A Christian Response, pt 3

We are just about finished with our brief, very broad stroked, discussion of voting and our role as Christians. I have begun, almost accidentally, with two key parts of a Christian, namely discipleship and idolatry, that really seem to be grounded in individual Christian lives and choices. It seems to me, however, that really the most important reasons for Christians not to vote stems not from the first two points, but mostly from what we will discuss here: the Church. There are a number of faithful, honest ways to imagine the Church, and Scripture uses a number of images (like body and building) to get at the heart of what it means to be the Church. Depending on your tradition, the Church may be a place, a dispenser of Sacraments, a collection of the elect, people filled by the Holy Spirit, an Institution, or any number of combinations of these and other ideas, but almost every church everywhere will agree that the Church is catholic. By catholic we mean the Church is universal, it knows no national boundaries. The Church is not American, Canadian or British, nor is it Roman or Greek. As a result of this, it is very difficult for the Church to get excited about specific national claims and ideas (for a very brief excellent article that struggles with this point, click here). The Church historically has made this mistake of tying itself to a nation, and that nation's success, and the results have been far less than fantastic (we are looking at you Germany).
Beyond being catholic, the Church also has very distinct practices and traditions. For example, when people decide they want to follow Jesus, we get out the water and make it official. We pray and we sing. We recite confessions and read from a very old book. As the Church, we want to remember that these are not simply things we do on Sunday morning, but rather they are the way in which the Church is political in the whole world. This is an extremely crucial point in our overall discussion of voting, so let me repeat it a bit differently, all of the ways we have of being together that are distinctly Christian, are all the ways we can faithfully be political in the world. It is not that instead of voting Christians do nothing, it is that Christians can think of nothing more faithful than actually being the Church. The irony is that while voting purports to be the way we should be active in the world, it actually stunts the Church's ability and imagination to help the world. Put another way, Christians do not vote to eliminate poverty, the Church provides food for the least of these. Christians do not sign petitions to make the government acknowledge traditional marriage, we confess our own sin and remain faithful to our spouses. Christians do not outlaw abortions, we adopt children into homes shaped by baptism. The degree to which we trust our government to transform the world, is generally the same degree to which we believe God is not already doing it.
One final note on voting as a practice foreign to the Church, namely that we tend to think of voting only as a good. In fact, though, there are a number of very serious assumptions underlying voting that make it very dangerous for the Church. The esssential premise of voting seems to be that the side with the most votes is the side that is most right, most true, most reflective of the community, etc... For the Church, those attempting to follow Jesus, this valuing of the majority over against the minority should send up huge red flags. The gospel simply is not concerned with who can get the most votes. The picture for resolving conflict and "electing" leaders in the New Testament church is radically different from this model of voting. Voting does not demand that I die to myself, or that together we might be wronged for the sake of the gospel. Voting does not force us to rely on the Spirit to come together in unity and to be of one mind.
Over these three posts, I have attempted to provide some framework for rethinking the assumption that it is the Christian's responsibility to vote. I have attacked this assumption first by challenging the notion that effectiveness is what ought to motivate Christian living. Second I have argued that voting really names a number of our idolatrous habits, particular our impatience with God and our attempt to control history, and finally I have argued that our Church membership is far more significant than our nationality. Beyond this, I have tried to articulate the point that there are a number of very Christian alternatives to voting. The point to be made in all of this is that not voting is not a strategy for withdrawal from the world, simply a challenge for the Church to more faithfully model lives of cross and resurrection.