Book Review: Running For Our Lives
A Story of Faith, Politics, and the Common Good
By Robb Ryerse
Robb Ryerse is a pastor who left his conservative denomination to start an independent progressive church in Northwest Arkansas. After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, he felt the urge to take action. His action was running for Congress…as a Progressive Republican, and this book tell the story of that campaign.
The premise is what attracted me to read and review this book. Upon finishing it (it is a fairly quick read) I found myself very conflicted in how I felt about it.
I enjoyed Ryerse’s writing-his story flowed well, and in most pertinent areas he was very open and vulnerable. He was quite candid about the impact of this campaign on his family and the challenges of it gaining traction without any support from the Republican leadership in Arkansas and very limited financial resources. Ryerse clearly established himself as the underdog, and who doesn’t love a good underdog to root for, especially one who is trying to buck the corrupt political system.
There was one major flaw with this encouraging underdog story, however. He got crushed, only receiving 15% of the vote in the Republican primary. He tried to make the case that, despite his lopsided loss, his campaign had made a difference in the public forum, but I felt he did not succeed in that, either.
Additionally, the toll on his family and his career was significant. He is a bi-vocational pastor, meaning the church can’t afford to pay him a living wage so he needs to keep a full-time job. He cycled through multiple jobs during his campaign, and also dealt with some significant emotional challenges with one of his three children.
The moral I took away from the story was surely not the one Ryerse intended. Rather than an optimistic underdog story, he showed how the system will crush someone who does not play the game within the established rules (which, to his credit, Ryerse did not do). His campaign also reinforced how much of an outlier a progressive is within the Republican party. I don’t believe he did an effective job of justifying why he ran as a Republican. I suspect it came down to a pro-life, small government political view, which would have likely been just as unwelcome in a Democratic primary.
Ryerse wound up landing a job with another progressive grassroots organization after losing the primary, but one that took him away from home even more and left his wife to pastor the church and tend to the family. Although his stated goals were to help people obtain better representation and improve their lives, I was left to wonder how much his love of politics and desire to become a player in that arena factored into his decisions.
While I found this to be an interesting story, I can’t recommend it to anyone looking for a satisfying or encouraging ending. It turns into a validation of the deep entrenchment of our political system, and I’m not sure we really needed that.
I received a copy of this book from Speakeasy in exchange for the promise to write a candid review.
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