I sent this letter to The Table Church on November 7, 2026, after the midterm elections.
Friends,
The past two years have been hard on the world, hard on this country, and hard on Washington in particular.
We've watched policies take effect that cost people their jobs and stripped away their rights. DOGE gutted USAID in a matter of weeks, costing more than 750,000 lives in the first year, most of them children. The true number will never be known because many of the systems that counted the dead were shut down too.
That grief came home to The Table. Many of us lost jobs. Some of us lost careers we'd spent decades building, as the whole concept of foreign aid and international development disappeared almost overnight.
As a pastor, I've felt a shadow hanging over this city. We have a president who resents DC and its culture, and who seems to resent anything he doesn't understand—a pluralistic society most of all. This church is built on the full welcome of queer and trans people, on care for the immigrant and the stranger. Our president treats both with open contempt. National Guard troops from across the country have been needlessly posted on our streets. We watched the East Wing of the White House come down under excavators and the Kennedy Center shut down. We've watched our city get dismantled in front of us.
So this past Tuesday felt like a long exhale. Control of both the House and the Senate changed hands, by margins almost nobody predicted. Come January, Congress will have the power to place some semblance of restraint on this administration.
Some of us—dare I say it?—are feeling something like hope. Some of us are feeling—what is this feeling, so sudden and new—joy. I'm letting myself believe the next two years won't be nearly as bad as the last two, and that maybe, even maybe, something good might happen. 🤯
And I also want us to be clear-eyed about what comes next. The infighting has already started. Some of the candidates who won last week backed away from trans people to get there, and there's the reality that Democrats will keep using trans people as a punching bag whenever the polls make them nervous. Let me be clear that, in the name of Jesus, we reject that as a way forward. Trans people at The Table are our siblings and our leaders, and they're nobody's bargaining chip.
There's a second danger. The harm of these two years could go unanswered. This administration's crimes could go unprosecuted, and the people who lost their livelihoods and their rights could be told it's time to move on. But we believe that a just and beautiful society has to include repair, and repair means reparations. When salvation came to Zacchaeus's house, it came with restitution, half his possessions to the poor and four times back to anyone he'd cheated (Luke 19:8–9).
Predictably, I keep coming back to a scene from the film version of The Two Towers. Frodo, worn down to almost nothing, asks, “What are we holding on to, Sam?” And Sam answers, “That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”
We spent a good part of these two years lamenting and grieving, and we needed to. But we also need a foundation of joy, and the people who know the most about building one are the people this country has harmed the most. Black churches kept singing through Jim Crow. Queer and trans people built ballroom and Pride out of a world that wanted them gone. Joy in the middle of oppression is a practice they've been teaching for generations, and we can learn it from them.
Paul wrote to the Philippians from prison, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation” (Philippians 4:12, NIV). The same letter tells them, twice in one breath, to rejoice (4:4).
A worry I have for us now is complacency. Relief can turn into rest, but rest can turn into checking out. Yes, let us catch our breath for a moment. And then we get back to work.
We'll speak up louder for trans people and for women's medical rights. We'll keep saying that gutting USAID was a moral catastrophe and that it has to be rebuilt. We'll keep declaring that ICE and anti-immigrant policies are evil and unbiblical. We'll keep naming as depraved the war the United States launched against Iran which has killed thousands of Iranian civilians. And we won't forget Sudan or eastern Congo or Palestine.
We do this because when we pray, we move our feet. Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Then he sent the people who'd learned that prayer out to heal the sick and announce that the kingdom had come near (Matthew 10:7–8). We don't get to pray it and then wait in the pew for it to arrive. God's will gets done on earth through people, and we're the people. So we'll be the ones who bring God's reign of justice on earth as it is in heaven.
So celebrate. Breathe that sigh of relief. Then keep holding our leaders accountable, whoever they are, and don't grow weary in doing good (Galatians 6:9). The word Paul uses for good there is kalon (καλόν), and it also means beautiful. Don't grow weary in doing beauty.
There's some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for. So we'll wage peace. We'll wage joy. We'll wage gentleness and goodness and kindness, in the name of Jesus, until all people everywhere know freedom and liberation.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Anthony
