c. 1996 Religion News Service
WASHINGTON _ In rural Northern Virginia, Judie Brown has made the fight against abortion her personal crusade. An hour’s drive away in inner-city Washington, D.C., Carol Fennelly is a veteran advocate for the homeless. The two women are activists on radically different ends of the political spectrum, but on Election Day this year, they face a similar dilemma: They both say they can’t in good conscience vote for either of the leading presidential contenders.
Brown, who many would consider part of Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole’s natural constituency, says she is frustrated with how both Dole and President Bill Clinton stand on the abortion issue. She is angry with Clinton for his general support of abortion rights _ and particularly for his veto of a ban on late-term abortions. But she also is angry with Dole for claiming to be”pro-life”while treating abortion as”merely”a political issue.”Neither one has exhibited any backbone on (the issue), so how can you vote for someone like that?”she asks.
Fennelly is part of a constituency that many would place in the Clinton camp. She is strongly opposed to many Republican-proposed economic policies, believing they would devastate the nation’s poor. But she says she felt betrayed when Clinton signed the new welfare reform bill into law. With that signature, she believes a Democratic president”did more damage to poor people”than was done in 12 years under Republican presidents.”I don’t feel like I can bow down to the altar of either the Democrats or the Republicans. I feel like casting a vote for either one is somehow idolatry,”she says.
Brown and Fennelly are not alone.
Traditionally, most American religious leaders have stressed the idea that voting is a responsibility which springs from one’s faith. But what happens when people of faith are so dissatisfied with the candidates on the ballot that they wonder if they can in good conscience vote at all?
As Election Day approaches, studies suggest that less than half of all eligible American voters will actually come to the polls. In fact, the United States has one of the lowest voter turnout rates of all the world’s democracies. Analysts say there are a complex set of reasons why people don’t vote, including apathy, anger, an eroding sense of civic duty and cynicism about the political process.
According to Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, based in Washington, D.C., there are also growing numbers of citizens”who are consciously choosing not to participate”in the electoral process for reasons of conscience. These citizens are less heedful of the message of religious leaders who stress the importance of voting. “It’s your duty as a Christian member of this community to go out and vote,”the Rev. Ted Hanawalt, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Slidell, La., told the 430 members of his congregation in his sermon on Sunday (Oct. 20).
Hanawalt believes voting is part of a”civic stewardship”rooted in the Bible.”We are told to render unto Ceasar the things that are Ceasar’s and to God the things that are God’s. It’s not a stretch to say that the Gospel says to do this civic thing,”he said in an interview.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church Council of Bishops took a similar tack earlier this year, calling non-participation in the electoral process”unconscionable.””It is our Christian responsibility to register to vote … (but) the duties and requirements of the church do not end with voter registration and education. It is urgent that we apply our knowledge and go to the polls and vote,”the bishops said in a policy statement.
Indeed, many religious groups are conducting massive”get out the vote”efforts this season, including the Nation of Islam, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the National Council of Churches. At the Christian Coalition”Road to Victory”rally in September, Executive Director Ralph Reed promised that his group would conduct the”most ambitious voter education and get out the vote program in the history of American politics.” But is it ever ethical not to vote?
Jim Wallis, an activist for the poor and founder of Cry for Renewal, says this question has come up repeatedly during the 50 town meetings his group has organized in 30 different cities in the weeks prior to the election. Cry for Renewal is a coalition of politically progressive Protestants, Catholics and evangelicals.”People feel so anguished. They don’t know how to vote, and they ask, `what do I do?'”Wallis says.
For some, the answer is not voting at all.”If it is legitimate for reasons of conscience not to fight wars your country is engaged in, it is surely legitimate for reasons of conscience to stay home on Election Day, and to a certain extent over time, people have increasingly been making that judgment either directly or subliminally,”says Gans.
Politically conservative Christians and opponents of abortion have warned that they may stay home on Election Day if they are unhappy with positions taken by politicians on issue like abortion. Other groups are taking a similar approach.
