Preachers, Prophets and Politicians (Part One)

Pastors turning into pundits, audience capture and culture war fan service. Part one in a series asking, "what does it mean to be 'prophetic'"?

Josh Howerton and John Pavlovitz

I was recently talking to a family member who had left their church after attending for several years. The church was their main source of community. They had been active members. Their kids made many friends in the children’s ministry. Leaving would be difficult.

The pastor of the church, Josh Howerton, had become more and more nakedly partisan and domineering in recent years. He infamously preached “How to vote like Jesus,” explaining why he believed Trump was the best candidate for Christians. He claimed his motives were pure:

I am not here to seek the approval of man. I am not here to seek the approval of a party. And I am not here to seek approval of a politician. I am here on behalf of the living God. Your convictions ought to pull your vote either right or left. But ultimately, the most important thing is that your heart goes up into the kingdom of God so that the Holy Spirit can come down on your life and bless your life. That’s what matters.

While Howerton claims he wasn’t seeking the approval of man or a politician, he got it. His social media following exploded, his media empire gained traction, he was invited to the White House. He became a growing and influential voice on the Christian Right.

While the church has grown as Howerton’s influence has grown, it has also lost hundreds of members. Those who have left include longtime members, many noting the “coarse, arrogant culture” that has developed. Howerton has made misogynistic jokes and comments from the pulpit. He later offered an apology, but appears to have plagiarized it.

And yet people stay. New members join. Because the church has become less about modeling the character of Jesus and more about toxic tribalism.

A Compromised Witness

There is much to be alarmed about on the Religious Right: Pete Hegseth’s form of Christian Nationalism, the Trump Bibles, and many other examples of faith leaders like Josh Howerton, to name a few.

But I worry that because the Religious Right has so lost its way, the Religious Left has given itself license to engage in some tribalistic behaviors of its own. In order to be effective voices, they have to be credible. And many are not. Precisely because the Religious Right holds more institutional power, the credibility of its critics matters even more. When those critics mirror the same tribal instincts, they weaken their ability to confront that power effectively.

A prophetic voice is not simply one that speaks passionately about injustice—it is one that speaks truth consistently, even when that truth is uncomfortable for its own audience. Your willingness or not to criticize your own side shows whether you are being “prophetic” or just partisan.

In this series of posts, I want to explore what it means to be “prophetic.” I also want to explore the ways churches and faith leaders compromise their prophetic voices by becoming partisan, chasing social media clout and succumbing to a phenomenon called “audience capture.”

Culture War Fan Service

What has happened to too many preachers turned political pundits is the phenomenon of “audience capture.” Prominent Christian author and professor, Dr. Richard Beck, described the phenomenon this way:

Through the hits, shares, downloads, and followers the writer or podcaster starts to chase virality, pulling their content away from careful, thoughtful analysis toward ideological bomb throwing. The influencer isn’t influencing the audience. The audience, through their attention, is influencing the influencer. The influencer starts to serve the interests, values, beliefs, prejudices, and biases of the audience. “Influence” becomes, in the end, culture war fan service.

It is difficult to be a consistent, thoughtful, prophetic voice while also striving to increase your online following. Beck continues:

This is why having “a large following” is a sure sign that you’re not going to encounter authentic Christian content. Because that “large following” is, rather, an ideological movement that has hijacked the influencer. “Large following” means culture war fan service. And if you doubt this, ask the influencer to call out the evil at work in their audience. They will not do so, for that would hurt their gig and their pocketbook.

Social media rewards reactive, polarizing, anger-inducing content. It does not reward nuance, thoughtfulness and fair-mindedness. If you’ve amassed a massive following on social media, it’s likely because you’ve become skilled at provoking tribal outrage.

As Pastor Zach Lambert stated when announcing the launch of his Substack:

• It is often unhelpful to limit discussions about who God is, who we are, and how we should show up in the world to 140 characters

• Algorithms on social media platforms contribute to outrage culture and the overall polarization which plagues so much of our public discourse

• Social media gives us the illusion of connection without the depth of community–we can have brief, surface-level interactions, but healthy, dialogical engagement is almost impossible

• Dopamine driven rewards on social media can sometimes create addictive engagement which lead to information overload, neglect of responsibilities, and mental health issues

As Lambert correctly points out, social media is a poor medium for meaningful theological and moral discussion because it flattens complexity, distorts engagement, and incentivizes outrage. Its algorithms and reward systems foster polarization, shallow connection, and even unhealthy patterns of use.

