Because faith matters, we need to ask ourselves whether, in this time of political stress, our faith has gotten swallowed up in our politics. If so, we need to rescue our faith from our politics so that maybe our faith might come to the rescue of our politics. I am a Reformation Protestant in my faith and a Liberal in my politics. I think what I have to say is also true of my Evangelical brothers and sisters, but then that’s not for me to say.

When we engage in politics, we claim to be “prophetic.” As I’ve struggled to write this article in the wake of our presidential election, I’ve found myself haunted more and more by the prophets’ cry: “Repent!” It’s always tempting to assume they were calling out to the Canaanites, or the Babylonians, or the Republicans or the Democrats. But the fact is that they were, first of all, calling out to themselves, so that they might speak truly, and then to their own people, so that they might live truly. And now they’re calling out to us.

Whatever else the stories of the prophets are, they are warnings to all of us would-be prophets of the temptations of the prophetic calling.

Six chapters into his prophetic outcry, Isaiah suddenly discovers himself to be “a man of unclean lips.” After this discovery he truly becomes the prophet of God we admire and not the puffed up prophet of himself that he was becoming in those first six chapters.

Elijah is the most dramatic example of the dangers of the prophetic calling. In the early part of his story he prophesies with great power, he brings a child back to life, he brings fire down from heaven when the Canaanite prophets of Baal can’t, and then he kills them all.

The Israelite King Ahab tells all this to Jezebel, his Canaanite wife, who had lured him into belief in the Baals, and she calls Elijah and tells him she will make him like the prophets of Baal. He becomes terrified and flees into the wilderness.

At first we think he flees because she’s threatening to kill him like he had killed the prophets of Baal. But why would he, who had just demonstrated such divine and human power be suddenly afraid of this Canaanite woman? It can only be that she’d made him realize that he had become like the prophets of Baal by committing their worst sin: the sacrifice of human beings in the name of their gods. And so he fled into the wilderness and finally into the arms of God (I Kings: 18-19).

The greatest temptations of our prophetic calling are our self-righteousness and our scorn for our political enemies. With our self-righteousness we spoil our rightness. If we don’t love our enemies, we become what we deplore in them. If we are to rescue our faith from our politics and maybe rescue our politics with our faith, we are called, first of all, to repent of our self-righteousness and our love of enmity. Then, flee into the wilderness that’s left and, hopefully, into the arms of God.

Allen Comstock is a retired United Church of Christ pastor. He has served churches in Heath, Rowe, Stockbridge, Boston, Charlemont, and Jeffersonville, Vermont. He has been interim or bridge pastor in South Hadley, North Adams, Montague Center, Shelburne Center and and Hartland, Vermont.