Faithfulness Minus the Partisanship: Lessons from an Unlikely Monk (Thomas Merton)

In an age when politics often demands allegiance, when “choosing a side” becomes a badge of honor, the call of faithfulness in our generation can sound illusory.

But it raises the question:

How does one stand with Jesus, or any religion, or your particular values and convictions, and yet not be owned by an ideological tribe?

The monk and writer Thomas Merton (1915-1968) offers enduring wisdom and a hopeful way forward—especially in the increasing politicized moment we find ourselves. The pressure Christians (and all humans) feel in aligning with a party, leader, or ideology with little reflection creates a paralyzing effect.

Instead of engagement, it often creates indifference.

Merton lived through the Cold War, the civil-rights era, and the beginnings of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He wrote not as a politician but as someone rooted in a God-centered and contemplative way of life.

The monk from Kentucky was not blind to the ills of society in the 50s and 60s. Merton knew deeply that a faithful Christian witness isn’t silent when confronted by systemic violence, racism, fear, and power. But he also knew that merely shouting into the void was not the most effective strategy.

Thomas Merton spent most of his life cultivating a deep wisdom, prayerfulness, and inner life with God, not allow for the seduction of political one-sidedness. Merton warned: once we choose sides, political or ideological, we risk becoming trapped, blind, and idolizing the party or ideology of our choosing.

Once we succumb to the power of ideologies, good, and bad, we have little room to resist. We have little room for God and the Kingdom to shape our souls.

The Danger of “taking sides”

Merton’s insights are blunt and challenging. When speaking about war, he says:

“At the root of all war is fear: not so much the fear men have of one another as the fear they have of everything. … It is not only our hatred of others that is dangerous but also and above all our hatred of ourselves … For it is this which makes us see our own evil in others and unable to see it in ourselves.” (National Catholic Reporter)

What does that have to do with political partisanship? What does this have to do with being faithful in our generation?

Everything.

When we align with “our side,” we often begin by seeing clearly “their side’s” faults—but we forget that we have faults, too. Nobody under heaven sees everything with clear eyes. They are called “blind spots” for a reason. Merton reminds us that the more rigid our side becomes, the less space we have to see our own idols, our own fears, and our own sin and shadows.

“For it is this which makes us see our own evil in others and unable to see it in ourselves.”

In his essay on nonviolence, he observes that modern society’s violence is “nourished by a brutal and convenient mythology which simply legalizes the use of force by big criminals against little criminals—whose small-scale criminality is largely caused by the large-scale injustice under which they live.” (smp.org)

Our system of Empire in America, and in the world, are not wired for the “little” and “ordinary” and “voiceless” and “unseen” of society. Only the connected, wealthy, and powerful survive.

When Christian engagement becomes indistinguishable from political tribalism, we risk taking part in that mythology: our side right, their side wrong; our party, our brand, our “nation” as ultimate good.

Merton’s challenge remains: be faithful without being partisan.

Faith First, Choose a Side Second (or not at all)

Merton emphasized that Christian nonviolence rests on a theological story, not on an ideological “side.”

“Christian nonviolence is not built on a presupposed division, but on the basic unity of [humankind]… It is not out for the conversion of the wicked to the ideas of the good, but for the healing and reconciliation of … the human family.” (The religious imagineer)

When faith in God is supreme, then political engagement flows from the Gospel. We see a bigger mission at work. The reconciliation of all things in Christ. When ideologies or politics are supreme we divide humanity into “sides.”

Merton writes in Faith and Violence:

“Theology today needs to focus carefully upon the crucial problem of violence. … Man not only is more frustrated, more crowded, more subject to psychotic and hostile delusion than ever, but also has at his disposition an arsenal of weapons that make global suicide an easy possibility.” (University of Notre Dame)

Merton’s thesis: the Christian must respond to systemic injustice, to war and violence, but not simply in terms of “we vs. them” ideology. Rather, the church must critique all sides, including the one it might naturally belong to because of the distortions of power, fear, nationalism, and idolatry.

The grounding theology of the “imago-dei” must be central to our politicking. Because God created all humans in His image, they all deserve dignity and respect. If we don’t take this posture, our ideologies become supreme, and we dehumanize one another.

Case in point: current modern politics in America. You not only vote differently than I do; you are less human. You are a bad person.

The Risk of Being Beholden

Once a follower of Jesus becomes entrenched in a political side, several risks follow:

Blind spots: When “our side” is sacred, we stop seeing its flaws. Merton observed that “once again, Merton advises that … the evils we suffer cannot be eliminated by a violent attack in which one sector of humanity flies at another in destructive fury. Our evils are common and the solution of them can only be common.” (merton.org)

The “common evils,” woven into every political party are obvious. But when we are beholden to a party affiliation, we stop seeing them. We believe our party is the answer to all ills of society. A utopia on earth.

