Wednesday Morning: Politics of Love?

Commentary

by

The Lo-Fi Gospel Minute | July 2, 2025

Change is afoot.

Change at the federal level, change at the state level, change at the local level is all happening simultaneously. Maybe it’s always been like this. Maybe I’m just starting to notice. I can’t say. I live in a very progressive congressional district. The school board is progressive. The city council tries to be progressive. But around the state, people are voting away their own rights. People are voting away the medical care that their grandparents enjoy. People are voting away, their neighbors rights. The only people benefiting from what’s happening right now are the ultra rich and the other privileged white men in our midst.

I think it’s important to remember little tidbits like my mother did not have her own credit card until I was four years old. At least not on her own. My mother-in-law is also old enough to remember not having access to her own economic freedom. What year was it that a woman could divorce her husband in Virginia? What year was it that the schools were finally integrated in Richmond, VA? Look it up.

Everyone serving in office right now who voted for the passing of this horrific budget is trying to return us to a time where people had fewer rights than they presently enjoy. And they have convinced an enormous section of the electorate that this is a good thing.

They have done so by equating these political actions with religious virtue.

This is both a political and theological lie. It is malpractice.

Society is being changed through the malicious machinations of a privileged view.

Thus, it is incumbent upon us to actually fight. That’s my plan. I don’t know what that fight‘s gonna look like. I don’t know if I will take to the streets in some way. I don’t know if I will take to the pulpit in some way. All I know is that I started seminary in 2001 in the shadow of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. What many of us imagined being the fight throughout our careers has proven inaccurate. Though there is still Islamophobia and the threat of war in the Middle East and though there is genocide in Gaza, the real enemy is us. The real enemy is our own government. The real enemy is a conservative right wing societal backlash.

The real enemies are white men like me.

If you can’t see this, you aren’t paying attention.

We are the violent. We are the autocratic. We are the power mongers who have no regard for our neighbor’s health and safety. We don’t believe in the power of the marketplace to do good. We believe in a kind of social Darwinism that eradicates the socially weak. We believe in a society that places us at the top.

“But not all white men…”

Yes, there are a bunch of us who aren’t like this. But we were raised to be like this. Our society tried to get us to be like this. To be otherwise was an active choice. We had to fight against it. We had to fight against the pressures of what is so popularly known as toxic masculinity. We had fight against the pressures that said we were better than women. We had to fight against the pressures that said white men are the superior human.

So when I say “we” I am saying that we have all been formed in this ideology. Maybe we unlearned a lot of it. Maybe we fought against it. Maybe your grandmother was like my grandmother who would’ve kicked my ass if I had done anything remotely like these bastards and Congress have done.

None of that matters now. Those of us in a place of privilege in this culture need to take responsibility for those of us who are misusing privilege. We need to be able to look in the mirror and say, “not on my watch.”

I don’t know what this looks like yet. I haven’t gotten that far. I’m still packing boxes of books that I bought when I was being educated in Berkeley, California and Chicago, Illinois and Richmond, Virginia. I have had the great fortune of being educated across this country. And what I have learned has been how to unlearn who I was told I should be.

I know. I am Berkeley educated. What a travesty.

I’m about to move in to an intentional Christian community that has as its mission the undoing of economic violence, racism, and sexism. We pray. I believe prayer is efficacious. We also transform lives… Our own and others. We are a safe place for people to do the hard work of unlearning.

Can you imagine a world where everyone has healthcare? Can you imagine a world where people are “judged by the contents of their character and not the color of their skin“? Can you imagine a world where women enjoy equal pay with men? Can you imagine a world where women have the freedom to govern their own bodies? Can you imagine a world where Christians live the beatitudes rather than the ideologies of empire?

Can you imagine a world without billionaires? Is this too radical?

Am I about to lose my citizenship?

Today is Wednesday. I have work to do. I have people to visit. I have charting to do. Much of hospice work is charting your visit. I offer my services to everyone equally. I offer who I am to everyone equally. Even when they have Fox News on for the entire visit and bemoan fact that our country has been misled by Big Government and the Radical Left, I endeavor to love them. I play music. I pray. I am rigorously honest with them when asked specific questions. I endeavor to do this without picking a fight. This is the work I have been given for a time.

This does not make me better than anybody else. I think of this as a baseline for what it means to be human. We are called to love one another. Everyone. Even our enemies.

And yesterday many of us were reminded that we have enemies in this country. Love them. It is the only way forward.

The Rev. Tripp Hudgins is an ordained Baptist clergyman who is also a professional musician and a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis. He has been named pastoral director of the Richmond Hill faith community in Virginia. This post is republished with permission from his blog, "The Lo-Fi Gospel Minute."