I was disappointed, but hardly surprised. How many times have we said that about people or systems in our lives? I have said that about the Democratic Party so many times, especially this year, that I feel like I want to trademark that statement. I’d make a killing. Last week 8 Democratic Senators voted to end the government shutdown by getting Senate Majority Leader John Thune to promise a vote on extending ACA healthcare subsidies in December. Wow, way to go guys. You really stuck it to the Republicans and to trump. You are getting a vote in the Senate which won’t pass and even if it did, won’t be taken up by the House. Way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. 

I guess this, for Democrats, is progress. In March, 10 Democratic Senators advanced a stopgap funding bill — a move that sparked a huge backlash against Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Maybe in a few months we will get down to 6 Democratic Senators to oppose trump in a nuclear war against Luxembourg. Progress. 

One of my Senators, Tim Kaine, was one of the eight Senators. I honestly really like Kaine. He is probably one of the more theologically lucid politicians I know. But I left him a message on his comments line promising him I would vote for whoever primaries him next time he is up. And if no one primaries him, I will. The truth is that the Democratic establishment does not really listen or care about the people who regularly vote for them. It’s not just that they gave in for absolutely nothing. It’s also when they did it. The elections across the country on Tuesday the 4th gave the Democrats enormous power. It happened all over! In Virginia a very moderate Democrat won by 15 points, and the Democratic Attorney General candidate who stupidly texted that he wanted to see a Republican politician watch his family die because he does not care about gun violence (of course, what Republican politician does care about gun violence?) won by 5 points! 

Democrats won by a landslide – a literal landslide. Not one of trump’s delusional landslides. A real landslide. A week later, they sheepishly gave that away and traded their power for a mess of pottage. Again, I was disappointed but hardly surprised. I don’t think I am jaded. Just experienced with institutions more interested in accruing and maintaining power than in using it for the benefit of others. 

I first learned to mistrust institutions when I was a part of the institutional church. I am sure this is not distinctive of the United Methodist Church, but that is where I first saw an institution engage in practices directly opposite of what it proclaimed to be true. I remember attending First United Methodist Church of Plano, Texas as a child and driving into the parking lot where scores of very nice cars were parked. After sitting in a very boring Sunday School class I then sat through an even more boring worship service. But I did listen. I listened to the pastor talk about God’s unconditional love given freely to everyone no matter what color they were, no matter what they wore, no matter what station in life they occupied. However, when I looked around our church we were all white. And if it didn’t matter what we wore, why was there such a thing as ”church clothes” and why the hell were they so uncomfortable? God may love us unconditionally, but the church definitely has conditions and a lot of them. 

It wasn’t just the blatant inconsistencies I saw when I was a child. Just this week I learned that though United Methodist bishops proclaimed at the end of 2024 that they were going to forego a pay raise for 2025, they reneged on that promise in April and did indeed reward themselves with higher salaries raising US bishops’ annual pay to an alarming $186,000 a year. Who doesn’t want to struggle for Jesus for almost $200k? And 2025 seems a surprising time for bishops to decide to reward themselves with such largesse. This year we have seen so many sectors of our society feel the full effects of trump’s idiotic economic policies including the tens of thousands of government employees who were illegally fired. I can’t imagine being negatively impacted by trump’s nonsensical tariffs or losing my job and then hearing that the leaders of my church were discounting the slightest attempt at solidarity and instead insisting that they give themselves $186,000 a year in pay. 

This is obscene, but yet again, hardly surprising. I worked in the upper echelons of the United Methodist Church and saw daily the complete disconnect between agency staff and bishops and local churches. Like elected Democratic leaders, United Methodist leadership has evidently forgotten why they are in the position they are in. 

There is a chant at demonstrations that I am hearing more and more frequently. “WE KEEP US SAFE!” This is meant to convey to the trump administration that we do not need ICE or the unholy alliance between ICE and the Metropolitan Police Department. But WE KEEP US SAFE can also be directed at those leaders and institutions that think they are serving us. WE KEEP US SAFE means that those who take us for granted should do so no longer. Leaders and institutions may parrot the rhetoric of caring about justice, but their actions show they are focused on their own welfare, their own power, their own institutional well-being. WE KEEP US SAFE means we are on our own. We are the change we need. We are the leaders we have been waiting for. For some of us, this is hardly surprising.