When I learned that a third No Kings rally is scheduled nationwide for March 28, I decided to engage. If anyone would like to be on an organizing committee with me, shoot me an email at tomholmes10@gmail.com. If one of you is already at work in that regard, let me know. I’m motivated to help.
What I would like to explore in this column is the role religion now plays — in the public square in general and in politics in particular — and the role it should play.
Last week one of my “none” friends asked me if I had heard about the 100 clergy who had been arrested as they participated in a large anti-ICE rally in the Minneapolis airport. He is not a religious guy and is a firm backer of the separation of church and state, but he was impressed with the action of those clergy.
A post dated 10/18/25 by a person named Danielle James read, “Thousands of Grand Rapids protesters who marched through downtown streets on Saturday were led by a coalition of two dozen West Michigan clergy members, who held hands up to stop oncoming traffic and at one point knelt in the street to pray.”
An article in Wednesday Journal, dated July 15, 2025 reported, “Another protest against President Donald Trump is planned for Oak Park this week. This protest is being planned by Congregations Networking for Social Justice, the Oak Park interfaith group.”
Forest Parkers voted for Kamala Harris in about the same percentages as did residents of Oak Park, so politically we are roughly similar regarding how we vote, but we do the relationship between church and politics differently.
None of the eight churches in Forest Park were involved in the planning of the No Kings protest in Constitution Court on June 14, 2025. What happened was I mentioned in a Review column that I was interested in doing an anti-Trump rally and included my email in the piece. Eight people responded by email, so I expected the protest to be small. On June 14, however, a total of around 200 showed up.
No one in attendance wore a clergy collar.
I’ve been covering religion in Forest Park for over 20 years, and my sense is that the clergy in town are theologically and politically more conservative than those in the village across Harlem Avenue from us and notably more conservative than the residents themselves.
Strange bedfellows?
I sent out an email last week asking all the pastors in town if they had done or said anything in public regarding the immigration issue. Out of 11 clergy, two responded. One wrote, “This is a complicated situation, and I have no comment at this moment.”
The other said that neither he nor his congregation had done or said anything about immigration, but added two Bible passages — Romans 13:1-7, 1 Peter 2:13-14 — which instruct readers to obey governing authorities. He ended his response with, “P.S. Please don’t quote me specifically in the article. I don’t want our church burned down or my tires slashed. That’s the modus operandi of the far left these days.”
How does that work?
Four years ago a Trump voter said to me, “I don’t understand Black Lives Matter. Don’t all lives matter?”
In her mind, race relations played out on a one-to-one basis, person to person, neighbor to neighbor. She would agree with Nikki Haley who declared, “We’re not a racist nation. We’re a nation with some racists.”
For most of the conservatives around here that I know, the system is not the problem; the problem is in the hearts and minds of each individual person.
“From one-on-one evangelism,” states the Living Word website, “to reaching the world through television, radio, internet, and crusades, we are touching and changing the world for Jesus Christ.”
Pastor Bill Winston founded the Joseph Business School in 1998, because he believed that the system in this country is fine. What needs to change are individuals who, one by one, are taught how to fit in and work the system. What needs to change is not the system but individuals.
Likewise, the Forest Park Baptist Church lists among its beliefs:
Salvation is redemption by Christ of the whole person from sin and death.
Christians, individually and collectively, are salt and light in society.
God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring all things to their appropriate end and establish the new heaven and the new earth.
In the DNA of Baptists is a strong resistance to anyone other than God’s Word telling them what political ideology to subscribe to. It’s enough to declare that believers are to be salt and light in society. There also exists a strong aversion to imagining that we mortals can, by our own reason and strength, establish “a new heaven and a new earth.”
Another way of asking about the role of religion in politics is to ask about the role of politics in religion.
