So I thought I could make it through this election season without blogging about it. Nearly.
Six days short of my goal.
But why?
Is it because I just discovered that attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund want pastors to endorse a candidate from the pulpit so they can engage in a legal challenge against the IRS rules taking it all the way to the Supreme Court to win the right for pastors to speak freely from the pulpit?
Is it because everyone else is talking about it so why don’t I join in?
Is it because prophetic speech about political stuff is an essential part of the Christian identity?
Is it because I’d prefer one candidate to win over the other?
Is it because some Christian's contributions to the debates are just downright unchristian and I’d like to disassociate my name from that sort of junk?
Maybe. To all of them.
Maybe the whole show has just got too much for me. We’ve gone crazy. Beyond the money, the rallies, the reality TV, the books about each candidate, the pundit’s thoughts, and the yard signs, the late-night comedian’s lines, and the latest polls – it’s begun to feel like a giant American Idol contest…..but the danger is there’s no Simon to tell us the truth.
Or perhaps there’s something else.
Why Vote?
Imagine standing in the pulpit the Sunday before the elections and daring to ask that question?
Some will jump to their feet and declare – we fought hard to win that right ..taking it back to running out the English and declaring constitutional independence.
Some might rise to their feet and declare that the civil rights struggle was about obtaining for everyone the right to vote.
Other will declare that democracy is American and America is Christian therefore you need to vote to be a good American and you need to vote to be a good Christian.
But I’m not even coming from that angle.
Why vote?
Maybe alongside whatever other reason we have for voting, we vote as some form of social action. In this election our voting could save lives – soldiers and unborn; our voting could feed the hungry; our voting could protect the environment; our voting could provide health care for needy people etc, etc.
This is my issue.
For too many Christians voting is the only form of social action they carry out. But it’s the weakest form, if not the most ineffective form. Christian social action is never secret, is never private, is never individual. It is never the action of public opinion. Christian social action is always communal, it is always public, it is always unpopular. More than that, and this is the biggest issue – Christian social action is not through the benevolence of the State or through majority opinion – it is through the sacrifice of the church and its people.
So ….we expect record voter turnout in this 2008 election – millions of them will be Christians.
Somehow, some way, prophetic pastor-leaders need to make sure that these same millions know that voting is not their social action.
Somehow, some way pastors need to delineate between political action and Christian social action. And if the surest way to delineate is to appeal to people not to vote – maybe you’ve done a greater good.
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Political Powerhouse>>>>>>>>>>>>>Political Servanthood.
One of my pointed personal beefs is the subconscious sense of political entitlement that the church in North America seems to posses. In some area it is all but gone ie eastern Canada and in some places it is shiny and strong ie the US Bible belt. But to various degrees the church believes that society at large should listen to it and co-operate with it just because it is the church. We need a wider lens to see this issue through. For the first 400 years AD the church was the smallest kid on the play-ground, if it made any advance it was through prayer, scrapping, being stepped on and rising again, bloodied and bruised but a little tougher and purer. There were no ‘rights’ only a call to love and serve the wider community. At no other time in history has the church grown so rapidly under such hostile circumstances, (modern day communist China would be our closest example), without any pretence of political power the church influenced and changed villages and cities in astonishing ways.
After the rise of Emperor Constantine Christianity became the ‘state religion’ and for the last 1600 years the church and politics has been inseparable. The Roman church became for about 1000 years the most powerful political entity on earth, starting and financing war after war in alignment with cooperative nations. The Reformation unfortunately continued along that road wearing new clothes. Calvin tried to make Geneva a Protestant state, marrying theology and politics in an inseparable way.
Now in North America the pattern continues as we hear spokes people for the church declaring their own versions of ‘holy war’ (jihad) on any liberal lawmaker who dare reduce the perceived ‘rights’ of the church and conversely promising loyalty to those who might pass ’Christian’ legislation that will be approved of by the church. This is a complex issue but my point is that the church has relegated the notion of the Kingdom to be enforced by sympathetic law-makers. The Kingdom will never be legislated into any community by any kind of good law (even saying the Lord’s prayer in public schools). The church has been seduced by the illusion of becoming the strongest voice in the political realms in the hopes that it can Christianize the nation by passing Christian laws.
I believe that we need as many thoughtful Christian leaders as we can get in political and civic leadership but not so they can try to exercise the political leverage of the church but rather to serve the society for the highest good by exercising Kingdom values to benefit the least and the voiceless. To see themselves as the presence of God’s active goodness who can make significant changes to bring about justice, protection for the exploited, care for the forgotten and the benefit of all citizens to be living in a safer, cleaner, fairer, more generous world. To the degree they seek to bring Shalom is the degree to which they are truly serving in a “Christian” way. The old way is too often about power and control motivated by a false sense of entitlement, the new way is about service and patience, motivated by a true sense of humility before God and respect for all people.
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