Christians: Yes, Let’s Vote Our Values
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On the whole, I’ve written a lot less about the voting choices before us in this particular election cycle. From my point of view, it’s pretty much 2020 all over again, only with more clarity about the cultural and character factors.
More clarity? I’m sure many don’t see it that way. I’m not saying people are seeing more clearly. Subjectively, things seem more muddled than ever. Objectively, though, the character and positions of the candidates are even more clear than in 2020.
In this post, I’m reacting a bit to Kevin Schaal’s post over at P&D the other day, and many others like it (e.g., Jerry Newcombe’s similar list over at Christian Post). I don’t disagree with much in that post, but I would differ in emphasis.
First, I fully agree with this:
Some Christians do not live or vote by biblical values. And some Christians have not been taught how their faith should impact their voting choices.
Then we read, “These are the values that are at stake in this election.” The list that follows isn’t bad. I’m all for freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, sanctity of life, individual stewardship, biblical marriage, and just balances.
My own full list of values to vote for would include those things. There are some values at stake in this election, though, that are upstream of several of the above.
My own short, prioritized list of values to vote for would look more like this:
1. Vote for the gospel.
I’m not in favor of expansive and ambiguous uses of the term “the gospel.” The gospel is the good news that Jesus died for sinners and rose again. But this news has far-reaching implications. What do I mean by “vote for the gospel” here? Vote with the goal of helping churches and ministries retain or regain their understanding of what their focus should be in society: effectively adorning (Titus 2:10) and proclaiming the gospel.
The conflation of political tactics, policies, and candidates with Christian belief, practice, and mission is a serious problem.
I anticipate an objection: “We can’t vote for gospel clarity. It’s not on the candidates’ agendas.” I’m not sure it isn’t, indirectly, but let’s say that’s true. My recommendation, across the political spectrum, is to look at candidates’ stated agendas, remove everything they are not actually capable of achieving (because Congress would have to do it, or an amendment would be required, and every state would have to do it). Then look at what’s left and ask, “How much of this is just pandering?”
After that couple of filters, there might not be much agenda left!
Assuming something remains, it’s time to ask: If results are so important, what are some likely unintended results of the candidates’ agenda? What kind of backlash policies—or, more importantly, cultural shifts—might we see?
We really didn’t think overturning Roe would result in “abortion rights” becoming an issue that is not only actively supported by one party, but now passively supported by the other as well. But here we are.
Voting for results is a tricky thing, none of us being prophets.
But if we’re going to vote for results, surely increased clarity about what Christianity really is, and is not, should be a result we prioritize.
2. Vote for rule of law.
We live in a system of governance that, by design of its founders, has law at its center. When the colonies decided to part from the authority of England, they created a document with representative leaders as signers.
Later, they experimented with the Articles of Confederation and insisted on a ratification process. Why? Because of the conviction that the best way to govern a society is for the governed to create law that then has authority over those who made it.
Eventually, the Constitution was ratified in place of the Articles. Every office and branch of the U.S. government now derives its authority from that legal document. Lesser roles and requirements derive from the laws passed through the representative-legislators legal framework this Constitution authorizes.
In short, in a republic, the law is king, and all other rulers are its deputies.
If we’re going to vote for results, we should vote for candidates who seem likely to respect and nurture the rule of law.
3. Vote for truth in public discourse.
In the U.S., we have a long tradition of messy public discourse. For as long as I’ve been paying attention, that has included a fair amount of misrepresentation, exaggeration, and outright lying about political opponents.
And that’s not even including the candidates’ claims about themselves.
I’ve occasionally been accused of idealism, but I don’t expect “honesty in political rhetoric” to become a real thing.
That said, before 2021, did the U.S. ever have a sitting president try to hang on to power on the fantasy that the election had been stolen from him? I may have read that something similar has happened before in U.S. history, but at best, it’s been a very long time.
For Christians, does anything matter more than truth? We could make a case that several things are equally important. Of course, we’d insist that the God of all truth is more important than truth itself. It ultimately has little importance without its connection to Him.
That established, Christians, of all people, ought to treasure truth anywhere and everywhere it can be found. We ought to despise lies, useful or otherwise. We should loathe the kind of exaggeration, distortion, and sloppiness that ends up being little better than outright lying. We should be repulsed by the intellectual laziness that lumps dissimilar things together, overgeneralizes, and prefers increased vehemence over increased accuracy. That doesn’t promote truth either.
