Prayer is a Political Act

Today's election has caused me to pause and think about the church's engagement with politics. Actually, framing the issue as the "church's engagement with politics" is deceptive - as if politics and the church are separate entities that only occasionally interact. If, however, the church's fundamental claim that shapes its identity is that "Jesus is Lord", then the church by its nature is an alternative politic. It's a politic because "Jesus is Lord" and its alternative because "Jesus is Lord". The implications for this are enormous, and I don't even want to try right now to explore some of them. Instead, I want to turn to something else that I've been thinking about recently.
As citizens of the American politic, perhaps a good case can be made that we have a responsibility to vote. Christians will often speak of voting as the way in which Christians need to engage with the "political sphere". However, since the church believes that God is the sovereign ruler of the world and the Lord of History, we have a more important political act - prayer. To not see prayer as a political act is to believe that Democrats and Republicans rule the world, and not God. The idea that prayer is simply a religious act reveals that we believe in a God whose role consists in nothing more than the maintenance of our souls - a good therapist, but not the God of the Bible. Praying is political because our God is the one who "brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing"(Is 40:23). The rulers of this age are mere pawns in His hand. So let us be political during this election time. Let us pray.