When They Move the Goalposts: A Candidate’s Witness to Gerrymandering — and Why the Church Must Respond

by Rev. Anna Golladay, Sr. Director of Communications and Marketing

I filed my paperwork. I gathered signatures. I introduced myself to neighbors, knocked on doors, and made the case that our district deserved a representative who would fight for working families. I did everything a citizen is supposed to do when they feel called to serve.

Then, in a single week in May, the Tennessee legislature rewrote the rules.

Governor Bill Lee called a special session beginning May 5th, and within three days, the Republican-dominated General Assembly passed a new congressional map — one that carved Memphis and Shelby County into three separate districts. The explicit goal, stated plainly by the bill’s sponsor on the Senate floor, was to “maximize partisan advantage” and ensure Tennessee’s congressional delegation reflects the state’s conservative supermajority. The state’s only majority-Black district — the only district where Memphis’s Black community had meaningful representation — was gone.

I was one of the “lucky” candidates…in that I still live in the district I am running. Not all my colleagues were as lucky. However, I entered the race with 10 counties, lost 3 of them last week, and gained 2 new ones. So I’ve spent dollars and time in three areas where I’m no longer running, and I have 2 counties that need to be newly introduced to me and my message. 

They have redrawn the lines. But they have not redrawn my resolve. The Tennessee legislature made a choice that speaks volumes about who they believe this state belongs to. The new district lines are not a reflection of our communities. They are a reflection of who those in power fear. And history is clear about what that fear looks like: it looks like racism. It looks like the deliberate silencing of Black voters, Latino voters, and every community of color that has dared to demand a seat at the table. What I witnessed in those days was not just a political maneuver. It was a kind of civic violence — the deliberate dismantling of the conditions that make democratic participation possible.

The Harm of Gerrymandering Is Not Abstract

People of faith sometimes treat gerrymandering as a procedural concern — a wonky policy debate best left to lawyers and political scientists. But the harms are pastoral. They are communal. They are deeply human.

The new map spreads Memphis’s Democratic voters into rural, Republican-leaning districts that stretch hundreds of miles east — effectively ensuring that the concentrated voice of a majority-Black city is drowned out by surrounding geography. Protesters outside the Capitol held banners calling it “Jim Crow 2.0,” and that language is not hyperbole. When communities cannot elect representatives who reflect their lives, their needs go unmet. When maps are drawn to silence certain voices, people internalize that silence. They stop believing their participation matters. Voter disengagement is not laziness — it is often a rational response to a system designed to make your vote not count. 

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais struck down a key protection under the Voting Rights Act that had helped guarantee majority-minority districts. Tennessee moved within days. The speed was not accidental — it was opportunistic. Across the South, the pattern is the same: rules change when the rules start producing the wrong winners. 

The Church’s Call Is Not Neutrality — It Is Harm Reduction

Progressive faith communities are sometimes tempted by a false version of impartiality — the idea that staying above partisan politics preserves our moral authority. But there is nothing neutral about a map drawn to silence Black voters. There is nothing apolitical about a system designed to ensure that power never changes hands. Neutrality in the face of structural harm is its own kind of harm.

So what does harm reduction look like for the church in this moment?

It looks like voter education — helping congregants understand their new district, their new candidates, and how other states are actively looking to act in similar ways. Confusion is a feature of rushed redistricting, not a bug. Counter it with clarity. 

It looks like showing up in court and in the streets. The NAACP Tennessee State Conference and the ACLU have both sued to block the new map’s implementation. These legal fights need moral witnesses. Faith communities have long understood that the courthouse and the sanctuary are not separate realms. 

And it looks like a long-term commitment to redistricting reform. Several candidates have already said they will campaign on creating an independent redistricting commission so that maps are drawn by citizens, not by the politicians who benefit from them. That is a cause the church can embrace across party lines — because fair maps are a precondition of representative democracy, and representative democracy is a precondition of justice.

A Closing Word

The prophet Amos did not call for procedural reform. He called for justice to “roll down like waters.” But justice needs channels. It needs structures that carry it forward. Gerrymandering is the deliberate obstruction of those channels — the engineering of a system where the powerful stay powerful and the marginalized remain exactly where they are.

I did choose to run for Congress because it was easy. I did so because my district — these people — deserve to be seen and heard. Quite frankly, it’s virtually the same reason I decided to enter pastoral ministry. What happened this month made that harder. It did not make it less necessary.

The church’s role in this moment is to refuse despair, resist cynicism, and do the patient, unglamorous work of keeping democracy alive for everyone. That is not partisan. That is prophetic.