About “The Ballot and the Bible”

In the fall of 2023, Kaitlyn Schiess, Duke Divinity doctoral student and Blacknall member, taught a four-week course inspired by her book “The Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here” (Brazos, 2023). America is Bible-saturated culture. American history is full of politicians, pastors, and pundits invoking biblical references to support political causes. And yet for all our familiarity with the Bible, we are woefully ignorant about how or why we are using the Bible in politics. How can we apply passages written thousands of years ago to contemporary politics? How can we dialogue with people who interpret passages differently than we do? How can we respond to Facebook posts that use bullet point verses or cherry-picking pamphlets? The answer might be found not merely in how we interpret the Bible but by critically examining our own history and our own hearts.

Kaitlyn Schiess (ThM, Dallas Theological Seminary) is a writer, speaker, and theologian. She is the author of “The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor” and is a regular cohost on the Holy Post podcast with Skye Jethani and Phil Vischer. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Christianity Today, Christ and Pop Culture, Relevant, and Sojourners. Schiess is currently a doctoral student in political theology at Duke Divinity School. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.