Beyond the Ballot:

A Franciscan Reflection on Peacemaking in a Polarized Nation

(For Chasing The Wild Goose — November 2026)

By Mike Carsten, OFS

Like many of you, I feel the heaviness in the air every time November rolls around in an election year. You can’t turn on the television, scroll through a news feed, or even talk across the back fence without sensing a simmering undercurrent of dread and anger. We have allowed our civic life to be dominated by the lie that whoever sits across the political aisle is not merely mistaken, but an existential enemy who must be crushed.

As the Franciscan Action Network gathers for its Election Eve prayer vigil and we prepare to cast our ballots, I sit quietly with the Secular Franciscan Rule, asking what the Gospel really asks of me right now.

Article 15 of our Rule doesn’t let us off the hook:

“Let them individually and collectively be in the forefront in promoting justice by the testimony of their human lives and by their courageous initiatives. Especially in the field of public life, they should make choices in harmony with their faith.”

For a long time, I’ve wrestled with what it means to be in the “forefront” of public life without getting sucked into the machinery of resentment. It is so easy to confuse Christian stewardship with political partisanship. We trick ourselves into believing that if only our side wins, the Kingdom of God will finally advance.

Saint Francis of Assisi did not start out as a quiet man of peace. In his youth, he bought into the romantic myth of military glory hook, line, and sinker. When civil war erupted between the noble oligarchs (the maiores) and the merchant class (the minores), young Francis strapped on expensive armor, drew his sword, and rode into the bloody Battle of Collestrada against Perugia in 1202.

He found no knightly romance on that battlefield—only slaughter. Assisi was routed, and Francis spent nearly a year rotting in a cold, subterranean Perugian dungeon as a prisoner of war. The illness, trauma, and disillusionment he suffered there shattered his appetite for conquest. When he later set out toward Apulia to fight for the Fourth Crusade, the Lord stopped him in his tracks at Spoleto with a question that echoes across the centuries: ‘Who can do more for you, the master or the servant?’

Francis turned his horse around and rode home, laying down his sword for good. His later radical commitment to nonviolence wasn’t naivety; it was the hard-won wisdom of a broken veteran who had witnessed firsthand what happens when men pick up weapons in the name of civic pride or righteous causes. When he chose to live among the outcasts, he was rejecting the entire machinery of domination. He had learned that the sword never brings peace—it only leaves behind more graves, more widows, and more Perugian dungeons.

In his Paradox of Power, the late Capuchin Father Michael Crosby pointed out something that has stayed with me for years: worldly power depends on control, coercion, and fear, while God’s power reveals itself only in vulnerability, service, and compassion. When Francis sent his early brothers out on the roads, he gave them counsel that cuts straight to the heart of our modern political dysfunction: “Announce peace with your lips, but be careful to have it even more within your heart. Let no one be provoked to anger or scandal through you, but may everyone be drawn to peace, kindness, and concord through your gentleness.”

Voting our conscience is an obligation of Christian citizenship. But casting a ballot takes only a few minutes. The real test of our Secular Franciscan profession begins Wednesday morning when the results are announced.

What happens then? Do we gloat if our candidates win? Do we retreat into bitter contempt if they lose? Do we cut off family members, dismiss neighbors, and talk with the caustic sarcasm that poisons our culture?

Our ultimate hope has never rested in presidents, governors, or political parties. Our King wore a crown of thorns and ruled from a cross, washing the feet of the very men who would abandon and betray him hours later. When the yard signs come down, and the campaign ads finally fall silent, our real work is still waiting right on our doorstep: feeding the hungry in our parishes, stocking the local food pantry, organizing Giving Trees for struggling families, visiting the lonely, and looking into the eyes of every person we meet to see the image of Christ.

If we want peace in our country, it has to begin in our own homes, our own fraternities, and our own hearts.

A Personal Prayer for the Days Ahead:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is political contempt, let me bring gentle courtesy. Strip from my heart the need to win arguments, and grant me the courage to love my neighbor even when it costs me my pride. Amen.