Preaching pastors like me have a few options during an election season.
On the one hand, I could speak and tweet and write daily on the intersection of our faith and our civic life. I might risk being more prescriptive than a pastor should be, or speaking beyond my understanding. Perhaps some would find an angle objectionable and call me divisive or leave the church. But I’d be helping my people in a real area of their discipleship in real time. My social media or blog output would not be our Confession of Faith, but it would be a genuine effort at working out the implications of our faith in everyday life—and this from someone who knows and loves them.
Alternatively, I might hold my cards close to the vest. In an effort to “stay in my lane,” I might avoid prescriptions in general, reminding my people, “The church is made up of adults; you will know what to do.” I’m not Moses, after all, and don’t intend to play Moses in the details of my people’s lives. Jesus Christ reigns above all earthly politicking and there is a certain comfort, even wisdom, in staying above the fray.
Or, I might avoid having cards altogether. “I’m not into politics,” some pastors say. It’s hard having people we love speak against us, and biblical instruction for our civic lives can invite more of that. So, for the sake of keeping the pastoral office free from politics, I might refuse to engage.
2020: A Year to Remember
Four years ago, however, I did engage, because it didn’t seem I had much choice. Everyone was telling my people what to think and how to pursue politics, including other pastors. Some famous pastors pressed fellow pastors to avoid being political, all the while using their own influence to steer opinion in a decided direction—typically left.
During the 2020 election year, I didn’t pick up daily tweeting, but I did take up writing a series of articles titled, Give to God What Is God’s: Three Rules for (Political) Engagement. What started as an election-week napkin-drawing, offered to a couple prospective church members, turned into a series of biblically-sourced reflections on politics.
The first article in that series, “Understand What You’re Doing as an American,” addressed an easily overlooked dimension of our responsibility as Christians: understanding our civic context and the meaning of a vote. I have much to be thankful for in the schooling I received growing up, but civics—understanding how our government works along with our privileges and responsibilities as citizens—was a gap. In listening to many pastors my age, I have a feeling it was/is a gap that many share, and especially those who say things like “I don’t care about politics. I’m all about Jesus.”
To that end, I wrote three articles for my church, and I share the first (with updates) here.[1] It is one pastor’s attempt to offer a civics lesson to frame the Christian citizen’s thinking about voting in our country. It doesn’t say everything that needs to be said, but it begins to explain how to vote to the glory of God in our uniquely American context.
1. An introductory article to set up this series included a definition of politics. Trent Hunter, “Give to God What Is God’s: Three Rules for (Political) Engagement,” Heritage Bible Church, November 1, 2020.
To Be a Good Christian You Must Be a Good American
Let me explain.
The Bible says that God put you right where you are. “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place” (Acts 17:26).[2] Assuming you are reading this in America as an American citizen, that means God put you inside the borders of America to be an American for this period of time. Faithfulness to God as Christians means faithfulness in this civic context in which he has placed us. Which means taking up our civic responsibilities with care.
2. I speaking specifically to American citizens throughout this essay, but what I will say has transferability to other democratic republics.
One of those civic responsibilities is voting.
On this topic, we rightly speak of wanting “a clear conscience” in the voting booth. Important for a clear conscience is a clear understanding of what we’re actually doing when we vote. You don’t need to feel bad about stealing third base when you’re playing baseball. That’s because it’s baseball; stealing is an expected part of the game. What is the meaning of a vote in the American context? The function of our vote emerges from the form of our government.
What Is the Form of Our American Government?
You and I are citizens of The United States of America, along with some 328 million other people who call this home.[3] Ours is a nation comprised of local, state, and federal governments. Unless anarchy or fascism rule the day, large groups like this live together somewhere on the spectrum of personal freedom and government control. What kind of government do we have?
3. Leave aside for a moment the question of illegal immigration and the millions of unregistered voters for which some of have raised concerns. We will tackle that thorny problem in an upcoming podcast.
In a sentence, we have a kind of government that intends to order and protect personal liberty. At least, this has been the aim of America from the beginning. While experiencing modifications to our constitutional order,[4] as well as bureaucratic manipulation,[5] we must begin with a basic lesson in what America was supposed to be. And to that end, my goal in this section is first to inform you, since you are an American, and secondarily to make you see the wisdom of our nation’s founding design as a Christian. All this serves to put your vote in its proper context.
