After the Election: You are crucial to this community in this time

Dear people of Saint Peter’s,

I offer this pastoral letter as a reflection on this present election cycle. I am intentionally not restating sage words that have been said by other faith leaders; instead, I offer this reflection as a way of digging a little deeper and giving us all something to linger with us and animate us for some time to come. Here’s my main point: in this time, you are crucial to our community.

This conviction isn’t something I or any modern faith leader suddenly formulated. It is based in the history of humanity, the history of God’s people, the history of Christianity. The pioneering scholarship of a trio of Yale University historians – John Boswell, Wayne Meeks, and Dale Martin – is at the forefront of my mind. Examining the ancient world in which Christianity emerged and was formed, their research points to the sheer number and strength of Christian communities in an environment we at Saint Peter’s know very well: cities.

The Greek word for city is polis. A polis, a type of all-in-one city-state with various relationships to still wider socio-economic/political structures, was home to businesses of all different sorts; people of many ethnicities; citizens of the empire as well as persons who were enslaved, and everyone in-between; practitioners of imperial religion as well as others like Judaism or Christianity. In the polis, gender roles common in the countryside were more readily redefined or bent. A person who didn’t quite fit the mold of other environs — whether political viewpoints or sexual orientation or religious practice — found the polis to be a place of relative safety. One could discover in the polis persons like one’s self or persons different from one’s self. What might have stuck out like a sore thumb elsewhere, blended in among the diversity of the polis.

Christianity developed and flourished in this milieu. Those who belonged to Christian communities came from across the entire cross-section of the polis. Here’s the interesting thing: that Christianity was so diverse and received so many different people into koinonia (a Greek word meaning communion, which is broader than the idea of membership) was an anomaly. Early urban Christian communities were unlike clubs or organizations of the like-minded or affinity groups of the polis. All these were much more monolithic than the koinonia — even though everyone shared a common home, the polis.

When we read the literature either authored by or attributed to Saint Paul in our Bibles, we are reading about these communities. At its root, this literature tells us a bit about how these urban Christians are trying to form and live as a koinonia, teeming with energy and filled with the dynamics that come with perspectives of all different sorts. Faced with a wide array of questions about how to live in unity amidst this great diversity, Saint Paul’s advice is consistent: value the most otherwise unvalued; be patient with one another and with yourself; prioritize understanding.



Perhaps you were born in New York City. Perhaps you moved here for a job. Perhaps you migrated here by choice or under order from another State’s governor. Perhaps you came here to find others like you and others who are not like you. However you came to New York City and the expansive metropolis (there’s that root Greek word once again — polis!) around us, if you are here today it is likely that the vibrant and expansive life that defines New York City is “food for your soul.” It shapes you just as much as you shape it. And for us, our beloved koinonia that is Saint Peter’s is at the heart of it all.

Whether or not you believe American democracy is the most important thing at stake in the coming four years, I think we can all agree that the vitality of the life of the polis is not the viewpoint embraced in this last election. Point in fact, the richness of polis life, itself, has been demonized and denigrated: from openness to new migrants to people of different sexual orientations or gender identities; from people’s volition over their own bodies to taking care of the most vulnerable in our midst.

Across time and across civilizations, the polis, and its various equivalents, has been a defining mark of the world’s most dynamic civilizations. Mindful of this, now – perhaps more than ever in our lifetime – we who find life and live our lives in this great city must recommit ourselves to the polis.

In the book of Jeremiah, God’s people are told to “seek the well-being of the city” in which they lived in exile in Babylon. Much can be said about this imperative. For us, a Christian koinonia, we seek the well-being of the city because it is us. Like our urban Christian ancestors, the diversity of our life and the life of our diversity is the diversity and the life of our polis. We pray for and seek a nation that will not simply respect, but allow this life to thrive.

With this way of life in the balance, of course we are — we should be — distraught and cautious. Yet, we cannot allow distress or caution to lead to despondency. Because we are and we must be the City we love, we are and must also be, inspired by our polis, the nation that we love.

In my life, I’ve come to know that the best way for me to avoid despondency is to act.

And so, I’d like to suggest that in the time ahead we “seek the well-being of the City,” and thereby the well-being of the nation, by acting in a few key ways:

First: Identify the most vulnerable persons in our midst and protect them. The polis is only polis with them. This means speaking up for, standing up with and accompanying the most vulnerable.

Next is this: Taking our cue from the way in which Christianity — we — are shaped as a united body amidst extraordinary diversity, actively speak about that which unites us rather than that which divides us. And, this is important: encourage others to do the same. Unity in diversity is the fundamental strength of koinonia in a polis. Our life in community is a living example of unity in diversity — and my goodness do we need this unity in diversity now!

Finally, while there is nothing wrong with anger or a healthy suspicion of what someone’s intentions may or may not be, the key to life together in koinonia, in a polis, in a nation is engagement. Engagement can take on many forms. Learning flourished in every vibrant ancient polis. So, too, engaging in respectful discourse. The idea of loving your neighbor is engagement: people living side-by-side with differences of all sorts. If we are to flourish as a nation, we who know the life of the polis, must double down on engagement with our neighbors both near — and far.

This is a long pastoral letter. I hope that in some way it has brought a piece of the history and breadth of the Christian tradition to bear on this moment. More than anything, I hope in reading it you will appreciate more and more just how crucial your presence and witness is to life in koinonia at Saint Peter’s, how crucial the presence and witness of Saint Peter’s is to the life of the polis we call New York City, and how crucial the presence and witness of New York City is to the life of the nation. This is, after all, our common home.

Grace and peace to you,

Jared R. Stahler

Senior Pastor