Vote Your Faith, Not Your Party

Why following Jesus should reach all the way to the ballot box

Introduction

We often talk about faith as though it belongs in certain rooms of our lives. Definitely the Church, Prayer and Family rooms. And sometimes the Work room for the way we treat a coworker who is driving us quietly insane. Politics, however, gets placed in another room, with a sign on the door that says, “Handle with care,” or “Danger. Thin Ice,” or worse “Road Closed. Do Not Enter.”

But if following Jesus is really a way of life, drawing lines around questions of politics and policy is not so clean. The ballot is not and should not be outside the reach of discipleship. Not because Jesus belongs to a political party. He doesn't.

And faithful Christians will not always arrive at the same policy conclusions. What I am saying is simpler. If Jesus shapes how I live, then Jesus has to shape how I vote too.

Politics, Morality and Partisanship

One reason political conversations become so tangled is that we sometimes treat politics as though it were separate from morality. But it isn’t.

Politics is about how we collectively exercise power, make laws, allocate resources, establish priorities and decide what responsibilities we have toward one another in a community. Morality asks what is right, good, just and loving. Partisanship is loyalty to a particular party or side, usually the vehicle through which people pursue their preferred solutions.

Those things can be related, but they aren’t the same thing.

Politics is never morally neutral.

Think about the questions hiding underneath almost any political issue: Who gets help? Who gets protected? Who bears the burden? Whose voice matters? What do we owe one another? What kind of community are we trying to build?

Those aren’t merely political questions. They’re moral questions.

Politics is where our moral convictions collide with the practical question of how we live together.

The follower of Jesus can’t avoid bringing morality into politics. So the question is which morality we’re bringing. And if we’re going to claim that Jesus shapes our lives, then his teaching has to shape the moral framework we bring with us.

Start With Jesus, Not a Party Platform

I want my political morality to start with the Greatest Commandments (Matthew 22:37-39), which give me a surprisingly practical starting point: love God with all that I am, and love my neighbor as myself. That changes how I read everything on the ballot.

If loving my neighbor is at the center of my faith, then my political decisions cannot be based only on what benefits me. My income, my taxes, my property value, my retirement account, my neighborhood or my preferred cultural outcome may all matter. But they can’t be the only things that matter.

Faith, even at the ballot, asks me to look beyond the question, “What’s best for me?” and ask, “What does love require of me toward other people?”

The People Jesus Put in Front of Us

Jesus makes “love your neighbor as yourself” concrete in ways that are difficult to reduce to personal preference.

In Luke 4:18-19, Jesus describes his mission using language about good news for the poor, freedom for the oppressed and release for those who are bound.

In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus describes a final accounting in which care for hungry, thirsty, sick, imprisoned and otherwise vulnerable people becomes central to the question of how people have responded to him.

Those passages on Jesus’ mission and who he sees as caring for the hungry, thirsty, sick and imprisoned don’t hand us a modern legislative agenda. But they do tell us something about the moral lens Jesus wants his followers to carry. The people with the least power don’t become less important because they have less power. Say that one out loud.

That’s a difficult standard for many of us because self-interest is remarkably persuasive. I can build an impressive moral argument around whatever happens to protect my own comfort. Conveniently, I can even convince myself I’m being principled while doing it. That’s one reason I need Jesus to both challenge and drive my politics rather than simply bless it.

Who Follows Whom

If I start with a political position and then go hunting through Scripture for support, I haven't followed Jesus anywhere. I've just recruited him to follow me. But if I begin with Jesus and ask what his teaching requires of me, my faith becomes a compass.

It may lead me toward positions I expected. It may also lead me somewhere uncomfortable. That discomfort can be useful. That means I have to notice when my preferred political position is rubbing against the character of Jesus.

If I have to bend, filter or dilute my faith to keep my politics intact, then it isn’t my faith that’s doing the leading.

A Personal Application

What does this mean when I actually fill out a ballot? For me, at the ballot following Jesus means slowing down enough to ask questions that don’t begin with my own interests.

• Who is affected by this policy or candidate besides me?

• Who has the least ability to absorb its costs?

• Who might be overlooked?

• Does this approach reflect mercy, justice, honesty and concern for my neighbor?

• Does the way I am thinking about this issue resemble the way Jesus treated people who had little status or power?

It also means being honest about the limits of my own understanding. Faithfulness doesn’t require pretending every political question has a simple answer. Sometimes reasonable Christians will disagree about how best to accomplish a shared moral goal. But disagreement over strategy is different from surrendering the moral framework altogether.

Policies have numbers attached to them. People have names. I need to remember the people behind the numbers, and be driven primarily by compassion for the people.

I can't keep Jesus in the Church room and leave him out of the voting booth.

A Different Kind of Calling

My goal isn’t to become less political, but to become less partisan and more intentional about voting my faith.

I'm permitted to bring my faith into politics, and I'd go further: I'm obligated to, the same way I'm obligated to give my time, money and effort to what Jesus cares about.

Practically, it means the following:

• If I believe life is sacred, I will care about it at every life stage, before birth and after. That means supporting pre-natal health for all women, new mothers, infant care, children's nutrition, equal educational opportunity, protection of young people from police and community violence, fair treatment of the marginalized under the law, and safety nets that reach people through their senior years.

• If I believe God made us all in his image, then I must oppose efforts to dehumanize people, whether individuals or entire ethnic and national communities, simply because they disagree with me, believe differently, have an accent, or look different.

• If I call Jesus Lord and God my Father, I will take seriously the repeated biblical calls to love, defend and protect the stranger and foreigner, whatever their paperwork says. I can support limits on immigration and still refuse to accept the inhumane treatment of undocumented immigrants: separating children from their parents, treating people as suspect because of how they look, or cancelling paths to asylum without notice or due process.

• If I expect integrity and fairness from myself and my leaders, I won't hand power over our resources, law enforcement, courts and political machinery to people known to lie, cheat, abuse or enrich themselves, just because they carry my party's label.

Some faithful Christians believe churches and private charity, not government programs, are the best way to care for the poor, and I take that argument seriously. What I can't accept is letting it become a reason to do nothing.

I accept that all this “love your neighbor as yourself” theology may cost me in practice: more giving out of my own pocket, a more crowded dinner table, a smaller retirement account, and sometimes higher taxes. But the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 paid out of his own time and pocket, and Jesus never suggests that was too much to ask. Loving my neighbor was always going to cost something.

For Christians, the full gospel should drive our politics, not just the part a particular party focuses on. Politics is important enough to require a moral foundation deeper than party loyalty.

Don’t make Jesus fit your politics. Make your politics answer to Jesus.

For Further Reflection

When I vote, am I mostly asking, “What happens to people like me?” or am I also asking, “What does love of neighbor require of me, especially toward the hungry, the overlooked and the people with the least power?