Idols of our own making: Loyalty can become worship of a cause. The church becomes the partisan cheerleader instead of the prophetic voice. Merton wrote of modern propaganda and “mass-thinking” that transforms the war narrative into myth and spectacle. (merton.org)

The problem with idols is they never quite deliver on their promises. They make us passive and ill-equipped to reflect wisely, and instead merely mimic the “mass thinking” of the moment.

Loss of contemplative grounding: When activism (political or otherwise) is driven by team-spirit rather than reflection, prayer, and discernment, the action may be sharp—but shallow, reactive, driven by fear or envy, not by love. Merton called the frenetic life of modern activism “a form of its innate violence.” (jimandnancyforest.com)

Much of our activism is shallow because it’s filled with grievance, emotion, and little reflection and prayer. We get caught up in a moment instead of considering the common good and long - term effects at stake.

So, is there hope? What does faithfulness without partisanship look like in practice?

1. Cultivate an inner life.

Merton believed that true resistance to injustice starts with the transformation of one’s own heart. Without this inner work, our external alliances merely replicate the structures of violence. Our external alliances mirror the diseased soul.

He stated: “Only the admission of defect and fallibility in oneself makes it possible to become merciful to others.” (merton.org)

2. Critique every side—even your side.

The Christian witness must remain capable of saying “we are wrong too.” Merton’s nonviolence ethic insists on refusing easy binaries. He proposed these nonviolent principles: “be free from unconscious connivance with an unjust and established abuse of power”; “dread a facile and fanatical self-righteousness and refrain from being satisfied with dramatic self-justifying gestures.” (The religious imagineer)

Much of the current political discourse is built on getting us to hate the other side. Everything is binary, you are either for us, or against us. Even worse, we use language around “God” being on our side. God hates the same people we hate, and the loves the same people we love.

So if you are not in the right camp, God has abandoned you. This is not how we build a democracy. Democracies are designed with “the voice of the people.” We create room for multiple voices, ideas, and strategies to work for the common good of all.

This requires the humility to know we are all broken and need grace. We need each other more than we often acknowledge.

3. Embody the alternative.

Rather than just proclaiming what is wrong, Merton urged Christians to live what the Kingdom looks like: solidarity, simplicity, risk in love. “The key to nonviolence,” he wrote, “is the willingness of the nonviolent resister to suffer a certain amount of accidental evil in order to bring about a change of mind in the oppressor.” (The religious imagineer)

4. Keep faith as primary, politics as secondary.

When Christ is Lord, then our political choices are subordinate. Our identity is deeper than party affiliation. Merton saw faith as an “awakening,” not a “narcotic dream.” (The religious imagineer)

Sadly, we are seeing “spiritual awakenings” happening in America directly tied to partisan politics. I don’t have time to comment on this disgusting turn of events. Our loyalty is to Jesus and his Kingdom and not who sits on the throne of the Empire. We have to work hard to keep faith central in our political discourse to say it simplistically.

Why this Matters for Today?

In our polarized moment, many Christians feel pulled toward a side—sometimes rightly so, in pursuit of justice. But Merton’s wisdom helps us see that when we lose the capacity to critique “our side,” we risk becoming complicit. The church that parades with one flag may lose sight of the Gospel’s larger allegiance to God’s justice, mercy and peace.

Merton lived through the U.S. escalation in Vietnam and the civil-rights movement—and repeatedly warned of technological war, structural violence, and the ways the “affluent world” is “nourished on a steady diet of brutal mythology and hallucination.” (University of Notre Dame)

We might say: the danger is not simply the “other side” but our side being unexamined, sacred, and beyond reproach. Faithfulness without partisanship means owning that we too may contribute to the very system we critique.

In the end, Merton invites us into a posture of deep faith, honest truth-telling, humble self-critique, and courageous love. “At the heart of Merton’s writing,” one commentator notes, “is the message that fear need not rule our lives.” (maryknollmagazine.org)

If the church can stand in reflective freedom—not captive to one party, not overshadowed by fear of the other—then it still keeps the power to speak truth, embody peace, and refuse idolatry.

The invitation is: choose Jesus, not a party. Let the Gospel shape your mind more than any campaign slogan. And keep yourself open to seeing the blind-spots in your side, so you can remain faithful, prophetic, and free.

May his voice encourage us—not to abandon politics, but to invest our politics in something bigger than partisan victory: the coming, transforming Kingdom of God.

-Ryan