How does one pray on election day? I get this question a lot and as of late I find myself always encouraging people to pray the psalter. The general protest is usually revealing: “the psalms are just words of encouragement… election day needs something political.” This is just factually inaccurate. There are encouraging Psalms, of course. But the whole book is a deeply political series of songs and prayers. They have offered and do offer God’s people his words to pray over circumstances which are beyond our immediate control (e.g. I alone cannot determine the election… that is precisely what an election is). I can cast a vote. I can do a myriad of advocacy things. But the election itself is an event which exceeds my vote and my activism. The Psalter offers us a liturgical remedy: eternal prayers, sung and prayed before the living God, songs which are both the Christ’s songs and Church’s songs, which lift my election anxiety from the ballot to the throne room of heaven.
A couple theological reasonings. Not an exhaustive list, but one I hope may illumine the wisdom of taking our cues for prayer from the Psalter on days and weeks like this one:
I do not know, fully the ramifications of my vote. That is beyond me. I cannot wager on it. Voting is best understood as a reasoned hope and not as the determination of an algorithmically enumerated litany of consequences. The long-range impacts of voting are, therefore, never certain, to us at least. Good politicians can be corrupted and wicked rulers can repent and redeem. The person I voted for could be a liar, could change his or her mind, could perish before accomplishing very much, etc. In an election I cast whatever ballots are mine to cast in the direction I think wisest and take the adventure which befalls. Praying/Singing the Psalms on Election day directs all of my-not-being-able-to-foresee-all-ends towards heaven and the One who does see all ends —who is Himself the End.
I also cannot foresee the election results. I may pray “Give me Donald” or “Give me Kamala” or I can pray “Be wise you kings, be warned you rulers of the earth” (Ps. 2). The last is the mightiest, universally applicable, and by far the most mighty. It is also evergreen: I can keep praying the day after the election. And this is not mere naivete, it is solid reality. Both Donald and Kamala will have to reckon with the “One who sits enthroned in heaven laughing” regardless of who wins on Tuesday night.
I also want to be careful, given how little I know, about “messiahizing” my candidate. Peter Sonski may be the most evidentially righteous person running in this presidential election, but that may not mean that he is our messiah. The Psalter spares me from the pressure of messiahizing my preferred candidate. I don’t have to participate in the pageantry of celebrity-cults which seeks to vouchsafe my confidence in the person of the candidate. I may like them for the reasons that I know and God may oppose them for reasons of which I am unaware. Regardless, my confidence rests along the lines of Psalm 68 “Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered…” That is my prayer. Not “Let Sonski arise and his enemies be put to flight.” My messianic hope is not on Peter. I’ve already found my Annointed One. My soul waits for him alone, more than a watchman waits for the breaking of the day. Praying the Psalms put my preferred candidate in their proper place: as only my preferred candidate and not my hope for our country.
The Psalter also helps order my sense of justice. The Psalms cut-through party planks and lofty abstractions printed on bumper-stickers, and easy platforms, and speaks in firm legal terminology from God Law. As much as I may want this or that candidate from this or that party to win in an election, I must remember that this or that party’s platform is not coterminous with Biblical Justice. Merely praying “help Republicans/Democrats to win” can sometimes blind me to the often glaring ways in which these parties obliquely violate even some of the most basic standards of biblical justice. Both of the two major parties, fas an example, are totally fine with, and actually profit from, widespread usury (creating wealth through other people’s debt; which is different than investment) which the Bible forbids outright with language as stern in some places as that which it employs in its sexual prohibitions. You may, in a particular race, vote for this or that party’s candidate, but praying from the psalms spares me from the delusion that my party’s justice is the Lord’s… or that my party’s candidates will be exempt from the guilt of injustice because they tithed their proverbial cumin and rue.
Here’s what I recommend and what I will be doing:
In the morning chant Psalm 2.
At mid-day chant Psalm 23.
At 3 o’clock chant Psalm 68.
When the first star appears in the evening chant Psalm 114.
I will then be chanting these each day this week, during all of what I have come to think of as “election-tide.”
I am not saying, hear me, that there are not times when certain election results are worrisome. Indeed, that does happen and may happen this year. What I am saying is that regardless of the results you will be hard-pressed to find a more fruitful set of prayers to guide you through the flood waters of Election Day than the book which has taught the church to sing for two thousand years. When Diocletian persecuted Christians, they prayed the Psalms. When Constatine legalized Christianity, they prayed the Psalms. When Vikings put King Edmund to death, Christians prayed the Psalms. When German princes made war on each-other, pitting Roman Catholics and Protestants against their brothers, Christians (on both sides) prayed the Psalms. When King Kamehameha IV, gave his people the Book of Common prayer in their language he particularly commended to them the praying of the Psalms. The list, here incomplete, goes on. The Church has found her strength in the Psalter in all kinds of political storms. In an age of shaking, it is a thing that cannot be shaken. Let us follow their example. Sing the Psalms this week.