I have been rewatching the TV series Andor. This is one of the best Star Wars series and quite possibly general television series of our contemporary moment. The storytelling and the characters within the story are rich. Andor sets up the events of the movie Rogue One which then leads into Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. But Andor focuses upon the stories of beings behind the scenes of the rebellion against the Empire. In its focus on the lives of people within the Empire who work for the Empire and who work against the Empire, we see a side of Star Wars that is closer to our daily lives than the grand space operatic nature of the films. Andor shows how messy rebellions can be, but it also shows the ways that Empires rise by slowly turning the temperature up on the metaphorical frogs in the pot of public life.
Throughout the series, we see fights, but we also see people just doing their jobs. We see a wedding, parties, the experience of different planets, and the inevitable spread of Empire’s long arms. Propaganda features heavily in Andor because that is the way empires shape beliefs and keep the populace in fear of Empire and one another. In the series, the Empire uses incidents that are both manufactured and real to seize ever more power. The almost futile nature of the Galactic Senate attempting to keep to the rule of law is heavy on the believers in the ideal of the Old Republic. The Empire uses the ideas of law and order, purity of thought, and claims of danger to shape thought.
Andor is also relevant to our current situation in the United States. We are being bombarded with stories meant to cause us to hate or fear one another. Propaganda is more likely to be encountered coming from our government than truth. The transparency of propaganda is so strong that only a few fringe organizations are left reporting from the Pentagon. Why? Because they were the few willing to allow the government to tell them what to report. News outlets from MSNBC to Newsmax finally had enough and exited the Pentagon. “You’re venturing into politics, pastor.” I can hear the comments now.
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But really, this is not about partisan politics but about truth and the idea that Christians believe in truth. The problem is that American white evangelicals have become polarized and co-opted by the powers. Ryan Burge has a new book releasing in January 2026, The Vanishing Church. Burge uses his excellent analysis of data spanning several decades to diagnose and provide potential solutions to the vanishing moderate churches. The once ubiquitous fact that houses of worship were once places where people of multiple classes, political parties, and other diverse ideas is no longer the case. Burge points out that self-selection has been ongoing and has become almost puritanical. For example, the majority of people who attend mostly white evangelical churches vote Republican. Most Atheist/Agnostics vote Democratic. Any deviation religiously or politically in either group is met with swift moves to expel.
From the promotional blurbs for The Vanishing Church:
“The moderate American church is disappearing–and it’s taking democracy with it.
Many people assume evangelicals are Republican, Democrats aren’t religious, and moderate Christians no longer exist. But that wasn’t always true. In the 1980s, evangelicals were just as likely sit beside a Democrat as a Republican at church.”
I remember that church, and I miss aspects of it. Our men’s group at church is going through Dan Boone’s A Charitable Discourse Volume 2. This past week we were discussing this idea. One issue facing us is that when any criticism is leveled at a politician, a policy, or a party it is assumed that you support the “opposite“ party. Or the worse problem is that the assumption is that you believe voters are also criticized. That may be because we’ve so intertwined our political identity with our core identity that we cannot separate the two. If we were more open to diversity in our pews, we might be less angry with or fearful of one another. When human beings are face to face, it is much harder to hate one another or dismiss our shared humanity. Hatred is hard up close and personal.
Truth is also important for honest discourse. But truth is in short supply in politics. This has always been the case, but now there are no reins present on the machines of power. Liberty is actually being threatened now through the ubiquity of lies being spread. The weight of those lies is pressing down with its heaviness on the backs of a people hurting. One prime example is the repeated lie that Portland, Oregon is burning. It is not burning, and there are not riots in the streets. Yet that claim continues to be made.
Pastors are scared to be honest or to share the message of Jesus as revealed in scripture because it is at odds with the powers of the world. If the church models Jesus, we can show a way out of our predicament. But too often we model the world rather than Jesus. The entirety of scripture points to God being with the marginalized. The shorthand in scripture to explain the marginalized is orphans, widows, and the foreigner. We’ve allowed the powers to make us afraid of the marginalized. Rhetoric is used to paint pictures of the poor as deserving their plight, immigrants (regardless of status) as dangerous, and that might makes right.
Here’s some good news for all. Burge continues by showing how survey data actually tells a much different story than the extremes would have us believe. The majority of Americans are actually moderates. The data shows nuance, tension, and complex thinking on matters of faith and politics for the average church attender. The bad news is that clergy in predominantly white evangelical spaces do not mirror the pews. Rather than a broad moderation, there is a decided rightward shift of clergy in theologically conservative denominations. Burge believes that extremes shape discourse. I agree based upon my own experience with clergy in my denomination. Many argue that any deviation from Republican politics is support for evil. That is depressing because that is not the way of Jesus.
I’ll be crystal clear here. If clergy are telling you that Christians must vote for a particular political party, those members of clergy are playing the part of wolves. The Kindom of God is not bound by human political systems. In fact, that Kindom looks drastically different from the powers of our world. But the lure of power has always called like sirens to the Church. The resistance to those calls is faithfulness. But the wolves are loud-mouthed and get praise from their fellow wolves. So the clergy who see the faithful way of Jesus often feel the need to sit on their hands and not stir things up. Even horror at the extremists cannot budge because the overall message sent is to keep those heads down and keep those mouths shut. Respectability is superior to faithfulness.
Of course, this care about respectability becomes a plea for the concern of souls and talk of heaven and hell. If my neighbor is hungry, they do not care one iota about eschatological flames because they exist in a hell of hunger. I don’t care how they got in that hell, Jesus compels me to feed my neighbor. Frankly, the concern for souls in isolation ignores the tradition of Wesleyanism, in which souls are indistinguishable from the suffering bodies. We care for the whole human being, or we create hell on earth. The wolves will say we cannot aim for equitable societies, but the Lamb tells us that is part of making disciples. Turning the world right side up so human beings can flourish in New Creation is holiness.
Back to Andor… The core of that story is the normal beings who resisted the Galactic Empire. They were from all classes and walks of life. Most went about their business and lives without a thought for the Empire until the Empire came for them. The fabric merchants of Ghor were happy to sell their fabrics to the wealthy regardless of their politics. They even allowed themselves to believe the illusion that the Empire would let them be. But Ghor had a resource the Empire desperately wanted, and so the Empire’s full force of propaganda and misinformation came to bear on Ghor. Law and order must be kept at all costs, therefore the Ghorman protests were put down. The Empire claimed the protesters were violent extremists, but they were peaceful until they were attacked by the Empire.
The earliest Christians understood the danger of Empire. Even when the Church allowed Empire to seduce her, there were Christians who fled to the dessert to avoid the trappings of Empire. They knew that it would be impossible to live lives of holiness and prophetic love by aligning with power. Only in standing outside the power of the world can the Church be the counter cultural voice of holy peace and mercy. Empire will always come for those who speak against its ethics of power.
Empire will not prevail against the Church. It may win some battles and convince some to follow its power. But eventually that power will be revealed as false and its peace revealed as empty. “[A]ll who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 18:14b) Empire reverses this idea and following that promise will result in corruption of the Good News. When we stake out positions based upon the partisan politics we so adore, we risk being unable to speak with prophetic voices. We risk being unable to live out the Sermon on the Mount because it is deeply frightening to the powers of Empire. We cannot allow Empire to tell us who to hate when God calls us to love all. If we embrace the power of Empire, we become the wolves prowling and seeking whom we may destroy.
Destruction is easy; co-creating a New Creation is hard. (Loki paraphrased)
Are we disciples of Jesus, or are we disciples of Empire?