Can I be honest and say the election confused me? I myself can be considered a minority evangelical. I am almost one-eighth Native American (don’t call me an Indian…I don’t wear red dots and I love beef—it’s what’s for dinner!).
What confused me was the overwhelming way minority evangelicals voted for a candidate who diametrically opposed the evangelical view on right-to-life issues. I am neither Republican nor Democratic. I consider myself an American. When selecting a candidate, I begin with the people who reflect biblical ideals. From those choices, I then select a candidate based on his economic plans, foreign policy, and national defense strategy. I typically vote across the two-party lines. For me, anything less would be mentally lazy.
I do not pretend to judge the faith of our new president. I cannot know, from this distance, what guides and shapes his life. His relationship with God is between himself and God, and short of speaking to him in a private conversation, I cannot begin to know the existence of or nature of that relationship.
That being said, I do see conflict with his “Christianity” and mine. The Bible inferentially supports the concept of life beginning in the womb--and even at conception. Isaiah speaks of being called by God before birth. David spoke of his life while inside his mother’s body.
I emailed several of my Facebook friends –conservative, evangelical Christians—who supported Barack Obama. They were completely candid and confessed that their vote came based on racial issues and/or their dislike for Bush’s policy. So my question is: “When did political policy (for the evangelical) begin to trump core convictions?” or “When did we begin to identify ourselves as race, first, and Christians thereafter?” Dr. Martin Luther King established the vision for an America where race was not an issue—where people are judged by the character of their heart and not the color of their skin.
What has been revealed is that evangelicals do not have as many true convictions as we think. It appears that evangelicals are learning to compartmentalize their faith. We have learned to live with contradiction—a state of mind that can be very unhealthy. As Christians, we should not be “for” or “against” any candidate. We should be “for” certain ideals, and our votes should reflect something deeper than our skin, our financial portfolio, or our discomfort with war.
That being said, I pray for President Obama every day, I respect his authority to lead our government, and I will support him in the policy decisions that reflect wisdom, morality, and good judgment.—because these are biblical ideals. To do any less is un-American, or worse…un-Christian. No matter who is in office, God must be with us.
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Hmm. I didn't vote for Barack Obama, but most of the evangelicals I know that did support him, did not do so merely because he was 1)black and 2)wasn't George Bush.
ReplyDelete- Still, it's hard to separate Barack Obama's racial heritage from him as a person and as a political candidate. And anyone who says that race had nothing to do with their support for him is probably not telling the complete truth. But similarly, I don't assume that race had everything to do with it, either.
- On the issue of whether Obama got support from evangelicals simply because he wasn't George W. Bush....
I do think that it's possible that many evangelicals do have conflicting political convictions. It's just that many evangelicals view hot-button issues like abortion or homosexual rights as being issues that can never ever be budged on.
For those evangelicals who don't feel compelled to vote based solely on these issues, it's just not that hard to support the first truly viable, inspiring, non-hate-filled, minority Presidential candidate that America has ever seen.
Understand my "poll" was informal and certainly not viable as a statistic per se.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to overlook the Democratic strategy of linking the Republican candidate to Bush and then calling for change. Most major networks defined this as the Obama strategy down the stretch. That was the explicit rhetoric of Obama's political advertisements. So I believe it is plausible to say Obama benefitted from an anti-Bush sentiment...as any Democratic nominee would have.
I agree about the inability to separate part of Obama's race from his political aspirations. I am proud that we have a minority president...I am even more proud to have a bi-racial president. But that is not all that he is. He told a pro-abortion crowd that within the first few days of office he planned to expand abortion rights.
Simply put, we all know that some people voted for Obama because of his ethnicity, and we all (unfortunately) know some voted against his ethnicity. To think otherwise is naive and unrealistic.
The point I wanted to make concerns the relative ease with which evangelicals have cast aside the right-to-life issue in favor of lesser moral, political, or economic issues. To a religious evangelical (as opposed to the political identification) what is more sacred than human life formed in the image of God?
I guess I am concerned about where Christianity goes from here. If what we believe to be true in the very depth of our soul has no meaningful influence on the major decisions in our life, what good is belief? Can we call something belief and faith when it does not have an overarching influence in our life?
Thanks for the thoughtful response
I still think that most WASPs would never vote for a candidate that does not have an absolutely pro-life record when it comes to abortion....and that is obviously an honorable conviction.
ReplyDeleteAnd while I, too, am skeptical whenever pro-choice politicians announce their intentions during the campaign season to reduce the number of abortions in America, I don't think that this is just some kind of black-and-white, mathematical argument, either.
