The Problem with Voting for Christian Issues
I used to think that staying true to my Christian faith and being involved in the political process was a simple thing to do. All I had to do was tally up all of the issues I cared about most – issues I thought Jesus would care most about as well – and then see how each party lined up with my point of view on each of those issues. Whichever party I agreed with on the most issues would then receive my vote. I essentially took the “how would Jesus vote” approach. It was simple, mathematical, and it worked. This is not dissimilar to the way many non-Christians vote – the only difference is that as Christians we become much more attached to a particular point of view when we put our personal Lord and Saviour at the centre of it.
For many years this method served me well, but lately I’ve started to see some flaws in the system. As I’ve come to discover, finding a party that aligns one hundred percent with Jesus’ worldview is simply not possible. While many Christians favour parties on the right of the political spectrum because of their stance on issues such as protecting religious freedoms or defending moral values, others will claim that it’s the left-leaning parties that truly represent Christian values because of their stance on issues such as protecting the environment and caring for the poor.
This absence of a perfect solution then left me with no other option than to prioritize certain issues over others. Which led to another problem: How do we as individuals decide which issues are “more Christian” than others, and therefore more deserving of our political attention? Ultimately, as I discovered, the problem with voting based on Christian issues it that we reduce our faith to just that: a set of issues. And didn’t Jesus come to do more than just give us a new political agenda?
So where does this leave us as Christians who are interested in bringing desire to bring the Kingdom of Heaven down to earth through everything we do, including our vote?
Two years ago, I spent four months in Ottawa working as an intern for a Christian advocacy organization. Prior to that, I spent four years studying Political Science in university, and so far I haven’t come up with a clear picture of how to vote as a Christian. In fact, I think I’m more confused now than when I started. One thing I did learn, though, and that is that the gospel is much too big to fit into our political system.
Kristopher Norris and Sam Speers, authors of the book Kingdom Politics: In Search of a New Political Imagination for Today’s Church (Cascade Books, 2015), point out that Jesus’ ministry on earth was all about inaugurating a new Kingdom (an inherently political act), but not the type of kingdom people expected. Many Jews expected the Messiah to usher in a political revolution that would overthrow their Roman captors, but when asked “Are you King of the Jews?” Jesus responded with a simple but profound statement: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:33-37).
This might lead us to think that Jesus wants to withdraw from politics altogether. At the same time, however, through acts like calling attention to those on the margins of society, sharing meals with his enemies, and welcoming foreigners as his family, Jesus was demonstrating a gospel that Norris and Speers call “both personal and social, public and private, spiritual and physical.” For Jesus, the act of loving radically was not possible without ruffling a few feathers and making a political statement.
The authors go on to say:
“The church is, by definition, an inescapably political body, called to embody a new and different form of politics in the world. The church’s political task is not primarily to influence state power or achieve desired electoral results; nor is it to unthinkingly reject the politics of the state as contaminated. Rather, the church’s political task is to witness before the world to the rule of Christ and the coming Kingdom of God.”
So how would Jesus vote? Or would he even vote at all? I’m sorry, but I can’t answer that question for you. What I can tell you is that when Jesus opened the doors to the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth, its was both a deeply political act and a deeply spiritual act. We now have the difficult job as Christians of navigating the intersection between those two worlds. And as with many issues that don’t have a clear answer, I can’t help but think that God left it somewhat ambiguous for us on purpose.
Because of the fact that Jesus was neither clearly liberal or nor clearly conservative, neither purely political nor purely a-political, we’re forced to exercise wisdom, and to come to God in prayer to sort through these issues. And even though our world today looks much different than it did in the first century, I’m willing to bet that if we want to exercise radical love and proclaim the Kingdom of God on earth, we’ll need to be prepared to ruffle a few feathers and make a political statement while we’re at it.
Photo by (flickr cc) Dean Terry