Surely we ought to be people who value truth more than tribe and who refuse to reflexively accept or reject claims based on what leader, pundit, or group they are coming from.
If we’re going to vote for results, we should prioritize whatever votes might help us, as a society, value truth more.
Final thoughts
I’d be first the admit that this short list of core values to vote for could be used to argue for whatever candidate one “likes.” That doesn’t make it objectively true that they are an equally good, or equally poor, fit for both candidates (or all the rest, down-ballot).
No, I’m not trying to tell people who to vote for (or “vote against,” if they look at it that way). But I do want to encourage us to have the gospel, the rule of law, and truth on our minds as we make these difficult choices. I want to encourage us also think in terms of our culture as a whole, not just the slice that is regulated by policy.
Important policy is at stake. Bigger things than policy are also at stake.
Aaron Blumer 2016 Bio
Aaron Blumer is a Michigan native and graduate of Bob Jones University and Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). He and his family live in small-town western Wisconsin, not far from where he pastored for thirteen years. In his full time job, he is content manager for a law-enforcement digital library service. (Views expressed are the author's own and not his employer's, church's, etc.)
- 2009 views
The voting public seems to care little about the national debt. (Which is a pity.) That being the case, Republicans are facing an uphill battle if they make that a priority. I think they've realized that if nobody cares, they may as well play the Democrats game of ignoring the debt and promising programs that voters like. It may be the only way to get elected. You can't lower the debt if Democrats win all the elections. When the national debt is clearly manifesting problems, voters may get behind a reduction program and Republicans are the ones most likely to provide it. This is more pragmatic than principled but campaigning on principles that cost you elections consigns you to unending minority status. Ultimately, the only solution for sound fiscal policies is to change the mindset of the electorate. I don't see this happening any time soon.
G. N. Barkman
Just for reference here, and I know the situations are a bit different, I've lived in Taiwan and Indonesia (and China, although that doesn't count for obvious reasons), both of which are democratic nations who elect their head of state. One of these is a developed nation, one is a developing nation. And I've been present through several elections. In both cases, it's normal for election results to be announced within hours of polls closing. Of course official results can take longer, but those never seem to change anything.
I realize there are governance factors in play, of course, but it doesn't change the fact that it really shouldn't have to take so long.
AndrewK,
The AP called the race for Trump at 2:30am EST. Polling closed in California at 8pm PST (or 11pm EST). The race was called 3.5 hours after the last poll was closed. I think that was fairly quick. Again, the US has an entirely different election process that does not run through a timetable that calls a president quickly. Yes, it will take longer than 3.5 hours to pull all final votes, but in the end it doesn't change anything. I don't see how making it any faster will really change anything at the end of the day. Unless there are legal battles or really close races, elections are called within a few hours.
All,
I agree that it would not make much sense to run on debt reduction, but it would make sense to run on fiscal responsibility. Trump fails to grasp basic economic functions, like how tarifs work. But if he is going to spend more than he should seek to cut from other places. If he is going to have wide swaths of tax cuts, than he needs to look to cut costs. I am all for tax cuts and cutting costs, but they need to be tied together. I hope this administration does this to a degree. Just balancing costs with expenses, will in and of itself reduce the federal debt.
Probably the biggest reason that we are having troubles with debts and such is that too many of our Congressmen have learned the wrong thing from "Boss Tweed" and "Tammany Hall"; that the purpose of government is to confer benefits, not merely to provide public goods (goods for which the private sector does not tend to provide, e.g. national defense). Since our poli-critters get re-elected on the basis of bringing home the bacon, that's what they do--and the temptation for a somewhat vain person to get his name on the new government project or building is a huge motivator as well.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
My take on why we have such delays is that many states have abandoned the notion that voters need to participate according to the rules--get registered to vote, show up for either early/absentee or voting day voting, show ID, etc..
So we keep making more and more exceptions to get a larger portion of electors to participate, ignoring the fact that quite frankly, some people probably should not vote.
That's controversial, yes, but do we really want people who never get a drivers' license or other ID--people who cannot get a good job, get a mortgage, pass background checks, fly commercial, get good medical care, etc..--to be making these multitrillion dollar decisions, at least in part?
Same basic thing for people who cannot be bothered to show up on time; should we be telling them, in effect, that this gap in basic adult behavior is OK, or should we tell them "show up to vote at the designated times, or you don't get to vote"?
