On not-voting as a political act. (Maybe I can do this with a series of status lines. Here's the first:)
I am convinced that whenever possible the world is not to be imagined geometrically, as three dimensional space that is viewed from heaven with a synoptic eye, as made up of points on a grid with fixed calculable spatial distances between them (e.g., two thousand miles).
I am convinced that whenever possible the world is not to be imagined arithmetically, as two dimensional spatial time that is viewed from heaven with a synoptic eye, as made up of points on a temporal (moving) line with fixed calculable temporal distances between them (e.g., two centuries).
Thus I am convinced that whenever possible the politics that prays close to the ground for the coming of God's Reign is not to be imagined as promoting the agendas of nation states that occupy geometrical space and arithmetical time.
On not-voting as a political act (as a series of status lines, this, the second:)
If political action is not to be confined within the vision of the world as an arithmetic and geometric system analyzable under the watchful eye of managerial power holders (cf. Foucault on the panopticon), then perhaps it is to be performed concretely, one or more persons vis-a-vis other persons, with the kind of freedom that is not the independence of one solitary individual from other solitary individuals. That is the kind of politics that was performed almost everywhere for the vast majority of the history of the human race. It is the politics of the little village into which strangers seldom stumble. It is there that the politics of consensus works. The theological outworking of this kind of politics is concerned with the coming polis of God, the New Jerusalem, to which the church—as "a little village"—works to bear witness.
On not-voting as a political act (as a series of status lines, this, the third, still on context:)
And so, if the political context for what I'm thinking here is the Polis of God, the New Jerusalem, and the question is how a body of people might bear witness to its coming, politically, then one might think (first) of a little local village/church in which people (don't just meet for an hour or so once a week or a few times a week, but) live and work together, day in and day out. This is a face to face sociality, a face to face politics. It is not that the little church (and I really mean *little*) is itself a polis. It is the coming Reign of God that is a polis, *the* polis. The little local church is derivative from that coming Polis. In the little local church all kinds of political/social/economic relationships are at play, among them relationships with strangers, i.e., with those who would not work with the people of this little church, and thereby it bears witness to what is to come.
One might wonder, however, about the responsibility of such a little church toward "all people." The answer, I think, is that a little local church is to pray for strangers, too, and by "pray" I mean *work*, in a Godward direction. But also a little local church is not a private society out to secure its own place in the world and its own future. The mission of the church in fact is to abandon its place in the world and its future, as following the way of Jesus articulated at the end of Mark 8 and throughout the gospel. Further, and this is a big deal, a little local church is catholic. It is not alone, but its very liturgy entails the liturgical work of all other churches. This is not a way of speaking of a worldwide ecclesiastical institution, able to be mapped and viewed from space. It is a way of speaking of the particularity and concreteness of the church, as local, and at the same time as anything but exclusive (or "inclusive" for that matter, which signifies the claustrophobic "closed in"). The act of one local church meets the act of every local church specifically through the coming Polis of God into which the liturgy of a church operates.
In a local church, then, the work is done by consensus, more specifically through the consensus of working together—working hard, e.g., with hands and back muscles. A vote here is out of place.
On not-voting as a political act (as a series of status lines, this, the fourth, is still on context:)
The nation state, its monetized economy, its technological order, and it inherent, systemic violence are about map-making, about schedules, about latitude and longitude, about time zones, about order under its watchful eye. Its techniques are its means of determining the kind of violence it is in one or another case to implement. And so, the violence of an army is not the same as the violence of the police. The nation state is the hand that holds its "citizens." It holds them and their task is to be grateful and to imagine themselves as protected within that hand, that protective fist. Citizens are by definition afraid and feel safe only as they feel simultaneously threatened (by enemies without and by enemies within) and protected (by the armed agents of the nation state). Citizens imagine themselves as points on a geometrically spatial grid (within borders drawn with blood in the aftermath of battle) and on an arithmetically temporal line. It imagines a world of competing nation states and it looks to leaders as the agents of a "justice" determined by what the nation state determines to be "balanced."
Voting is yea-saying to this order. It is the illusion of power within the illusion of power within the illusion of power. Voting is bowing before a god whose graven images adorn its offices and, say, its Washington National Cathedral, a god no less imaginary and powerful than Athena who stood tall in the Parthenon.
On not-voting as a political act (as a series of status lines, this, the fifth, is a parenthetical addition still preliminary to articulating what I'm imagining not-voting to be):
Not-voting (which is not to be confused with *not*[ ]*voting*, without the hyphen) is not disengagement from the political process, say, in a pseudo-democratic society like America. It is rather *throwing* oneself into political engagement, but without imagining the world as a collection of individuals who are to be counted. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting those who are in prison, etc., is not providing commodities to individuals because there's a rule that says we should. It is entangling your life (i.e., the life of the church, and that means mostly the little local church) in the lives of those people and thus learning from them how they and people like them might no longer be hungry, naked, or imprisoned. It is a social act, an embodied act, an act that stands and falls with oppressed people. It deals with the system that is fed by voting (and do I have to say that "voting" here signifies a whole system, not raising your hand or entering voting booth?), but from the outside.
