Instead of leaving political conversations behind with the election season, we have a responsibility to begin the work of formation now—telling beautiful stories of human flourishing, confessing our brokenness with the hope of redemption, and doing the everyday political work of loving our neighbors.

Many Christians arrive at the end of this election season with a sense of relief regardless of the outcome. The months (or even years) leading up to the election have been divisive and difficult for anyone trying to live a faithful life in our inevitably political world. Churches, schools, and institutions have spent time during the election season equipping Christians with theological and political principles; pastors have shepherded their people through division inside and outside the church; and individual Christians have navigated the political tensions of their own friends and family.

We are tired, frustrated, and very often heartbroken over the evil and injustice we have witnessed. But we have cast our ballots, we have taken an “I Voted” sticker selfie, and we have completed our civic duty. We can be done talking about politics now, right?

The end of this election season, however, should be the start of a new season of political participation, not a chance to throw down in exhaustion. The work of faithful political engagement neither begins nor ends with an election. This is true not only because the regular work of government has just begun, but because for Christians the work of spiritual formation has only just begun as well. We have been shaped by the election, just as much (if not more) than we sought to shape it. The work of forming and sustaining human communities is inextricably bound up in questions about spiritual formation: the shaping of our loves and loyalties, the stories we tell ourselves about the world and our place in it, and the ultimate goods worthy of our striving. Any time is a good time for cultivating the political imagination of the people of God.

Augustine is one crucially important figure in Christian history who remains a helpful guide for nurturing a distinctly Christian political imagination. He lived in a tumultuous time in history: the beginning of Christendom and the beginning of the end of the Roman empire. He lived in a time of shifting popular attitudes towards Christians and a time in which an empire that once felt inevitable and eternal revealed its fragility. That feeling of instability, of shifting cultural attitudes towards Christians, of inevitable institutions unexpectedly crumbling—this might not feel all too unfamiliar to us today.

The theologian and bishop of Hippo is often remembered for his relative pessimism about secular authority: compared to other Christians seized by triumphalist visions of Christian rule on earth after the conversion of emperor Constantine, Augustine was realistic about the power of human government to affect positive change. He believed, as many church fathers did, that human government was a remedial measure by God to restrain sin in the world—and thus limited in its authority and potential.[i]

Yet despite his low expectations for human government, Augustine was personally politically engaged. He wrote letters to officials urging against the death penalty even for those persecuting Christians; he commended the official Macedonius for his desire for the heavenly city as a proper motivation for good work on earth; and he dedicated City of God to another government official, Marcellinus. In his letters and sermons, he describes the civic duties of leaders not in contrast with their faith but in deep connection with it.[ii] Augustine’s own theology, pastoring, and life represent a crucial tension for Christians throughout history: how can we have a pessimistic understanding of politics while still faithfully participating in it? In other words, how can we live in the tension between our competing impulses towards idolizing politics on one hand and abandoning our responsibility to seek the common good on the other? How can we maintain low expectations and high hopes?

One important way Augustine’s theology can help us answer those questions is his account of the “two cities.” Rather than making a simple divide between “church and state” in the way we typically do today, Augustine describes the two cities—the city of God and the earthly city—as two communities united by their common objects of love. The city of God includes all beings united by their love of God and oriented toward him. The earthly city includes all beings united by their disordered love of themselves, others, or material goods above God. This conception allowed Augustine to see in all earthly communities—churches, governments, families, cities—the mixing of these two cities, the intermingling of people with different loves. This account of human communal and political life continues to provide us with resources to think about our own political participation and the spiritual formation that should motivate it.

One such resource is Augustine’s consistent critique of perfection. Political work is of course always imperfect: we toil in a broken world, fight the sinful impulses in our own hearts, and struggle against the powers and principalities in all areas of life. While we await the coming redemption of the world, all our efforts will be tainted by sin and difficulty. And yet much of our politics works with perfection in mind: you either win or you lose. You either reach your ultimate goal or you fall short. If a political goal cannot be a roaring success, it might not be worth attempting.

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