4. Brad Green, “One Constitution, or Two? Reviewing The Age of Entitlement by Christopher Caldwell,” Christ Over All, July 31, 2023: Civil (Rights and Wrongs).
5. See Auron McIntyre, The Total State: How Liberal Democracies Become Tyrannies, (Washington: Regnery, May 7, 2024) who argues that the managerial revolution has fundamentally changed the way America works. In October, we will discuss some of those changes with him.
What Is a Constitutional Federal Republic?
What form does our government take? We have a constitutional form of government. We are not ruled by a king whose authority is derived from blood or force or pulling out a sword from a stone, but by a constitution. We do not have a ruler, but we are instead ruled by law (Lex Rex), the fundamental law of which is the Constitution.[6] More specifically, we are a constitutional republic, which means our representatives are democratically elected by the people. Their authority is derived from the people they lead.[7] More specifically, we are a constitutional federal republic. Hence, we are not the United People but the United States. It’s for this reason that our election of a President is not by popular vote, but by means of the electoral college, a way of ensuring national schemes do not subsume the interests of local states.[8] It is for this same reason that all governing power is not concentrated in the Federal government but distributed between local, state, and federal governments.
6. Doug Wilson, “An Introduction to Lex Rex,” June 19, 2024: Great Books Throughout the Ages.
7. It is important to clarify the distinction between democracy and republic. In the former, sovereignty is vested in the people and is carried out by the people directly (think Athens). In the latter, the sovereignty stems from the people—but it is exercised on their behalf by elected representatives.
8. More importantly, the Electoral College prevents direct democracy from deciding presidential races. If the President of the United States were directly elected, a candidate would just need to get the largest cities to vote for them and he’d be in.
What is all this government machinery constructed to do? The Founders had a precise answer to this question: the government is here to secure the rights of the people, rights which are universally held, and which pre-exist government.
What About My Rights?
It seems biblical to talk about our responsibilities as Americans, but what about “our rights as Americans?” Yes, that’s biblical too. Admittedly, that doesn’t always seem like the correct emphasis as Christians who are called to lay our lives down. In an age when many of our fellow Americans are contesting those rights, it even feels a little like culture-warring. But what if laying down our lives includes appealing to our rights as Americans? What if loving our neighbor requires us to stand up for our rights, so that now or later their rights will be protected?
Those are important questions related to civics, and they are also quite biblical. Remember what the Apostle Paul did when he was taken before the Roman tribunal? Acts 22:25 records his question: “Is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a Roman citizen and uncondemned?” Paul knew the answer, and so did the officials, so they let him go. Paul took up his cross and followed Jesus, but that doesn’t mean he was trying to get killed as fast as possible. No, he’s the one who told us to pray for kings so that we could lead “a peaceful and quiet life” so that all people might “come to a knowledge of the truth” (1Tim. 2:2–4). In other words, Paul’s strategic appeal to his rights saved his life and made way for the gospel’s advance. It also checked the state at that point of intrusion. He was right and they were wrong.
The American preoccupation with rights is not just an American thing. It’s an American thing because it’s a human thing.[9] Biblically, rights are tied to the basic structure of the created order that God has made: there are humans who have inherent dignity, families that are the basic building block of society, and government. Each of these have their own distinct role in relationship to God and one another. Paul appealed to his rights as a means to the gospel’s advance.
9. Admittedly, the concept of “rights” is not interchangeable across all cultures, nations, and historical contexts. The rights of a Roman citizen were quite different than the rights enjoyed by early American colonists, or by Americans after the Constitution was ratified. Further, there is disagreement as to the nature and substance of these rights. Thinkers like Burke argue that “rights” in the early American context were norms grounded in English common law—developed over many hundreds of years within a specific place and culture. He draws a sharp contrast between this conception of rights and those espoused by the French Revolutionaries as abstract universals.
Christians in America also have a certain responsibility to hold America to its purposes and its promises. Not only because many of our rights as Americans precede the state, but because the state has made certain guarantees concerning those rights enshrined in the Constitution and the rule of law.
