Lament and Grievance Politics

Grievance politics has occupied a central role in American politics for over a decade, but it also festers within American churches. Practitioners of this political mode stoke negative emotions and use blame-based strategies against opponents. Grievance politics is less interested in finding democratic solutions than in seeking dominance over declared enemies.

We could take grievance politics’ presence in churches as merely another example of the dominant culture—including our media and social media—shaping us more than Christian theology does, but something else is also at play. Grievance fills the vacuum in American Christianity we created when churches abandoned the ancient practice of lament. Thankfully, a renewal of this form of prayer will help us reject grievance as our dominant mode of social interaction.

The Vacuum

In his 1986 article, “The Costly Loss of Lament,” the late Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann illustrates the deleterious effects of excising lament from our liturgical practices. Faith without lament stunts our development as covenant partners with God and limits our ability to stand against injustice. Without lament, we have no way of bringing to God matters of personal suffering or systemic oppression. Our worship thins out to a celebration that is, “a practice of denial, cover-up, and pretense, which sanctions social control.” (102)

Losing lament reduces God to a coping mechanism for life’s challenges. Worse, a faith without lament makes the God of Israel who hears the Hebrews’ cries—i.e., their laments—and delivers them from slavery across the Red Sea not only unintelligible, but a metaphysical impossibility.

I want to look at another cost of losing lament. The trust and neighborly concern needed for a healthy body politic dissipates without this form of prayer. When we cannot bring our complaints to God, we turn on our neighbors.

A foundational myth of America tells us we have a birthright to success and endless progress. This myth takes on a religious dimension in the American Church as we believe God ordains our constant growth and ever-increasing profits. Soong-Chan Rah shows the danger of this myth in our lives in his book, Prophetic Lament. Americans, and especially American Christians, are not supposed to lose or suffer setbacks. But loss will come, and if we can only offer praise to God, we will have no spiritual resources when we face layoffs, terminal illnesses, crime in our communities, disparate health care outcomes, infertility, or the death of loved ones.

Who then will bear the weight of our natural anger and disillusionment? Before answering that question, let’s compare and contrast lament with grievance politics.

Lament

Lament and grievance politics share similar features. Both acknowledge life is not going well. Injustice and chaos seem to reign. The righteous experience defeat while the unjust gain victory. Lamentation and grievance give voice to the anger, shame, and pain people feel. They diverge, however, both in their assessment of who is truly responsible for the loss of well-being, and their believed solution to these troubles.

The Book of Psalms contain laments in which the writers cry out to God as they suffer injustice or calamity. Some laments take the shape of indictments against God (Ps 13) and others are prayers against one’s enemies (Ps 109). By laying accusations against God, the psalmists proclaim God is, or should be, in control. In asking God, “How long?” before God acts, the psalmists affirm God is the sole source of their salvation. The psalmists say shockingly angry, even violent things against their neighbors and enemies (Ps 137). However, they leave that rage before God—they do not take it upon themselves to avenge their losses.

Lament is not a destination in biblical prayer—it is part of a cycle that moves from praise when life is secure, to lament when calamity hits, and to thanksgiving when God brings deliverance. This cycle dispels the falsehood of constant success, while acknowledging painful and disorienting loss is a feature of life. Lament prayers have movements of their own. The psalmists cry out to God, describe their pain, petition God to fix the problem, and usually end with a statement of trust and a commitment to worship God again.

Being honest in our laments allows us to mourn the loss of our former stability and eventually embrace the new realities God creates. Lament draws us nearer to God. It makes forgiveness of our enemies possible by placing our anger before the one who can hold and transform our rage.

Grievance Politics

Grievance politics also names frustration and suffering, but with the larger goal of fomenting distrust between neighbors. Differences of viewpoint become threats to one’s way of life. Those who disagree, or come from different backgrounds, are idiotic or evil. The democratic work of seeking solutions to problems through debate and compromise gives way to blame, anger, and victimization. Grievance politics tells us we were right to believe we should never lose or suffer. We don’t have to change. We deserve to return to the secure, happy past. But, in this political vision, we close ourselves to new possibilities of God’s work.

Grievance politics supplies the answer of who bears responsibility for our suffering and lost sense of well-being—namely, our neighbors. Those people. Had they not done that awful thing, had they not lived among us, we would still be secure and happy. Grievance does not foster forgiveness or grace, but demands we take retribution on those who infuriate us. We are seeing the the dangerous and fatal fruit of grievance’s seeds with the resurgence of political violence—assassinations of and assassination attempts on elected officials and political activists, kidnapping plots, pipe bombs, the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The Right Shoulders

So, who will bear the weight of our grief, particularly if in our hollowed-out worship, God is only to be praised and bears no responsibility for our disappointment? We cannot hold that pain, so grievance politics steps in to tell us to put the blame on our neighbors.

The fact is, our enemies and neighbors cannot bear our grief either. The Christian practice of lament reminds us God alone has shoulders strong enough to take our disappointments. Even more, Jesus alone can deliver us and redeem our loss. New possibilities arise when we say to God, “This is wrong—what are you going to do about it?” The Hebrews did not return to the former time in Egypt when an earlier Pharaoh treated them with respect. They lamented to God and received a new reality free from an oppressive regime and with a home of their own.

A Church that regularly practiced lament would not be so susceptible to the dangerous lure of grievance politics because we would bring our confusion and pain to the God who can deliver us. The Holy Spirit can then transform our suffering so that we seek our enemy’s salvation and well-being, not their defeat.

Our congregations need a renewal of lament. It will take time, but we have powerful resources to teach us to give our rage to God. By gathering to pray those discomforting psalms with their raw language we will experience what Brueggemann calls, “God’s dangerous availability.” (108) No skipping psalms or amputating unseemly verses just because they disturb us. Let their shocking words lead us to lay all our inner anger, no matter how ugly, before God.

People will think and do things that frustrate us. If we approach them with the tools of grievance politics, we will have no means to work through our differences. We are seeing the awful effects of that polarization and lack of reconciliation in our churches and nation now. If we bring our frustrations to God through lament, however, we can fully deal with our disappointment so we may together build healthier communities.

Tyler Watson writes fiction and theology. He has served as a pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church and earned his MDiv from Fuller Theological Seminary. He has written one novel, The Gospel According to Doubters and Traitors, and several devotionals. You can find more about those works on this site.