What worries me more about the outcome of the midterm elections is the disturbing, if not disgusting, nature of the campaigns themselves. Politics has always been a nasty business. Each year when we face elections with a national focus, we find ourselves in the crossfire of accusations and counter accusations, personal smears and wild fabrications.
This year feels different. From where I sit, and sometimes hide, the campaigns have moved from viciousness to pornography. Not the pornography of illicit sex, although those allegations are often implied if not overtly alleged, but the pornography of fear.
Pornography is a combination of two Greek words: porni — to prostitute oneself; and grahein – to write. We are now in a climate where far too many candidates and political leaders have prostituted themselves in the promotion of fear. The examples are wanton, wild, and wrong: Haitians are eating pets, candidates are grooming children to satisfy their sexual appetites, Muslim candidates will usher in jihad and shariah law, kids go to school as Henry and come home as Henrietta. Lies are distributed as freely as Halloween candy.The list goes on. Fear has become a kind of market currency There seems to be no end in sight.
It is estimated that the sexual pornography industry has an annual revenue of $100 billion in the US alone. A lot of people are making money from porn. An estimated 2.4 billion people from across the world, mostly men, are frequent viewers of porn. Some argue that the attraction to porn is tantamount to addiction. No doubt the pornographers of fear are drawing lessons from the porn industry in terms of the money that can be made, and the influence the pornography of fear can wield.
There is a desire, if not an insistence, to shut it all down. Cancel the pornographers of fear. Not likely. They are far too strong and too well funded. They are too attractive to too many appetites.
There is a tragedy in all of this. One is obvious: that the lies, vulgarity and character assassination — all encased in the service of generating fear — have become commonplace, and are increasingly regarded as normal, if not acceptable behavior. The other is more obscure.
For the past thirty years or so religious institutions on the American landscape have experienced a significant decline in terms of membership and influence. And carried off with that decline is the use. awareness and understanding of some important religious language: grace, humility, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Unfortunately, what is replacing that religious presence and language is an outsize perch of religious groups which promote a rigid theological certainty and seek to dominate the political landscape.
In some quarters of the Christian world, particularly the New Apostolic Reformation or NAR, the need to be right replaces the desire to understand. The idea of reconciliation, which in Greek word means exchange; especially to exchange what has been broken to what can be repaired, carries little importance or value. And humility, whose Latin root is humus, meaning ‘of the ground’, and refers to meekness and vulnerability, is being eclipsed by the desire to humiliate, which is the intent to grind someone into that ground.
The use of spiritual language can foster repentance and reconciliation. The world saw that in post-apartheid South Africa with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1995. He wove the language and practices of mercy, repentance and forgiveness into the proceedings, and those words — along with the actions the TRC took, opened a doorway to healing and hope for that fractured country.
We need to re-invest in these ancient words, whose importance is valued in all of the world’s religious traditions. We need to understand them and use them. As described by the Rev. Lydia Sohn in an NY Times op-ed on October 25, 2026, “languages need habitats. They need stories and songs, rituals and practices, communities in which we hear them spoken and enacted from generation to generation.” Acknowledging grace, practicing forgiveness, demonstrating humility, and seeking reconciliation doesn’t necessarily stop the flow of fear, but they go a long way in reducing fear’s toxic power. Using these and other words has the capacity not only to expose those who fuel the pornography of fear but can reduce its power of attraction and addiction.