In fact, the number of abortions actually went up during Bush 41's term, and came down significantly during Clinton's eight years in office in the 90's (and have continued to come down under Bush43 to a 30 year low).
But as wonderful as it may have sounded to conservatives during John McCain's campaign speeches, Roe v. Wade would not have gone away had the man been elected. From a political standpoint, this is just not realistic.
I know we've all heard the arguments a million times, but I think it just comes down to the fact that there is an increasing number of evangelical Christians who think of themselves as "pro-life," but they expand that term to mean more than just just the treatment of unborn humans.
For instance, this new breed of evangelical also thinks that it is just as important not to kill people across the globe as the result of needless wars and nationalistic pride (be it intentional or unintentional).
All this being said....Barack Obama's stance on abortion rights was still one of the issues that concerned me enough to not vote for the man (the other issue being Jeremiah Wright).
Seriously, I need some enlightenment...what is a WASP? Maybe I'll google it.
ReplyDeleteYour abortion statistics are interesting. I'd love it if you e-mailed me a link to that report. I would be really interested to see what the rises and declines were attributed to.
And you're right...Roe v. Wade and School Prayer are beyond the scope of the office of the president. That's a Judicial and Legislative issue. Those will only be overturned when the American people vote those ideals (in Senate and House races, specifically)...which is the basis for the initial discussion.
I think there is a secular argument to be made that abortion is not a black and white issue--based on the particular worldview. But I don't believe it is a gray issue for an evangelical.
And I am aware of the pacifist movement in evangelicalism...its quite chic in some circles. Though, again, it is not consistent with the Bible. The hardest question I have been asked to date is "If you are pro-life, how can you be for the death penalty?" That's for another time.
Regarding the war being unjustified...that is really sticky. Most of the service personnel I come in contact with feel it was quite justified. I am inclined to believe them because they are putting their "money where there mouths are." I guess the argument is if its wrong to kill babies, how is it okay to kill people in war? To maintain that argument, you would have to conclusively show the war is completely unjustified. I don't think that can be maintained. For one, I seem to remember Colin Powell advocating for the war...but has since jumped to the Obama camp. If he's with Bush he's wrong--but if he's with Obama, he's right and teh past is moot? Seems very contradictory.
My intention is to call evangelicals back to a consistency between belief and life choices. Either change your beliefs or your life choices, but its irrational to live in such deep contradiction--or is it a paradox? Again, another dicussion.
I don't feel like it's necessarily an outright pacifist mindset that I see. I think that many evangelicals feel, as Barack Obama said in 2004, that while they are not against all wars, they are against dumb wars. But as you say, the issue of whether or not America should have invaded Iraq in the first place has been discussed endlessly, and I don't think anyone's changing any minds at this point....especially now that it's almost over.
ReplyDeleteAnd I certainly don't mean to imply that abortion should be a "gray" area for Christians. But the fact that abortion is wrong is only one issue. Whether that one issue should be important enough to supercede every other is another entirely.
To summarize, I think that evangelicals (and Americans, as a whole) are increasingly more likely to vote for a politician whom they feel they can trust. This isn't to say that religious beliefs, personal convictions and political policies don't matter....it's just the sense that, due to incredibly corrupt national and local governments (both Democrat and Republican, Christian and secular), evangelicals are just as likely to consider ethics, as well as morals when they choose their elected leaders.
Very well put, and I think you have made some great observations. I agree that the debate is whether life issues will supercede all else. And I do believe that is a conversation Christians should have.
ReplyDeleteI know that I have a growing pessimism concerning politics because I felt that I was expected to vote for John McCain, simply because he was there, or it was his turn, or evangelicals typically vote Republican.
I did not see any real effort put forward to secure a comfortable evangelical/conservative candidate. I liked Huckabee's morality, but he never convinced me he could run the country. The Sarah Palin nomination seemed premature, last minute, and ever-so patronizing, and, therefore, a bit embarassing. I liked her stance on life issues, but again...not sure she could run the country. I felt good about Mitt Romney, but was uncomfortable when he spoke of "Jesus as his Savior." That's evangelical language, without evangelical meaning. John McCain was simply leftovers from my process of elimination.
To be sure, Obama and Clinton rallied their troops and caused their constituents to feel needed and important...while guys like me, felt obligated to turn out. I think many were swept up in the tidal wave of charisma. It also does not hurt to have most of Hollywood and a majority of the major network news anchors on your side.
2012 will be interesting. In the meantime, I hope Barack Obama does as good a job looking like a fiscal conservative as George Bush did at looking like a tax and spend liberal.