As we enter the second week of the government shutdown, paychecks are on hold, flights are being delayed, and the political blame game is in full swing. One way or another, it will end when legislators do what they failed to do in the first place: Pass a spending bill.
Until that happens, I find it’s easy to get lost in the political soup of it all. A nonstop churn of pundits bid for the best take on what the shutdown means, which party will be held responsible, and whether a new spending bill even matters if Congress won’t do its job and enforce. Politicians point fingers, the president posts a racist deepfake, and Washington, D.C.’s bars roll out themed “unhappy hour” menus with discounts for furloughed workers. A round of “Continuing Rye-solutions,” anyone?
After more than a decade living in our nation’s capital, I’ve found that whenever politics get messy, the best theological question is often the simplest one: How do these decisions impact people who don’t have much power or money?
If you look past the talking heads, the current Washington gridlock revolves around two groups of vulnerable people: those who suddenly find themselves without a paycheck and those who are expected to face cost-prohibitive hikes in their health care coverage this year.
The people whose paychecks are in limbo include roughly 750,000 federal workers who are furloughed. Despite a 2019 law signed by President Donald Trump ensuring federal workers receive backpay after a shutdown ends, this week the White House began arguing backpay wasn’t guaranteed for everyone. Adding to the anxiety, the president keeps threatening to further reduce the federal workforce through mass layoffs if a deal isn’t reached. There are also the 2 million active-duty military members and other federal workers, like aviation officials, who are expected to report to work despite possible missed payment. And then there are federal contractors and others whose livelihoods depend on the government. For many workers and their families, a missed paycheck is a considerable hardship.
“Stop this. Stop messing with people,” Audrey Murray, a contracted cleaner at a Smithsonian museum, told CNN while struggling not to cry. “We have families who depend on us.”
The Bible doesn’t speak directly to every contemporary situation, but it does have some clear instructions when it comes to delayed paychecks: “You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns,” God instructs the Israelites via Moses in Deuteronomy 24. “You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset, because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them; otherwise they might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt” (14-15).
This warning against ignoring the cries of the poor echoes throughout scripture with the general gist being God’s insistence that the righteous care about the poorest members of society.
Yet, the Democrats who forced the shutdown by refusing to sign a spending bill would say their decision is also rooted in concern for vulnerable people, namely the 22 million people who purchase their own health care through the marketplace set up by the Affordable Care Act. Tax subsidies currently make many of these plans more affordable, but if they aren’t extended, insurance premiums are expected to more than double. KFF, a nonpartisan health care data group, offered several worst-case scenario estimates, including how a 64-year-old who paid $5,328 in 2025 could wind up paying $16,500 in 2026 if subsidies expire.
READ MORE: A Truth That Bears Repeating: A Budget Is a Moral Document
This too strikes me as a relevant issue for Christian faith. Though written millennia before anyone had deductibles or claim numbers, scripture is pretty darn insistent that God’s people should provide generously for the material needs, rights, and well-being of those who lack resources. Wealth is to be shared, these passages explain, because it’s not really ours anyway and the bar for generosity has been set high: “We know love by this,” writes the author of 1 John, “that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or a sister in need and refuses to help?” (3:16-17) Add in the gospel’s repeated emphasis on Jesus healing sick people and it’s hard to see how his followers can ignore decisions that will leave millions struggling to pay for the care they need—or without insurance at all.
Republican leaders have said they’ll negotiate the subsidies—but only after the government reopens. Democrats have reason to be wary: Insurance commissioners have warned about the expiring subsidies and impending rate hikes for months. More than three quarters of the public tell pollsters they support extending the credit, including a majority (57%) of self-identified MAGA supporters. Most of those who will be impacted if the subsidies expire will be folks in states that Trump won in 2024, including Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, and West Virginia. But despite months of warnings and public sentiment, Republican lawmakers have previously rejected Democratic proposals to extend the subsidies and have generally been unwilling to negotiate on any health care proposals. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act not only failed to extend the subsidies, but also made changes to the Affordable Care Act marketplace that will increase the number of uninsured people.
And so, our current political situation asks us, what’ll it be? Continue to withhold the livelihood of people who work for and depend on the federal government? Or risk losing a last-ditch effort to keep health care affordable and more people ensured?
These are, of course, a falsely limited set of options. We don’t need Walter Brueggemann levels of prophetic imagination to envision a nation where we keep the government open, pay government workers on time, and ensure people can afford health care. We should all want a government where legislators are motivated to pass a spending bill without shutting itself down to force a deal. We should also want a country where health insurance is within reach for everyone, and legislators are eager to act on issues that matter to those they represent.
Also? We can be mad that this is the state of the things.
But here’s the tricky part: If we are unhappy with the world as it is and want something different, we’re going to have to act differently. Typically, when shutdowns end, we collectively sigh and shake our heads, muttering about our broken political system, polarization, and heated rhetoric. Another shutdown, another prime example of dysfunctional U.S. politics, but that’s Washington for you, huh?
But this is the 21st government shutdown we’ve experienced in the past four decades—a number that triples if you include near-misses averted by a last-minute deal. And when the same pattern plays out year after year, we need to think about why. Sure, shutdowns highlight the way our government is broken, yes, but they also incubate outbursts of public pressure. Shutdowns end when Congress recognizes that its continued inaction becomes a political problem; when legislators notice their approval ratings sliding or constituents become angry about airport delays and missed paychecks, they become newly motivated to hammer out a deal. To put it bluntly: Our elected officials act when we force them to.
We don’t need to wait for a shutdown to supply this kind of pressure when we want political change. Shutdowns rely on everyday people who get fed up with legislative indecision and ultimately kick Congress into gear.
We could also choose to simply apply public pressure from the get-go: This means calling our legislators and going to town hall meetings, ensuring your elected leaders know why health care coverage matters to you, and asking how your representative will vote. Public pressure can mean showing up at protests and engaging in other forms of nonviolent direct action.
It can also look like withdrawing our support—or our money. Consider how Jimmy Kimmel returned to air after 1.7 million people canceled their Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN streaming subscriptions. Or how the 2019 shutdown ultimately ended after 10 air traffic controllers decided to stay home on the same day, shutting down travel at a busy New York airport and inflicting delays elsewhere.
You can do these things individually, but they’re more effective when we do them together. Who are the other people and groups who share your anger and want to see something else? What can you do together?
As it happens, public pressure is also what we’ll need to wade our way through the rest of the political soup that 2025 keeps serving up. It’s also a key ingredient in the kinds of civil movements that have been shown to be most effective in uprooting leaders who are trying to accumulate power in anti-democratic ways. We’ll need public pressure to ensure Congress upholds whatever spending bill it ultimately passes. We’ll need to pressure lawmakers to block Trump’s efforts to expand executive power and silence his critics.
This, too, is a kind of neighbor love: refusing to accept a political system that only moves when people suffer.
If we are unhappy with the world as it is and want something different, we’re going to have to act differently.
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