COMMENTARY: Following a God who votes like us

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest, author and former Wall Street Journal reporter living in Winston-Salem, N.C. Contact Ehrich via e-mail at journey(at sign)interpath.com.) (UNDATED) As the political year proceeds and moral issues take center stage, the word”Christian”will be worked overtime. Diverse coalitions of Christians will do battle with each […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest, author and former Wall Street Journal reporter living in Winston-Salem, N.C. Contact Ehrich via e-mail at journey(at sign)interpath.com.)

(UNDATED) As the political year proceeds and moral issues take center stage, the word”Christian”will be worked overtime.


Diverse coalitions of Christians will do battle with each other, each claiming ultimate authority. Politicians courting the”Christian vote”will pursue what pollsters tell them is a”Christian agenda.”The mind and will of God will be quoted with unwavering certainty, not only on issues with which Scripture does deal, but others as well, such as abortion, prayer in schools, immigration, perhaps even capital gains.

But what, exactly, is a”Christian agenda?”From the days of prickly colonialists to the present, this nation has been a hotbed of religious variety, spawning over 260 Christian denominations. Within those denominations, there are subsets and parties who want nothing to do with each other. We differ on everything from doctrine, ethics and politics to architecture, church furnishings, baptism and Scripture.

Other than a desire to keep church contributions tax-deductible, I doubt that Christians in America could agree on anything.

Nor, in all honesty, will the views of Christians be sought, except perhaps by those clever souls who run focus groups to test attack ads. We won’t witness a Christian convention. We can’t even stand to be in the same room. Christians detest each other and think each other absolutely wrong, worthy only of condemnation.

Hold a Gay Pride Parade, for example, and you will see some Christians marching and other Christians jeering from the sidelines. Stand outside an abortion clinic, and you will see some Christians fighting to keep the doors open and other Christians fighting to stop women from entering. It’s a good thing God isn’t guided by our opinions of each other. Who, then, could be saved?

This is nothing new. Over the years, the Christian banner has been carried by every conceivable strand of opinion, every sort of behavior. Christianity has been invoked by fire-bombers, murderers, child-molesters; by the sanctimonious and cruel; by decent faithful folks who say their prayers, read their Bibles, care for the needy and, through small acts rarely publicized, make this a better nation.

This election, like others, has important ethical matters to consider. In a democracy, we work out our community values in public debates and balloting. No doubt many believers will turn to their Bibles for guidance on how to vote. But we should all be honest and admit there is hardly a uniform”Christian”view on any issues. For a political coalition to call itself”Christian”doesn’t necessarily mean that opposing views are non-Christian.


We certainly won’t find truth by tossing citations from Scripture at each other. In fact, the tragic irony is that by torturing the Bible to draw politically potent conclusions on matters about which Jesus said hardly a word, we become too angry, fragmented and self-righteous to hear the words Jesus did say.

Given our fascination with sex, we might wish Jesus had said more on the subject. But, in fact, Jesus talked about money _ specifically, the great burden that wealth places on the believer, the need to let go of wealth, the need to break our addiction to control, and the need to share.

People hear what they want to hear, and we Christians have fallen prey to the very sin of self-centeredness that Jesus came to cleanse. We have projected our own desires onto God. In his name, we have pursued castles, thrones, armies, oppression, inquisitions, executions, as well as our personal and institutional prosperity. We have baptized our appetites and opinions. We have created a God who wants what we want, who hates those whom we hate, who looks like us, talks like us, maybe even votes like us.

We are not the first to build a golden calf. But sinners should always leave a little room for humility, and the increasingly polarized moral politics of America show little evidence of humility, especially among the followers of Jesus.

We just need to remember that Christians are known by their deeds of self-sacrificial love, not by their political platforms. The Gospel is about dying to self and loving both God and neighbor, not raising the victory flag of right opinion on Election Day.

MJP END EHRICH

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