The larger the social media following, the larger the temptation to avoid critiquing your own tribe while only critiquing the other.

Unequal Scales of Justice

In the days and weeks after the 2024 Election, former United Methodist minister and popular progressive Christian influencer John Pavlovitz shared a series of tweets and a Substack post espousing conspiracy theories and claiming Harris had won the election. He has a massive following: 382,000 followers on X; 571,000 followers on Facebook; and more than 118,000 Substack subscribers. As the Substack, “A Public Witness,” described his influence:

When Pavlovitz writes something, it gets noticed — especially among progressive Christians. As Wired noted, Pavlovitz’s X post questioning the vote totals the morning after the election was viewed more than 5 million times. Such reach was why they highlighted him as an example of Kamala Harris supporters engaging in emerging “conspiracy theories” and “baseless disinformation about the election being stolen.”

Pavlovitz’s post-election social media post wasn’t just the case of someone waking up on the wrong side of the bed. He’s regularly suggested — without evidence — that Harris actually won the election.

I first heard of John Pavlovitz’ election denialism and conspiracy theories from a progressive pastor I know who shared his frustrations privately with me. This pastor has a large (and growing) social media following himself. I was not surprised that he never shared that frustration publicly, given that he rarely criticizes figures on the left on his social media.

The disconnect was notable, however, as this pastor speaks out frequently and forcefully about the dangers of conspiracy theories on the right. A recent Substack post of his focuses on the book “Reality in Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an American Evangelical Crisis.” The pastor had also recently invited the author to speak at his church about the same topic.

In February, this pastor posted a screenshot of an interaction he saw in the comments of a Facebook post. In the comment, one individual was sharing an AI-generated image of Bad Bunny burning an American flag. Despite being told it was clearly fake, the individual doubled down. Facebook comments are not known for their nuance or truthseeking.

The progressive pastor then tweeted about the interaction to his 56,000 followers and described the Facebook comment as “such a perfect encapsulation of right-wing outrage in our country.” In the tweet, the pastor’s screenshots included the individual’s first name, last name and profile picture. The individual is a non-public figure.

After the tweets, the interaction and screenshots became a separate post on Substack. Full names of non-public figures included.

Pavlovitz has 571,000 followers on Facebook. The random individual who got called out has 2,000. Pavlovitz shared a series of posts on social media and Substack that got millions of views and national media attention. The random individual was commenting under a post on Facebook, which likely wouldn’t have been seen by more than a few dozen people if the pastor hadn’t shared it on his own platforms. One of these people is progressive. One of them is conservative. One of these people is getting a pass (the pastor has since quoted Pavlovitz approvingly on his Substack). The other is being turned into an example of “right-wing outrage” and publicly singled out.

This asymmetry is telling. People notice things like this. It not only erodes the credibility of pastors desiring to be prophetic voices, it also erodes the credibility of The Church.

I recently raised concerns about the tone and tactics of this pastor’s social media with him directly, sharing examples of either contemptuous, false or overtly partisan posts. He did not address the examples, but stated his work was “rooted in conviction rather than an attempt to gain social approval or group acceptance.” I was not encouraged by the response.

This is not about one pastor. It is about a pattern—one that I’ve seen repeatedly across leaders who are otherwise thoughtful and sincere.

Blurred Lines

This dynamic isn’t limited to social media. It also shows up in how churches and pastors relate to political power itself.

I come from a faith tradition (Churches of Christ) that is typically averse to anything perceived to be political messaging in a church. This has some drawbacks, but it also leads to a built-in resistance to blurring the lines between Christian witness and partisan advocacy. For example, at the fairly conservative church I grew up in, there was a class one Sunday on the dangers of Christian Nationalism.

That’s why I was surprised to hear prominent Church of Christ members named as part of Sen. John Cornyn’s “Faith Advisory Council.” (John Cornyn is also a member of the Churches of Christ.) Popular author and pastor, Max Lucado, alongside Phil Schubert, the president of my alma mater, Abilene Christian University, are part of a council “to stand for faith, family and freedom.”

