Many Americans say politics induce stress and complicate their physical and emotional health. Christians are not immune to this anxiety. Even those who seek the peace of their cities through the power of the gospel often also express political overwhelm, fear, and anxiety.
Author Sara Billups sees a connection between personal and political well-being, and she sat down with The Bulletin’s Clarissa Moll to talk about how anxiety manifests in our lives and politics and how practices that encourage surrender and trust can offer an antidote to the stress politics often brings. Here are edited excerpts from their conversation in episode 225.
How do you define anxiety?
Anxiety is a future-facing, ambiguous sense of dread that can cause physical symptoms. Some people are diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. Others just tend toward anxiety. There’s often a genetic component, whether generationally or through epigenetics. Many of us experience anxiety because of what’s going on in our communities and the world.
Anxiety, in and of itself, is not something that we want to eradicate. It’s a natural response in our bodies. Parts of anxiety are lovely. For example, anxious people tend to be imaginative and creative, good storytellers. Anxiety can prompt deeper empathy or a desire to connect. Beautiful gifts can flow from the disposition sometimes. The problem comes when anxiety’s volume goes up too high.
How does personal anxiety influence our politics?
There’s a somatic as well as corporate angle to political anxiety. Political anxiety is not officially in the DSM-5 as a diagnosis, but it is something that many people experience. After the 2020 election, two-thirds of American adults said that the election was a big source of stress in their lives. That number was significantly higher than it was in 2016.
We are anxious as the body politic. Our political dispositions and our culture-war issues are bound to our well-being. The root of anxiety is often uncertainty, a need for control, a grasping or desire to be okay. That’s a very human, natural thing. But we have conflated our well-being with our particular political identities.
So much of our rhetoric centers on not tolerating difference. We resist reaching across the aisle because maybe we’ll be associated with a certain outcome. It’s easier to say, I can’t reconcile with you because you stand for something that I see as oppressive or a structure that is antithetical to my belief system. That unraveling leads to war against one another. There is no way to reconcile, to heal, to move forward.
If we begin to regulate the anxiety in our bodies, it can trickle up to better collective understanding. Conversely, when pastors and church leaders model being non-anxious, it can trickle down into a healing effect that can be modeled by and amplified by a congregation.
We have to be realists. This is deeply uncomfortable work, but it is life-giving personally and collectively. I believe that the church is our best hope still at modeling this kind of reconciliation and healing. Even as a person living in Seattle in the wake of Mars Hill, living in an epicenter of culture clashes, I choose to believe there is a chance for renewal and change.
How can embodiment offer relief from political anxiety?
Church can be a very grounding place to be connected and fortified. A healthy church community can help us think about how to navigate political anxiety. There are about 150 people at my church here in Seattle. One Sunday, we all stood around the sanctuary while one of our pastors held a large rock. She said, “If you’re comfortable, pass this to the person on your right and tell them something you’re carrying. Then the person can say back to you, ‘By the grace of God, I’ll carry this with you.’” That collective, physical exercise brought forth emotion and connection; it was something I’ve rarely experienced in church before.
Being grounded helps us to serve and care for others. Ignatius of Loyola talks about different binaries, a short life or a long one, fame or disgrace, health or illness. Instead of being focused on the outcome of these binaries, he says we must open our hands in a posture of holy indifference. If we are convinced of God’s goodness, whatever the outcome would be, can we glorify God? Can we move toward that kind of wholeness and conviction? This holy indifference frees us from needing to win. It lets us learn how to lose in the way of Jesus. It helps us relax from striving and be honest. It can help to practice this surrender in a community of people who are willing to do it with and beside you.
Holy indifference seems to require a great deal of trust. When your trust has been broken by your political system or church, perhaps even by your own body because of illness or aging, how do you begin?
I started looking at the lives of the saints that came before me. Thérèse of Lisieux lived a very short life, but she was incredibly wise. She says, I accept for love of you “the joys and sorrows of this passing life.”
Look back to the desert mothers and fathers, to people who had a life that we would probably categorize as one of suffering but found presence, connection, and community in the midst of affliction. Jesus modeled indifference by his choosing to die, choosing to succumb to the Roman Empire. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus prays, “Your will be done.” That’s the perfect example of holy indifference. The hymn says, “It is well with my soul.” This idea is everywhere. When you tune your thoughts to it, it becomes a constant way to form your thinking, to surrender small practical things or large systemic stresses. These examples remind me why I am a Christian. Where else would I go? I am clinging to Jesus.
How do Christians balance the call for stillness with the call to invest—in our churches, in people, in causes, or for civic renewal?
There are so many competing interests and such little time. We all have a lot going on. Holy indifference is really a posture, a way of thinking, and an idea to bring into prayer. It begins with a way of seeing that can then infuse into the practical work that we do to love the people in our lives. This posture can drive us to show up for vulnerable populations, not opting out but having inner acceptance of any outcomes so that we can much more freely pour out into the places that need support.
Even when we commit to holy indifference, anxiety may persist. The examen is a contemplative tradition where, at the end of the day, you scan back over the day and realize where God showed up. The examen invites Christians to reflect on where you could have done better, where you need to apologize. Then, you set an intention for the next day. When we do that, we can begin to sense God’s love, which is always more than enough.
God’s love meets our anxiety in that stillness. When we are afraid or flooded, we can ask God to show us his love and consolation and nearness. As we commit to rhythms like this, we begin to notice God more.
In the end, it is not your job to solve, to fix, to reconcile. God wants to draw people to himself. The Holy Spirit is alive and active in you, in your life, in the world right now. You can be less anxious if you accept and realize that it doesn’t all rest on your shoulders. You can be present and love your people well.
The central question I’ve had since I was a kid is this: When we read to not worry, like the lilies or the birds of the air, what do we do when we feel and carry these worries that we can’t shake? God did not take away my anxiety. Instead, he’s given me the capacity to live well, love my people and my community, and love him in the presence of limitations. He’s enabled me to actually find joy in the midst of them.
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