"Top ten things I hate about election time," revisited four years later

Four years ago, I generated a pretty feisty discussion with a Facebook note, "Top ten things I hate about election time - #1". This note was the culmination of a series of notes decrying the unfortunate aspects of national elections in the USA. Some items on my list were funny, some were serious, some were simply gripes. But each was born out of my genuinely held feelings, opinions, and experiences.

The final item on the list, "Christians telling other Christians how they have to vote," generated the most controversy among my friends and family, even garnering comments from people I had never met. (Apparently, notes defaulted to "global" sharing back then.) To summarize the arguments of those I had offended, I had to make the abortion issue my number one political priority, as a Christian.

This argument took me by surprise. I had not mentioned abortion (in any light or from any perspective), nor did I even refer to any particular candidate who was up for election (such as, I don't know, the big one). Regardless, though, everyone assumed I was referring to the Christian right's then-ubiquitous campaign against abortion in the context of choosing a President.

I actually had in mind the now-all-but-forgotten Florida Marriage Amendment, which was being supported vocally on Sunday morning by the leaders of the church of which I was a member at the time.

Much has changed in the last four years:

1. I am no longer a member of that church (their attempt at polarizing their congregants' votes that year being one of the reasons that ultimately culminated in my departure in late 2010), though I have cautiously attended services there the last few weeks.
2. I have since then become much more educated on the history of the Christian right, and now see where many of the excesses that I wrote about stem from.
3. I hear significantly fewer references to Romans 13 made in church.
4. Despite the protests that were offered on my 2008 note, I hear much less about abortion in presidential debates, campaign ads, and even in church on Sunday morning.
5. Instead, I hear much more about the economy and the government's relationship to the poor---now finally being given some explicit argumentation from Christian principles (if not Scripture). (Not surprisingly, there is equal Christian argumentation on both sides.)
6. And, perhaps most important (and the reason I'm writing this post), the Christian right may now be forced to reexamine their unquestioning support of Republican candidates.

This reexamination comes from the choice they now have to make---in some small sense---between their political agenda and their convictions about the gospel laid out in Scripture. I'm referring (as you might have guessed) to the evangelical conviction that believing a false gospel is a serious problem. Evangelicals---especially the more fiery ones, who are usually also fiery on political issues---rely on texts like Galatians 1:6-9 and 1 John 1:18-27 as a litmus test to distinguish genuine Christianity from heresies the way Archimedes relied on his principle of displacement to distinguish authentic gold from a forgery. And these evangelicals believe the warnings in these texts are dire:

"But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!"

"Whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ... is the antichrist... No one who denies the Son has the Father."

Many evangelicals---including these fiery, Republican evangelicals---believe that Mormonism falls under this category of "another gospel" that "denies that Jesus is the Christ." These evangelicals take the deity of Jesus very seriously---as they should, if they believe it to be true---and reject any gospel---like that of Mormonism---that denies it.

So, they have some distress as November approaches: Do they stay true to their social and political convictions, and vote for someone whom they believe (based on such a dire, central conviction in their religion) is in this heretical hotseat? Do they stay true to their evangelical profession that "the gospel is central" and vote for the other candidate who at least claims to believe the same gospel they do? Or do they wander in a political wilderness, wishing they were back in the Egypt of the 2008 election? (It's strikingly similar to the Jeroboam vs. Rehoboam "election.")

I suspect that most will take the first route. Their priority in elections, after all, has been to oppose the social and political evils that they perceive to be so great. "The gospel is the church's responsibility," I suspect they might say, "not the President's."

I could not be happier with this answer.

Because really, evangelical Republicans' rationalization for sticking with the Republican candidate simply goes to demonstrate what I wrote four years ago: We have to not only cultivate our beliefs, but also cultivate the priorities we place on those beliefs, in the contexts in which we live them out. These evangelical Republicans are willing to favor their stance on political and social issues over their commitment to a pure gospel in the context of this election. That cannot possibly be an easy decision to make, but in the end, it is certainly a reasonable one.

But in making that decision, in assigning those weightings, they must be willing to respectfully allow other Christians to assign their weightings differently---in this decision, and in the myriad others that we face in this world of issues and questions that cannot be resolved to a one-dimensional spectrum, or a single choice between two equally nuanced options. We need to acknowledge that these determinations are not easy, that there is a struggle involved. We should never present the end result as the only logical outcome that we arrived at in a straightforward and nearly instantaneous manner.

I therefore propose two considerations for the next six months.

1. Let's adopt an attitude of sharing in the struggle, instead of arguing over the answer. It is not a straightforward manner to decide whom to vote for, what party to align oneself with (or declare independence from parties), what stance to take on a political issue, what stance to take on a theological issue, what career to choose, where to attend church, etc.
2. If you feel uncomfortable voting for someone, then don't. If you feel uncomfortable voting for either presidential candidate, then don't vote for either. Still vote---for whatever you feel comfortable---but leave that line blank. The Republican party has long relied on the support of much of the Christian church, and their drift away from the abortion issue (which the Christian right said was so important to them four years ago) indicates that now they're assuming that support. But what if some Christians voted for every issue/candidate with whom they felt comfortable, but left the presidential line blank? What if the number of abstentions on the presidential selection on ballots became a statistic referred to on the news? What if it became a concern, to both parties?