In the midst of a heated primary, the announcement appears less about seeking guidance and more about co-opting faith for political ends.

The issue with aligning yourself with a candidate is that it colors your public statements about a party or politician. If Max Lucado, whom I deeply admire, were to speak out about Cornyn’s primary opponent Ken Paxton’s damaged character, it would now land differently. Any criticism will come across as an attack from a campaign rather than a prophetic denunciation. If Lucado were to critique James Talarico, it will seem more of a partisan attack.

This is why I’m averse to pastors aligning with a particular party or politician. When I see a pastor tweeting or retweeting content from one political party—and only that party—I begin to question whether their critiques are coming from a place of principle or merely partisanship. This is especially true if the content is about winning the midterms, taking back the House or Senate, or winning up and down the ballot.

Prophetic voices were meant to speak outside the system to critique it. Once they are co-opted by the system itself, their prophetic voice is compromised.

From Spiritual Formation to Political Mobilization

When faith communities become tightly aligned with political identities, they risk losing their ability to challenge those identities—and instead begin to reinforce them.

The Texas Tribune recently did a story on how faith communities have shaped James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett (the piece was written before Talarico ultimately won the primary). The piece describes the way churches became get-out-the-vote efforts in the primary.

While Talarico has brought religion to secular campaign spaces through a populist, faith-based pitch, his chief primary opponent, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, has targeted the political power of the pews, working to supercharge Democratic turnout by tapping into the civic power of Black churches like her own. She has drawn hundreds to campaign events held at over a dozen Black churches around the state, while wielding endorsements from groups like the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.

Crockett is known for her inflammatory rhetoric: calling the wheelchair-bound Greg Abbott, “Governor Hot Wheels;” accusing Hispanics who voted for Trump as having a “slave mentality;” calling Marjorie Taylor Green a “bleach-blonde bad-built butch body;” falsely claiming a Trump official took money from Jeffrey Epstein.

But this did not stop churches from mobilizing in her favor or national faith organizations calling her a “bold and principled leader for our time.” Or from Crockett’s home church becoming a voter registration site.

At the recent Sunday service, outside the sanctuary, members of the congregation scanned a QR code and filled out forms to register to vote or check their registration status.

This voter registration effort occurred after a fiery sermon from the lead pastor, Frederick Haynes III, who is running to replace Crockett in the House of Representatives.

When churches become vehicles for turnout rather than formation, they are no longer positioned to challenge the political figures they platform—they are invested in their success.

Final Thoughts

When churches align with a party or politician, they lose the ability to critique them. Their criticisms are suspect. By avoiding criticizing their own tribe, their critiques come across as partisan.

Too many spiritual leaders have given themselves license to engage in arrogant, overtly partisan behavior because they believe their cause is righteous. Their motivations are pure and therefore do not need to be examined. But we should not mistake contempt for “conviction.”

Being a smug, self-righteous jerk online is not being “prophetic.”

Pastor Dennis Sanders wrote about the tendency to always view ourselves as the ones standing with Jesus when he is turning over tables, a story found in the Gospels in which Jesus becomes enraged to find the temple has become a place for merchants and money changers.

Whenever somebody talks about Jesus cleansing the temple, listen to where the speaker is in the story. More often than not they are not among the merchants. They aren’t on the sidelines. Where are they? They aren’t in the crowd and they aren’t among the moneychangers. Usually, they are in Jesus’s shoes flipping over the tables of injustice that they see in their own world.

The problem with this text or actually, how people interpret the text, is that it is focused on others that we don’t like. God is focused on our enemies, while we are left blameless, fighting God’s good fight.

Jesus is flipping over tables because a place of worship is being used for commercial purposes, to promote greed and power and purposes far beyond what the temple was built for. We should be careful before assuming, just because we believe our cause is righteous, that Jesus endorses every action in service of that end.

“It’s Time to Turn Some Tables,” is the slogan for Texas State Rep. James Talarico’s campaign for U.S. Senate. I’ve largely avoided mentioning him, and his likely (I’m sorry, I wish it weren’t true) opponent for the general election, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Those two will be the focus of the next post in this series.

The question is not whether we are willing to flip tables.
The question is whether we are willing to let Jesus flip ours.