In a recent interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said he will not be encouraging his followers to vote in the election _ despite the voter registration drive his group launched earlier this year.”I would not discourage our people from voting, but I don’t see any candidate that is worthy of my vote,”he told the newspaper.
But some religious leaders maintain that voting and other political participation is an obligation _ even for people who have deep ethical problems with the political system.
Speaking at the National Press Club Tuesday (Oct. 22), the Christian Coalition’s Reed criticized the presidential candidates for what he said was their lack of attention to moral issues during the campaign.
But Reed said he does not believe religious conservatives will stay home on Election Day in protest.”There’s too much at stake”for them not to vote, he said, referring to congressional and local races.
He predicted that religious conservatives will turn out in record numbers this Election Day.
In recent speeches and articles, the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, president of the New York-based Institute on Religion and Public Life, has been raising questions about the”moral legitimacy”of the current U.S. government. A former Lutheran who is now a Catholic priest and editor of the conservative First Things magazine, Neuhaus cites papal encyclicals that teach that Christians are not obliged to follow laws that”contradict moral law.”Still, Neuhaus says his comments should not be taken as a call to stop voting.”To speak of the actual political system as being illegitimate does not mean that one should not participate in it. … On the contrary, it might mean you participate all the more vigorously in the hope of redeeming it,”he says.
Neuhaus asserts that if more laws are adopted sanctioning euthanasia or expanding abortion policy, Christians may decide they can no longer ethically support them. He says that opposition could take many forms: not voting; withholding tax dollars; or civil disobedience. Or Neuhaus argues,”in extreme circumstances where one has concluded that the entire political and legal system has set itself against moral law, there is a longstanding Christian tradition among both Protestants and Catholics for legitimate revolution.” Jim Wallis also generally encourages people to”vote and do the best they can.”He likes to joke that sometimes it takes two hands to vote:”You have to hold your nose with one and pull the lever with the other.” Wallis also concedes that there may be occasions when people are”just so morally offended”that they may decide to sit the election out. But he says, even then, people of faith still have the responsibility of political involvement.”If I’m unhappy with the choices, I have to be involved in opening up new possibilities, to create a third path, to find new solutions,”Wallis says.
Jewish ethicist and author Arthur Waskow agrees.”Sometimes, the question is not only an immediate vote on specific people who are running, but also how you build the context for the future,”says Waskow, who works for ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal in Philadelphia.
Many people emphasize that citizens’ voting options are not limited to only voting Republican or Democrat. Judie Brown says she intends to cast her presidential vote for Taxpayer Party candidate Howard Phillips, who will be on the ballot in Virginia and several other states. Carol Fennelly says she plans to reject a”lesser of evils”political philosophy this year. Therefore, she will be voting, but when it comes to the presidential race, she will cast a write-in vote for president.”It will be a purely symbolic vote, but for me, that has meaning,”she says.
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Like Fennelly, Waskow was so outraged by the signing of the welfare bill that he feels he can no longer in good conscience enthusiastically support Clinton’s presidential re-election either. He has worked out a mathematical equation to determine his presidential vote: If Clinton is at least three percentage points ahead of Dole in Pennsylvania (where Waskow is registered to vote) on Election Day, then Waskow will do a write-in vote for Ralph Nader. However, if there is a chance that Dole may win Pennsylvania, then Waskow intends to vote for Clinton, since he believes Dole’s policies would be even worse than Clinton’s.
Gans of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate emphasizes that a general feeling of dissatisfaction with candidates”does not relieve religious people of the obligation to spend a lot of time searching both about the candidates and the parties.” He adds that voters must always remember that the presidency is not the only thing being decided in 1996.”The question is whether in other races and other ballot initiatives they can find a reason to participate,”he says.
Overall, Neuhaus believes the debate is a healthy one for American society because it helps refine and personalize the meaning of participatory democracy.”This set of questions doesn’t really have a left or right or liberal or conservative copyright on it,”he says.”When we remember our history, we should not be surprised that these questions keep coming around again.”
MJP END LAWTON