Those inalienable rights alluded to in the Declaration of Independence were made explicit in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Constitution has been amended many times, and the first of those are called the Bill of Rights, which guarantee our civil liberties. These amendments outline our rights in relationship to the action of our government and make explicit what the government cannot do to us or take from us. The first of these is important enough to cite, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Lose one of these and lose them all. That’s why they are collected together in one amendment. Other amendments deal with due process, ensure that we are innocent until proven guilty, and protect our right to property. From one angle, these amendments are just a way of making explicit a commitment to keep government in its place as God’s servant.
Weapons and Balances
This form of government is utterly unique in human history. The history of nations is generally a story of a tyrannical unrestrained government, as our Founders alluded to in the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence. By contrast, the theme of our constitutional system is restraint, or limited government. This form of government recognizes the sinful tendency of mankind to abuse governmental power. Thus, several principles built into the Constitution help to limit the power of the government. For instance, in the United States we took the power usually concentrated in one man (the king) and split it into three parts (separation of powers): a legislative branch to make laws, an executive branch to execute and enforce the laws established by the legislature, and a judicial branch to interpret the laws. Then we gave weapons (checks) to each of those branches to allow them to keep their powers balanced (checks and balances). The President can veto laws, but a supermajority (two-thirds) of Congress can override the veto. The Supreme Court can declare laws unconstitutional, but Congress can impeach justices and the President can appoint new justices with congressional approval. Separation alone would not keep any one branch from dominating the government. Checks must be given to each branch to keep the others from gaining too much power. All of this keeps government doing its job.
That’s a summary of our government. Now, which Americans get to run this ship? The Bible is clear that governing authorities derive their power from God (Rom. 13:1, 4). They are his ministers doing his work, whether it be patrolling the streets or signing bills into law. But the Bible does not speak to how this-or-that person comes into this authority. We might wish that it did. But we can be grateful for the careful reflection of our Founders on this question.
What Is the Function of Our Vote as Americans?
America’s electoral process is built on John Locke’s understanding of social contract theory, which itself is a secularized version of the Bible’s idea of covenant.[10] That is, the idea that the government’s just powers are derived from the consent of the governed.
10. For those who haven’t read Locke’s Two Treatise of Government, they might be shocked (but shouldn’t be) that this great thinker of the spent large swathes of time interpreting early chapters in Genesis. While we might dispute his interpretation; we would not dispute his source. Instead, we should recognize that Locke’s use of Genesis plays a role in forming the ideas of America’s founding.
How this works out to balance a large nation’s consent involves some deliberate intricacies. As one example, the legislative branch, or Congress, is made up of an upper and lower chamber. The lower chamber is the House of Representatives where each state elects representatives in proportion to their populations. The upper House is the Senate, where each state regardless of their size elects two representatives. This ensures that Rhode Island’s interests are not functionally irrelevant at the table because its relative size. Shorter two-year terms in the House of Representatives keep our elected officials accountable to the people while longer six-year terms in the Senate protect against the intrusion of short-term political interests and ensure stability. The Presidency, as we know, is limited to a maximum two-term office of four years each, which keeps us from crowning a perpetually-elected king. And justices on the Supreme Court, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, serve for a period of good behavior, which generally means a life term, insulated from political pressure so that they can check both the Presidency and the Congress.
Trade-offs in a Two-Party System
Even our two-party system is very American even if it isn’t a part of American law. What is it exactly? It’s a way of facilitating a negotiation between millions of people. It gets a bad rap at times, and that’s understandable. It delivers us less than ideal candidates. We don’t generally get to vote for who we would pick. But that again is a design feature, not a bug. Why? Because the original intention of the federal system aimed to balance competing interests and various interested parties.[11]
11. One of Madison’s greatest fears was the emergence of faction. He envisioned the republican system as a means of controlling it. See The Federalist Number 10, [22 November] 1787 (archives.gov).
Narrowing our whole process down to just two candidates before the final pick fosters cooperation, concession, and compromise—in both senses of the word (positive and negative). It allows people who have differences to still rally together because they have enough in common. Things can get weird, as we know. Given human nature and in the absence of true religion, these collections of interests can become a functional religion unto themselves. And we can get swept up or lumped in with the phenomena. Party slogans don’t help. Certainly, Christians must be disciplined about how we relate with our respective parties. But my point is this: there is much to appreciate in even this part of our system for how it fights our natural tendency to fragment in a large group.
