Partisanship

This is part confession of what I have been guilty of in the past. I was set free from it awhile ago and I’m grateful for that. Some clarification might help for this post. It’s ok to be a member of a political party. There are good reasons to do that. The problem becomes when we so equate our identity with a political party that we forget or are blinded to who we really are. When we can’t imagine leaving our party because it is so tied to who we are, then we have a problem. And we have a serious problem in this country right now with this very thing.

Partisanship is a weird thing. It’s a part of politics, but not the whole part. And not even the most important part. The most important parts of politics are the public policy, how decisions are made, how we do things that benefit the whole. Yet partisanship ends up being the part most people think of and pay attention to when they think about politics. Why is that?

To say that politics = partisanship would be equal to saying that food = Brussel Sprouts. Yes, Brussel Sprouts are a type of food, but food goes way beyond Brussel Sprouts. Thank goodness. I think I would starve otherwise.

In our current time partisanship is at both an all time high and low. Fewer people than ever identify with a political party or are registered with a political party. And at the same time, partisan identity has become so very important for so many people — finding out someone’s political leanings leads to breaking of relationships, fights, blocking people, verbal violence, leaving churches, boycotting…