Voting as a Spiritual Discipline: Ten Tips
I came across this list by Fred Sanders. It is worth a read.
Well, now it’s convention season, and responsible voters need to wake up and smell the candidates. Here is some advice about how to conduct a healthy spiritual life in a political season.
1. Vote. Resist the temptation to hover above the fray. “If God had meant for us to vote, he would have given us candidates.” “My views are so nuanced, or so otherworldly, or so nonpartisan, or so individual, that no party or candidate matches them enough to get my vote.” Hogwash. Apolitical posturing is immature and unserious. God calls us to responsibility, and it is a sin to refuse the call.
2. Vote actively and gratefully. People tend to get involved in politics incrementally, doing just as much as they feel they must. If you’ve been wronged or systemically oppressed, you take recourse to any legal option available to you. Voting is the easiest and most ordinary means of taking action for most of us. Thank God for the opportunity.
3. Vote submissively. In Romans 13, Paul tells us to be subject to the governing authorities. For those of us who live in nations where the governing authority is constituted partly by the consent of the governed, submitting includes voting. It’s a funny kind of active submission, but there it is.
4. Vote philosophically. Most of us don’t reflect on our political philosophies often. The election cycle is a good excuse to do so. Take some time to think through your basic presuppositions about the commonwealth, about power, about life in the communities you belong to, about the distribution of goods and the protection of rights. If your political philosophy got a little more coherent every time there was an election, you’d really know what you believe by midlife. Go ahead, invest a little more of your thought life in thinking things through.
5. Vote intelligently. Become informed enough to cast an intelligent vote. How much information does it take to cast an informed ballot? Find out, make a decision, and do the relevant research. Just because everybody gets a vote doesn’t mean you automatically deserve yours. Try to deserve your vote. Do the basic research necessary to know what you’re voting about: check the sample ballot, the position papers, and the various arguments.
6. But don’t go crazy with it. Unless consuming news analysis happens to be your hobby, don’t let it take up too much of your life and mental space this season. A finite number of thoughts course through your conscious mind each day; make sure you leave room for prayer and for thinking creatively about helping people around you.
7. Register to vote by mail, and send in your ballot nice and early. Then ignore all political coverage until election night. Journalism is in such a sorry state these days that nearly all election coverage is a little bit stupid. But in the ten days before election day, the news cycle spins out of control, the reporters go stark raving mad, and the whole world becomes an echo chamber. You can feel yourself getting dumber the longer you watch the news. For most people, no thought can occur during that time. The noise generated during this brief time period is exactly the kind of noise that drives out prayer.
8. Keep your perspective. There’s more to government than the president. Sure, he’s important, but he’s just the head of one of the branches of one of our many overlapping government systems. A president is a blunt instrument, and your vote can’t be a precise instrument. The presidential election cycle produces a strange kind of foreshortening that makes us think this vote will address all issues. Remember that local politics are slightly less stupid than national, and gradual progress toward goals is better than trying to fix everything with your One Big Presidential Vote. Is there anything you could be doing between now and the next big election that might make more of a difference?
9. Christians, don’t let your head get turned by the parties and causes that want to recruit you. The Republican party wants to keep counting on evangelical votes with no questions asked; the Democrats have been frenzy-driven to conjure up a Religious Left voting block for about five years now. The particular configurations that seem so important now will blow over, and the church will still be the church, Christians will still be Christians. Remain calm, it’s just flirting.
10. Pray about your vote. Tell God what you’re doing.
For the rest of this thoughtful article, click here.
Well, now it’s convention season, and responsible voters need to wake up and smell the candidates. Here is some advice about how to conduct a healthy spiritual life in a political season.
1. Vote. Resist the temptation to hover above the fray. “If God had meant for us to vote, he would have given us candidates.” “My views are so nuanced, or so otherworldly, or so nonpartisan, or so individual, that no party or candidate matches them enough to get my vote.” Hogwash. Apolitical posturing is immature and unserious. God calls us to responsibility, and it is a sin to refuse the call.
2. Vote actively and gratefully. People tend to get involved in politics incrementally, doing just as much as they feel they must. If you’ve been wronged or systemically oppressed, you take recourse to any legal option available to you. Voting is the easiest and most ordinary means of taking action for most of us. Thank God for the opportunity.
3. Vote submissively. In Romans 13, Paul tells us to be subject to the governing authorities. For those of us who live in nations where the governing authority is constituted partly by the consent of the governed, submitting includes voting. It’s a funny kind of active submission, but there it is.
4. Vote philosophically. Most of us don’t reflect on our political philosophies often. The election cycle is a good excuse to do so. Take some time to think through your basic presuppositions about the commonwealth, about power, about life in the communities you belong to, about the distribution of goods and the protection of rights. If your political philosophy got a little more coherent every time there was an election, you’d really know what you believe by midlife. Go ahead, invest a little more of your thought life in thinking things through.
5. Vote intelligently. Become informed enough to cast an intelligent vote. How much information does it take to cast an informed ballot? Find out, make a decision, and do the relevant research. Just because everybody gets a vote doesn’t mean you automatically deserve yours. Try to deserve your vote. Do the basic research necessary to know what you’re voting about: check the sample ballot, the position papers, and the various arguments.
6. But don’t go crazy with it. Unless consuming news analysis happens to be your hobby, don’t let it take up too much of your life and mental space this season. A finite number of thoughts course through your conscious mind each day; make sure you leave room for prayer and for thinking creatively about helping people around you.
7. Register to vote by mail, and send in your ballot nice and early. Then ignore all political coverage until election night. Journalism is in such a sorry state these days that nearly all election coverage is a little bit stupid. But in the ten days before election day, the news cycle spins out of control, the reporters go stark raving mad, and the whole world becomes an echo chamber. You can feel yourself getting dumber the longer you watch the news. For most people, no thought can occur during that time. The noise generated during this brief time period is exactly the kind of noise that drives out prayer.
8. Keep your perspective. There’s more to government than the president. Sure, he’s important, but he’s just the head of one of the branches of one of our many overlapping government systems. A president is a blunt instrument, and your vote can’t be a precise instrument. The presidential election cycle produces a strange kind of foreshortening that makes us think this vote will address all issues. Remember that local politics are slightly less stupid than national, and gradual progress toward goals is better than trying to fix everything with your One Big Presidential Vote. Is there anything you could be doing between now and the next big election that might make more of a difference?
9. Christians, don’t let your head get turned by the parties and causes that want to recruit you. The Republican party wants to keep counting on evangelical votes with no questions asked; the Democrats have been frenzy-driven to conjure up a Religious Left voting block for about five years now. The particular configurations that seem so important now will blow over, and the church will still be the church, Christians will still be Christians. Remain calm, it’s just flirting.
10. Pray about your vote. Tell God what you’re doing.
For the rest of this thoughtful article, click here.
Labels: Cultural Observations, Faith and Politics, Global Issues
posted by Jonathan Morrow at
2:57 PM
1 Comments:
I've got to disagree with Mr. Sanders on point number one. While I think we should exercise our freedom to vote as often as we can, there are times, I believe, when there may be no one worthy of our vote. In those situations the best course of action for a Christian would be to not vote. The lesser of two or more evils is still evil. I also feel that Mr. Sanders misses the boat on number eight. Yes, we should engage in local politics and not focus so much on the president, but one of the biggest reasons for that is that for the last hundred and fifty years in particular we've been allowing presidents to usurp far more power than is actually granted them by the Constitution. It would be far better to keep the majority of political power close to us, so as to keep the state in check.
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