A Few Random Thoughts
Conservative, liberal, pro-life or pro-choice, gun laws, racial issues, no student left behind, legal drugs, capital punishment, Mormons in office, health care, minimum wage, fair housing, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Maher, the war in Iraq….. Is there no end? Folk wisdom suggests that we should never discuss religion or politics because you can be certain it will lead to disagreements and sometimes nation splitting arguments. The Civil War divided families while the Viet Nam war continues to have an impact on our nation. A nurse, working for the VA in the psychiatric ward, said it is full of patients from the Viet Nam era who fell through the cracks. What does any of this have to do with religion and politics? Perhaps plenty. One of the study guides from the PCUSA on religion and politics asks the following questions.
- Did you vote in the last election? Why or why not?
- Did you see a connection between how you voted and your faith? What issues were relevant to you?
- Do you vote in ways that are similar to how your parents voted, or different?
- Who shaped your political identity? What part did the church play in developing your political thoughts?
- What do you think are the biggest “justice issues” facing our world today?
I challenge you to answer these questions for yourself and see if your faith and political views have points of intersection or are uncoupled from each other.
RMW
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Great questions, however for the sake of brevity, I will only respond to a couple…
3. My mother never really voted along party lines, I always remember her saying that she voted for the “person.” Personal integrity, experience, and sound judgment were more important to her than politics. In this campaign, that really held true for me. The candidate I aligned most with ideologically wouldn’t get my vote because he lacked the rest of the characteristics that I think the President needs.
5. Our overall attitude towards foreign policy is one of the biggest “justice” issues for me. Spreading the ideas of democracy to different parts of the world is something we should be doing, so that everyone can be free to express and educate themselves. However I think it should be done without force and fostered through diplomacy in order to fully integrate it into cultures that are very different than ours.
My first remembrance of politics was the year that Nixon and Kennedy ran for President. My teacher used the event to teach a civics lesson complete with learning about the candidates and a pretend election. I recall that the vote was 19 for Nixon and 1 for Kennedy. No surprise… I lived in Kansas and children tend to vote for who their parents support.
The church shaped my views of politics in numerous ways. I was taught to look for indications that “kingdom values” would be held in high regard. Clearly, there have been many times when kingdom values and the political arena have been in great opposition to each other… thus, some years have yielded a “not voting” response for me. Not sure if that was always the best choice, but that was what happened.
My challenge is to find ways to see the political system as an avenue to convey kingdom values. How can it bring peace and reconciliation to a broken world? How can it bring hope and justice to a our society.
It is tricky to give your primary allegience to God and His Kingdom and simultaneously try
continued..
to discern what is our rightful place in the world where we are called to be salt and light.
Thus, my hope and prayer for myself is that my litmus test for deciding how to vote is not based on self serving motivations or selfish whims, but on New Testament kingdom values that bring us closer to providing “cups of cold water in His name.”