It's not the only thing going on in certain communities, but I'd argue that our approach to voting is helping to infantilize a lot of people by making basic adult behavior optional, and in doing so, it's causing a huge amount of strife in our country as we wait weeks to months to know the results of an election.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
That's controversial, yes, but do we really want people who never get a drivers' license or other ID--people who cannot get a good job, get a mortgage, pass background checks, fly commercial, get good medical care, etc..--to be making these multitrillion dollar decisions, at least in part?
Bert, you've made a point of presenting some of Rajesh's statements about music as being racist, but this paragraph here of yours seems just reeking of racism. It's usually the minority communities who've been unable to get good jobs, who've been prevented from getting mortgages, who've been targeted with harsher penalties for crimes and who can't get good medical care. Are you saying these minority communities should also be restricted in voting?
"That's controversial, yes, but do we really want people who never get a drivers' license or other ID--people who cannot get a good job, get a mortgage, pass background checks, fly commercial, get good medical care, etc..--to be making these multitrillion dollar decisions, at least in part?"
That is not a choice we make. Voting is a Constitutional right. Your thinking is the very same thinking that we rail against when restrictions are put on guns, religion, vaccine.... Every citizen has a right to vote, independent on an arbitrary view of the value that they have in society or whether we feel they are competent to make a decision that we feel shouldn't be given to them.
There are plenty of people who don't have a drivers license or state id. Where on earth are we required to have a driver's license and how does a driver's license standard indicate whether someone should or shouldn't vote. My brother-in-law is a disabled vet who cannot get a good job. Does the fact that he sacrificed his ability for our country delineate him on whether he should vote or not? I don't get your comment at all.
So your solution is to setup some level of arbitrary standards on who should or shouldn't be qualified to vote? Some of your verbage is eerily close to the same verbage used to argue why blacks or women shouldn't vote.
David, if I want to point to a racist/sexist assumption, I'm going to point to your assumption that large numbers of minorities (etc.) are incapable of showing up on time or getting a basic ID. That's a lot closer to the Jim Crow arguments about capability than mine!
Let's be honest here; getting a state ID, or reading one's watch, can be done by someone with Down's. We are not exactly talking about the poll tests done in the South that were written in Mandarin, or poll taxes that were unpayable by sharecroppers. We're talking about finding one's birth certificate and walking down to the DMV (or the Post Office if you want a passport) to get an ID, and we're talking about reading the clocks that one finds in plain view in most buildings. You don't even need to pass a driver's test.
Really, my point is simply that our voting system is undermining basic adult behaviors, and the end result is that by eliminating requirements for timeliness and ID verification, we're creating huge squabbles about our elections while infantilizing our poorer populations.
You want something with racist overtones, there you go.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
RI has Voter ID. We are a VERY blue state. I honestly have no idea how that law got passed in RI, because the vast majority of states that have NO Voter ID laws are very blue. HI, WA, OR, CA, NV, NM, MN, IL, MD, PA, NJ, NY, MA, VT, and ME have no ID laws. It is insane to not require something as basic as a voter ID. I have no idea how states justify not requiring it, and I have no idea why the Federal Government hasn't passed some law demanding states to do the same. But I think we all know the answer, as what do all of those states have in common? They're either very blue or they're battlegrounds (NV/PA). Only progressive/leftists complain about voter ID requirements.
BREAK BREAK
Voting is a constitutional right for all - because of amendments. Amendments are a good thing; they allow for societal evolution to make rational adjustments. But not all adjustments have been rational, and some adjustments probably should be reconsidered.
The 26th amendment is an excellent example. I don't even think most 21 year olds should be voting. I do not know what I think is the best answer as to when a person should be allowed to vote; age? Other factors? These aren't easy questions, but no one can convince me right now that allowing all 18 year olders to vote was a good Amendment. I know; that decision came during the Vietnam war when it seemed to make sense to allow draftees to vote for their potential CINC. But even consider the year and how rampant drug use was in that era and consider if it made sense to allow early 70's 18-year-olders to vote. The 26th should be repealed.
I also do not think universal suffrage best, but I can offer no alternatives - because it would be impossible to pass any laws that would narrow suffrage that would not be partisan. Therefore, I think universal suffrage is the only possible answer. The only thing that is negotiable, IMO, is the when. Definitely not 18.
Ashamed of Jesus! of that Friend On whom for heaven my hopes depend! It must not be! be this my shame, That I no more revere His name. -Joseph Grigg (1720-1768)
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