Nov. 3 is the day we have all been waiting for or waiting to be done with! The presidential election has never had more importance in decades. The good news is that all of the controversy and angst around the political season has resulted in a huge uptick in voter participation and engagement. People of faith must never absolutely equate any political party with “truth, justice of the American way.” There are important distinctions, however, between political parties and political candidates. Christians should cast their vote for the person who stands for the “common good”, especially the most vulnerable and marginalized in our society. We should avoid making false moral equivalencies between candidates. Yes, as Jacques Ellut described it, politics is the “realm of the demonic.”
Politics like any human institution is flawed and those who participate in it often compromise and fail but that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be some candidates preferred above others. For instance, there is a difference between those of us who sometimes lie and those of us who habitually and pathologically lie. Below are a few thoughts and scriptural verses you may want to contemplate as you search your conscience before you
vote.
Quotes for thought and communal reflection
By Minister Jason Carson Wilson, M. Div., Justice and Peace Policy Fellow, United Church of Christ.
Ephesians 4:31-32: Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.
John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States of America: “Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”
Bayard Rustin: “If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.”
Audre Lorde, Our Dead Behind Us: Poems: “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”
Isaiah 58:6-10:
Is this not the fast which I choose,
To loosen the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the bands of the yoke,
And to let the oppressed go free
And break every yoke?
Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry
And bring the homeless poor into the house;
When you see the naked, to cover him;
And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?