Marginal Christianity

1.      Voting is the least significant act of citizenship. 2.      If voting is your only form of active citizenship, you are likely a poser. (Voting alone does not make you an active citizen any more than church attendance makes one a Christian) 3.      Only if voting is a symbol of actual involvement in seeking the well-being of your community are you an active citizen. 4.      Only if voting is a sacrament of your life broken and poured out for the world is it a Christian act. 5.      Only if voting is a sign of your solidarity with the last and the least and reflects their needs and interests is it in line with the Gospel. 6.      Only if voting is bathed in prayer and reflection with a community of faith is it an act of God’s love for the world.  

Top of Form John C. Nugent 08/05/16 Kudos to believers who strive to vote like Christians. Some do so by electing candidates who best represent the Christian values they cherish most. Others do so by electing candidates whose overall approach to government they believe best serves the good of all. By voting in these ways, believers attempt to love and seek the peace of their neighbors. Unfortunately, many people who are attempting to vote Christianly are actually voting Christendomly . By “Christendomly,” I mean striving to retain or recover the collaborative relationship that Christians have long enjoyed with Western governments. (See this recent Wayne Grudem column as an example.) Such collaboration began in the fourth century, when the Roman Empire went from ignoring and persecuting Christians to tolerating and eventually embracing Christianity as the state religion. Since then, believers have grown accustomed to promoting Christian values through civil mechan...

Ballot box image via Shutterstock.com John C. Nugent 07/19/16 Evangelicals are rapidly endorsing Donald Trump, who seemed anathema to them only months ago. In their mind, he represents the “lesser of two evils.” Sure, he’s not vey moral, he’s politically inexperienced and he routinely alienates minority groups and women, but “crooked Hillary,” to use Trump’s words, is considered much worse. I wonder whether Christians have any business resorting to lesser evil calculations. Would God authorize us to choose evil at all? Those without hope have been conditioned to think that a life without a vote is hardly worth living. But are Christians so obligated to participate in national elections that we must do so even if we believe that both viable candidates represent evil in one form or another? Read more at https://thinkchristian.reframemedia.com/the-pretense-of-lesser-evil-voting

Alasdair MacIntyre University of Notre Dame When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither. And when that choice is presented in rival arguments and debates that exclude from public consideration any other set of possibilities, it becomes a duty to withdraw from those arguments and debates, so as to resist the imposition of this false choice by those who have arrogated to themselves the power of framing the alternatives. These are propositions which in the abstract may seem to invite easy agreement. But, when they find application to the coming presidential election, they are likely to be rejected out of hand. For it has become an ingrained piece of received wisdom that voting is one mark of a good citizen, not voting a sign of irresponsibility. But the only vote worth casting in November is a vote that no one will be able to cast, a vote against a system that presents one with a choice between Bush's conservatism and K...

   27/3/2015   Introduction: Mixing Religion and Politics  " He who says politics and religion do not mix understands neither one." (Mahatma Gandhi) I am the true ‘swinging voter’. In the numerous elections of my life (beginning with the Federal election of July 1987), my personal votes have been fairly evenly split between Labor and The Liberal, or Coalition, parties. In what follows, then, I have no agenda. The last thing on my mind is to influence which party you vote for.

I do, however, want to insist that people who identify themselves as Christian should vote in a way that is informed by their faith, whatever decision they finally make. While Christianity is not party political, it is political in the broader sense. At a fundamental level, faith concerns life in society—the word ‘politics’ comes from the Greek politeuō , meaning to live as a citizen. Everyone who is concerned with the life of our wider community  (as every Christian must ...

  The people we elect aren’t the ones calling the shots, says Tufts University’s Michael Glennon By Jordan Michael Smith  |    October 19, 2014 istock/photo illustration by lesley becker/globe staff T he voters who put Barack Obama in office expected some big changes. From the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping to Guantanamo Bay to the Patriot Act, candidate Obama was a defender of civil liberties and privacy, promising a dramatically different approach from his predecessor. But six years into his administration, the Obama version of national security looks almost indistinguishable from the one he inherited. Guantanamo Bay remains open. The NSA has, if anything, become more aggressive in monitoring Americans. Drone strikes have escalated. Most recently it was reported that the same president who won a Nobel Prize in part for promoting nuclear disarmament is spending up to $1 trillion mod...

http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/we-dont-vote-for-persons-we-vote-for-commericals-why-voting-is-not-as-important-as-the-lords-table-and-we-should-start-living-like-it/ Someone just came over to my booth (morning of election day) at McDonald’s and said he’s going to vote. He said, “I’m on a mission from God to save this country.” OK? Evangelical political activist Charles Colson once said “it’s our duty as citizens of the Kingdom of God to be the best citizens of the society we live in.” For him it was our “Christian duty to be a good citizen and go vote.” Today, Christians react with intense (and I do mean intense) outrage at the mere suggestion it might be more Christian to refuse to vote I’ve studied ideology long enough to know that there’s something here to be noticed in the outrage. The ensuing eruption of antagonism reveals just how much “voting” has become enmeshed in our Christian identity. There’s nothing quite so sacred among Christians as the “duty” to vote i...