll never forget that encounter, how him being so caught up in politics and, yeah, the kingdom of this earth. So yeah, thanks a lot. It was very, very good.

And yeah, you should be able to unmute yourself, and if you have something to share, feel free. We’d be glad to hear from you. Hey brother, I thank you for the message. It’s very encouraging and challenging as well. And I wonder if you could comment—something I’ve noticed on participation in the government, especially in voting, is that it can make it very difficult to share the testimony of Jesus with others. There’s a person that I knew from growing up in school, who was a Christian and then fell away. And he’s actually been interested in learning more about the church that we attend here in Maryland, because it doesn’t participate in voting and things like that. He views Christianity as a political thing, and the thought that there are some that aren’t is a challenge and an encouragement to him. So I would just seek to have you share on what that means for us as kingdom Christians. I appreciate it.

Sure. No, I think that you’re spot on there—that when the church is clearly part of a different kingdom, it actually broadens our reach. And what has happened in so much of the evangelical world is they’ve shut down at least half of the world, because they’re so strong in their rhetoric and actually political in their preaching. And that really has done a disservice to the gospel. And so—I remember I was working in construction in Harrisburg, probably eight or nine years ago. This was during the election cycle between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. And a man that we were working for, staunch Republican, was very concerned about the election. And my foreman, John, was there as well. And this man, Max, that we were working for—Max came to me and he said, do you vote? And I said, well, I have. And, well, that satisfied him. He didn’t even ask if I was going to, just the fact that I had. He then went to my foreman, John, and John said, no, I don’t vote. Well, Max just couldn’t have this. You know, he just—this is important, this is a big deal.

And it just so happened that that morning, Max said, you know, my wife is going to make lunch for you guys, you can make burgers. And I thought, oh no. Typically, you know, I do fast some meal, or whatever, maybe once a week or once every two weeks, typically on Wednesday. And I thought, oh—and if something comes up, I’ll just quietly shift my fast, you know, in other words, I’ll just do it on Thursday, the next day. But in this case, because other people were joining me, I felt like I couldn’t change it. And so I thought, what’s Max going to say if I tell him I can’t enjoy his wife’s burgers, you know? And so I just pulled him aside. I said, look, Max, I used to vote, I don’t vote anymore, but I am fasting for the election, and I feel like I can’t join you today. And I was surprised—he said, oh, that’s fine, don’t, you know, that’s okay. So I went off and did my thing over lunch.

And the next day, Thursday, we didn’t go back. But Friday, we went back to Max’s house. And sometime in the morning, he pulled me aside. He said, hey, whatever you’re doing, keep it up. There was just a big document dump on Hillary yesterday, and Donald Trump is really up in the polls. I wasn’t fasting for any particular candidate to get ahead of another one, you know. It reminded me of the fact that the weapons that God offers us are effective—in the sense that they are not coercive, and they are not threatening to people. They are simply seeking for God’s will to be done against the principalities of darkness that are actually behind all worldly leadership. And so it was a clincher, you might say, or just another reminder that it’s so valuable and important for us to maintain—not just in what we say, but in our methods, how we live it out. So thank you, brother, for sharing about your church there. Yeah, thanks a lot, really appreciate that.

Another good read is this book by Gary Miller. Yeah, I’ve been really enjoying this book. Very good read. Well, thank you, brother. I wanted to recommend two resources—and some of you maybe have already read these—but Pilgrims and Politics by Michael S. Martin. This is just—if you have questions about authority, about how to interact with the government, I feel like he lays tremendous groundwork. Why are there governments? How does God view this? How should we view the government officials? How should we interact? It was formative for me. I had already put away voting by the time that I read it, but highly recommend it. And then a second resource that you might be familiar with is What the Early Christians Believed About Voting and Politics by David Bercot. I just listened to this again the other day. And really, we have so much in our heritage—not just the Anabaptist heritage, but going back to the early Christians, and how they understood Jesus and his teachings. I really feel like we have the firm foundation, we have the hope of the future, we have the joy of the present. And there’s just a lot of reasons to be positive. And I would say that that shift to a kingdom mindset has made me a positive person. Do I still get depressed and unhappy? Yes. Do I still have strong opinions about government policies that affect everybody? Yes. But when I remember that Jesus is King, and that of the increase of his kingdom there should be no end, I’m reminded that everything will be okay. God’s going to win.

