Iowa Gov candidate Lahn says Church should actively fight ‘socialism’ of Dems
Photo: Lee Wright. Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0 license for use.
I hate when public figures draft traditional religion into their campaign speeches. C-SPAN reported that on Saturday, Republican Iowa governor candidate Zach Lahn told attendees at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition that the Church can serve as a defense against ideologies such as Marxism, communism and socialism. He says these ideologies have taken over the Democratic side.
Lahn framed his remarks around defending Iowa's culture, saying the Church has been the bulwark against what Democrats are asking for: more protections for minorities, more social programs, and taxing folks to pay for them. He’s treating a major religion as a local security fence or a partisan weapon.
Whether you go to a place of worship or not, reducing a faith community, in this case American-brand Christianity, to a culture war tool just doesn’t sit right. In fact, it’s offensive!
This is basic Christian Nationalist stuff, dressing up exclusionary politics in minister’s robes and trying to baptize a specific regional and political agenda.
For those of us who follow Jesus, His core message goes way beyond what Lahn tries to do with it, beyond Marxism, communism, and socialism, and what he tries to do with it is in fact the opposite of that message.
Critics, even in my own congregation, love to claim that pushback like mine is just the flip side of the same coin, accusing me of using the Gospel to push my own alleged socialist tendencies. They look at a call for economic justice, care for the vulnerable, or basic accountability for the wealthy and dismiss it as partisan posturing.
But there’s a massive gulf between demanding that society care for the poor and trying to turn the body of Christ into a voting bloc or an arm of the state.
Equating prophetic calls for justice with partisan spin is just a lazy way to deflect from what my pastor, the Rev. Kristin Hutson formerly of Iowa, calls out as obvious idolatry at play.
The teachings of Jesus don’t exist to prop up a political platform, and they certainly don’t exist to soothe folks who are scared of a changing culture. That message calls us into a completely different way of living that refuses to fit into human economic boxes or political parties.
When we turn faith communities into weapons to fight our political opponents, we hollow out the message completely. We swap out a teacher who gave everything for humanity and replace Him with a tribal sign meant to keep people out.
In our tradition, Jesus didn't spend His time on earth building cultural walls to protect a certain lifestyle. He smashed walls down. He walked toward the folks on the margins, He challenged the powerful, and He talked about a community defined by radical love instead of flags or state borders.
Dragging Him into local political fights and using a holy name to argue against economic theories just to protect a regional vibe misses the point entirely.
Pointing out that Jesus champions the poor and challenges unchecked wealth is not about endorsing a modern economic theory like socialism. It’s about taking the text seriously when it says that how we treat the least of these matters infinitely more than preserving our own comfort or political dominance.
Communities dedicated to faith are supposed to be places of healing, welcoming, and truth, not recruitment centers for Christian Nationalism. When politicians try to use the pews for their own campaigns, they turn sacred things into cheap stuff.
Whether you share these religious convictions or stand completely outside them, we can all recognize why it’s dangerous to weaponize faith for political gain. We have to draw a hard line against it, remembering that our true loyalty belongs to values that refuse to be used by any political side, left or right.