On not-voting as a political act (as a series of status lines, this, the sixth):
Not-voting thus means social/political/economic engagement that doesn't wait for someone to count yeas and nays. It is local, face-to-face, an outworking liturgy of the eucharist. It is without leader (except the Son and the Spirit, both of whom lead elusively and non-teleologically) and without the presumption of success. It lives to and from the coming Reign of God, i.e., it lives to and from the justice that is indistinguishable from righteousness/holiness. It stands and falls with the outcasts of the world and understands itself as the body of *the* outcast of the world. Thus it stands and falls with them not as an outsider looking to "do good," but as a fellow stranger in a world that has no room for the kind of poor whom we have with us always. Since such a local body lives from and to the coming Reign of God, it is utterly entangled in every local body that lives from and to the coming Reign of God. Indeed, all such bodies meet in that Reign, that Reign that is more actual than anything we might lay our hands on here and now, for it is the here and now redeemed, set free. Thus every such local body is secondary to what is to come. What is to come is *where* such a social body touches what it prays to be—even here and now. Thus a local body, a church, is "a thing that is not" (to quote William Cavanaugh). This local sociality thus is a multiple and mutual local sociality, a sociality that is never exclusively local or inclusively universal. It is rather a concurrence that never leaves the ground.
On not-voting as a political act (as a series of status lines, this, the seventh):
It is the church's catholicity that prevents it from being either exclusively particular or inclusively universal. "Catholicity" is not a synonym of "universality." "Catholicity" signifies "the whole dang thang," not an overarching, comprehensive category of which particulars are instances. The catholic church (and I'm actually okay with capitalizing those words, so long as what is meant thereby is not some sociologically describable institution) is what happens when a particular, local church, in its liturgical life, entails or is inherently entangled in, other particular, local churches, in their liturgical life. "Catholic church" is not more than the sum of its parts (or something), but neither is it merely the sum of its parts. It is an event that occurs otherwise than mathematically. In its work, a local church is nothing in itself. It is where the Reign of God partially and fragmentarily breaks out. And it breaks out in such a way that any such outbreak concurs with it. The work of a local church is social and political and economic. The work of the catholic church is, of course, as well. And so, e.g., all faithful churches simultaneously work particularly and catholicly with open doors to migrants, regardless of their "legal status.”
On not-voting as a political act (as a series of status lines, this, the eighth):
It is hard work for the church to be nothing but politically engaged (that is, in the mode of hope toward the Polis of God), but that is its task. It is hard work for the church to be catholic (that is, neither exclusively particular nor inclusively universal), but that is its task.
In the meantime, the church is in a world obsessed with the politics of the nation state, and that means the politics of monetized violence (or violent monetization). One of the traits of the nation state is an obsession with counting, e.g., counting votes in a pseudo-democratic society. What is the church to do? I mean, nation states build the roads, put in fiber optic cables, set flight paths, manage food production, make the maps, standardize time and schedules. Well, the church is tasked with deconstructing those patterns; not destroying them, but opening them up, loosening the grip of this present evil world on human lives. That is, the church is tasked with revolution.
On not-voting as a political act (as a series of status lines, this, the ninth):
Nation states (inextricable from modern capitalism) have organized and seem likely to continue for the foreseeable future to organize this world. The church is tasked with revolution, in the mode of a peace that exceeds understanding. It is to do that by looking the powers in the eye without blinking, speaking the good news to them without flinching, and taking what they dish out in response. It is to disrupt and resist them. It is also, however, to look for parables of the Reign of God in the work of the powers—even when a closer analysis of that work would reveal energies contrary to the gospel. Thus the Civil Rights movement or the women's movement or the work of LGBTQ+ activists or the resistance of states to the imposition of inhospitable national immigration policy are to be acknowledged as "like the Reign of God"—and that regardless of how much capitalism and individualism and civil religion have fueled this "liberation." At the same time when the work of the powers is found to be overtly in the spirit of antiChrist, it is to be denounced, even if there are also certain subtle aspects of that spirit that could be regarded as parabolic, too. Thus the presidency of Donald Trump, its inclinations to white supremacy, its inhospitality to the poor, its xenophobia, its blind ambition, and much more, is to be denounced. Of course, when to celebrate a parable of the Reign of God and when to denounce an act of the spirit of antiChrist takes discernment. It is the task of a faithful church to cultivate by God's grace the wisdom of God that is so very different from the wisdom of the modern nation state and its ally monetization.
On not-voting as a political act (as a series of status lines, this, the tenth):
If the (locally catholic) church is to engage the arithmetic and geometric order that would situate it and everything else within one or another of its geographical and temporal borders, then why would members of the church not vote, say, in the pseudo-democratic elections of a nation state? A few responses:
1. They may vote in them, if doing so is an act of prayer, not a presumed causal act or the fulfillment of a presumed duty owed to the nation state. However, voting propaganda is so energetically thrust upon voters (at least in America), so imagination-shaping, that it is difficult to escape its allure, especially at a polling place.
2. Since a single vote makes a negligible impact even in an election with relatively few votes cast, voting is prone to a kind of magical thinking in which one imagines making an actual (i.e., measurably determinative) contribution to the outcome of an election.
3. "Voting blocs," i.e., deliberately consolidated groups of voters who agree to vote the same way in order to force a greater impact on the outcome of an election, are violent, even if from time to time in a certain sense resonant with justice.
4. Not-voting is quite different from refusing to vote until better candidates are put forward or from refraining from voting out of laziness or ignorance or other forms of passivity.
5. Not-voting is neither Kantian (bound by a categorical imperative) nor Hegelian (driven by the desire to make the world a better place). Not-voting is rather an *act* by which the sovereignty of God is overtly, if subtly, trusted.
6. Voting may, under extraordinary circumstances, constitute a parable of the Reign of God, as the aftermath, especially in the South of the U.S., of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 illustrates. Voting in such times may well be an act of prayer and consistent with not-voting as it would be performed under ordinary circumstances.
7. Not-voting is open to other exceptional circumstances and does not regard the polling place as irredemptively unclean.