Yeah, you mentioned we have so much in our heritage—the thought and idea that we’ve been taught, that it’s important to obey and follow Jesus’ teachings. And the danger with politics would be to steer us away from obeying Christ and his teachings. Yeah. We’d be glad to hear from some more of you. If there’s any questions or comments—it’s always very, very enjoyable to hear from our audience. So feel free to unmute yourself and ask your question or make your comment. We would be glad for some feedback. Maybe Dan Martin could fill in on some areas where I’ve missed.

You’re not sure how to unmute yourself? How do you unmute yourself? Okay—I did something wrong here. I apologize. I checked the wrong thing. So I’m really, really sorry about that. I checked the wrong thing. So you should now be able to unmute yourself. Yes, thank you. Sorry about that. It’s working now. There was no way I could tell you that I couldn’t unmute myself.

Yes. Well, of course, I talk to people all the time from the broader society. And this is a question that often comes up: which side am I on? And when I tell them that I’m not politically involved, that immediately is a positive with them. If I would take sides, that would be the end of our discussion. Because they’re very upset that Christians get involved in government. And the thing that’s upsetting to them is, then Christians are putting pressure on people to conform to their way of life. And Christians are not coercive—that’s the thing about Christians. Jesus said, do not resist an evil man; love him, bless him, do good to him. But we are not to get involved in coercion and resistance. And that’s the whole issue of politics: coercion and resistance. And so when I can say that I’m not involved, they’re immediately open to hear whatever else I have to say. That’s a plus. I’m very much aware that if I said that I voted for whoever, that would be the end of the discussion. So it’s a very practical thing. I’m very much aware that when we’ve been voting, our witness is definitely diminished, if not rejected.

Yeah, thank you so much for that. As polarized as things are, or seem to be getting—I would say the tension, from my perspective, is getting worse—it’s probably more than ever a time to stay out of politics, so we can be a witness to our generation. It’s a blessing to hear from you, Brother John, and we’d be very, very glad to hear from more of you.

Yeah, thanks so much for joining us. This was a real blessing, and I really appreciate your time, Brother Brandon. I know life is full, life is busy for you, and we really look forward to hearing your message at Kingdom Fellowship Weekend here, the end of August. Again, you can find the website online—Kingdom Fellowship Weekend 2024, August 23rd, 24th, 25th. Thank you for joining us. And Brother Brandon, would you close us in prayer, then we can consider ourselves dismissed.

Sure, thank you, Brother Elam. Let’s pray. Father, we do thank you that you are the great God over all gods, and we thank you for sending your Son to live, and to die, and to rise again, and to intercede even now at the right hand of the Father for us. We confess, Lord Jesus, that we need those intercessions, that we need your help and your service. We thank you that you offer all these things and more to us. We do think about our situation as strangers and pilgrims, and you have placed us in various countries. You’ve placed many of us who are on this discussion here in America, and we trust that you will help us to know how to live well, that we can represent you well as ambassadors, and as people whose primary citizenship is in heaven. We’re so grateful for that. Thank you for those that you are calling to yourself. Thank you for the ways that you are working. And Lord, I do pray for the leaders of this nation—for President Biden, Vice President Harris, for the Supreme Court justices, the judges across the nation, the governors, the representatives and senators, the county commissioners, township supervisors—I pray that you would help them to recognize that they are responsible for the role that you have given them, that they will give an account. I pray that you’d help them to lead well, so that we could live quiet and peaceful lives in a way that would advance your kingdom. I pray, O God, that you would bring to nothing the counsel of the ungodly, that you’d help truth to prevail. And ultimately, O God, we pray that your kingdom would come and your will be done in this nation, and in every nation on earth, as it is in heaven. We pray all this in Jesus’ name. Amen.