I wasn’t able to vote in our national election this year, due to an unexpected death of a family member which required my being out-of-town on election day, too late to get in on absentee or early voting. But to listen to some of my Christian friends on FB, it’s a good thing I didn’t. Some made it clear (if not overtly) that as a Christian, I couldn’t possibly vote for President Trump. Other Christian FB friends made it clear (if not overtly) that as a Christian I couldn’t possibly vote for Vice President Harris.

Who was right? How could a Christian vote for Trump or Harris and still please God? If we’re to take the outcome as a sign for who was right, or at least for who were the better pray-ers, it would seem the one’s pushing for the Christian vote for Harris were wrong and God favors Trump. But I’m not sure (probably like you) that the outcome necessarily reveals God’s will…or maybe it does. Most likely those whose preferred candidate didn’t win will devalue the teaching in Romans 13 about government authorities being established by God and the further guidance it provides concerning our attitude and posture toward them.

Opponents of Trump most often cited his character as the biggest reason he wasn’t qualified to be President, turning a blind eye to Harris’ actions, decisions, promises and statements contrary to Christian values while opponents of Harris often cited those things the anti-Trumpers ignored about Harris, putting less negative weight on Trump’s personal, even sometimes public, life outside of his official policy decisions.

Grant it, character is important. I want for a president a man who has high moral values, but I think the issue I have with many of my Christian FB friends who insisted on Christians having to vote a certain way to really vote “Christian” is that they were forcing (their) morality on the candidates, as though public office is a religious office. Sure, I would love to have all elected officials be Christian, better if they are conservative Christians, and if I took it a bit farther, it would be even better if they were conservative Christians in the Wesleyan tradition. But not only is that not likely to happen en masse but it would come awfully close to violating the “No Religious Test” clause in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, though that clause isn’t intended to prevent voters from using the test but rather to prevent government action influenced by the candidates’ religion.

So where’s the rub? It appears, if we are permitted to read between the lines of the spiritual diatribes of the Church’s FB pundits (as well as remember previous FB posts where they reveal their allegiances and political views), that our faith or spirituality is being used to mask the actual political desires of the authors. However, they often do a pretty good job making their political views biblical, but then they’re forcing their interpretation of Scripture onto the issues while denigrating other’s valid interpretations of Scripture, which in the case of some of the issues, often have centuries or even millennia of support from the early Church and Church Fathers…and even the words of Scripture and (dare I?) Jesus himself.

Do I think we should ignore our faith and Scripture teaching when voting for candidates for public office? Absolutely not. Our faith should influence all of our decisions and actions, whether they’re properly pigeon holed as “spiritual” or “secular” (though that pigeon holing, or separation, violates the idea that all of life -for the Christian- is spiritual even when delving into what could be defined as the secular, or arenas that are not defined or viewed as spiritual). It’s always going to come down to your view of what’s right against my view of what’s right. So, we might as well step down from our political-couched-in-spiritual-language soap box, simply urge our friends and parishioners to research the candidates and issues, study the Scripture and spend time in prayer before voting, then let our political views be what they are: political.

Accepting this philosophy would certainly simplify the debate. It would remove the effort to try to find Scripture that supports our political views and frees us to discuss or debate the issues for what they are, realizing that there is an aisle, actual and symbolic, which divides us by our belief about what is best for our country and its people, and how best to accomplish it. We can’t ignore the aisle but we don’t have to let it be divisive. If we don’t overly spiritualize public issues, questioning the spirituality of those who don’t agree with us, we can possibly have civil conversations about the issues and work toward better understanding and potential compromise rather than suggesting those who disagree with us are less spiritual or less Christian.

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Photo from theconversation.com/us-election-trump-declares-victory-theres-never-been-anything-like-this-241711 (while not necessarily recommending the article it’s attached to).