Difficult by Design
The American system of government is frustrating, and that’s the point. It is frustrating to human government’s time-tested tendency to totalitarianism. Rome moved from a republic to a dictatorship, and that trend keeps happening around the globe. Our government is designed to slow things down. It’s calculated to make power frustratingly difficult to accrue, arrest, and abuse. The purpose of government is not to perfect humanity or the human experience. The purpose of government is, among other things, to protect humanity from itself. Or, as Peter put it, “to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good” (1 Pet. 2:14).
Paul knew his rights and held the officials to honor them. That’s part of what we are doing in our political process as Americans.
It’s Time to Vote
Through the Constitution, the Founders established a government strong enough to provide for the common defense and general welfare—to protect the peoples’ natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—while preventing the federal government from amassing power or exercising it in ways that would infringe on the rights of the people. We participate in the political process to uphold the purposes and promises of our government.
Americans will engage in the political process in different ways and to different degrees and in different spheres—local, state, and federal. Yet, voting is something all of us can do, whether it’s for a school board president or the President of the United States. And it’s easy.
Why then is this topic often so hard, especially when it comes to our vote for a President?
As I see it three are three different ways to understand the meaning of a vote. One of them matches the kind of game we’re playing in our role as voters on the playing field of politics in America.
1. All-In Voting
For those who operate with a pietistic view of voting, what matters most is what a vote says about me before God. This view adopts a secular religious framework for the action of voting. Let me explain. With the receding influence of Christianity in our culture, politics and political leaders have moved into that space. Politics is how Americans, in the process of losing their religious moorings, express their hopes and aspirations for themselves and humanity. Which is why our political discourse takes on such strident overtones. As with all religion, in this secular civil religion of politics we identify with the individual who gets our vote. Because religion requires purity, the purity of this selection is crucial to our spiritual and moral standing. Our vote is a statement of faith, so it has to be just right. True to the nature of religion, to vote for a candidate is to be all-in with that candidate, to engage in a form of religious self-expression, a kind of secular sacrament.
If you need a candidate that can do no wrong, you may be a pietistic voter. Or, alternatively, maybe you’ve said, “I could never vote for Kandidate Karl.” Depending on the reason, you may have accepted the all-in sacramental framework that supercharges your association with the candidate with spiritual implications that lead either to a sense of personal defilement or salvation.
2. All Eyes-on-Us Voting
For the public relations view of voting, what matters most is what a vote says about me or maybe what I am trying to say to others. This kind of voting seems to dominate the airwaves of X, and while genuinely intentioned, it seems to think that voting is as much for show as it for saying “no” to the candidate that is clearly more committed to wicked policies. More on that below.
For now, we can say that public relations voting treats a vote as an important public statement affecting one’s reputation and, by association, the reputation of the church and of Christ. It is a virtue signal, and I don’t use that pejorative flippantly. Rather, such voting booth PR changes the way one thinks about the whole voting system. For those familiar with Thomas Sowell, it is more akin to politics for self-congratulations, than doing actual good.
When polls report on blocks of voters, they do so in a way that ignores the textured motives of those voters. Such polls generate headlines, and those headlines generate reactions. Some may even attempt to swing voters. If you don’t want to be one of those people when the headlines roll out in the days following the election, then you will be vulnerable to such voting. This mindset makes you vulnerable to manipulation, as public square opponents of your values know how to steer you away from the partnerships that would advance your interests.
Both of these first two voting mindsets can be held with good motives. In the first case, we want to honor our Lord. In the second case, we don’t want to misrepresent him before the world. Yet both are vulnerable to unique forms of worldliness. The world makes the government its God, an election its sacrament, and the President its king. That’s not the game we’re playing, constitutionally or theologically. Alternatively, voters who prioritize the perception of their neighbors, trade on the actual good of their neighbors. But the constitutional game we’re playing assumes neighborly disagreement by design.
My own take is that there is a better approach, an approach with more integrity. That is, an approach that is truer to the kind of constitutional game we’re playing, regardless of what X thinks. Here’s how to vote.
3. All-Things-Considered Voting
For the principled pragmatic view of voting, what matters most is not what a vote says about me or to anyone else, but what a vote does. This view takes a functional view of voting and it sees a vote as a strategic move to advance the greatest good given the circumstances with a special emphasis on the role and goals of government. In other words, its a matter of prudence. It is simply answering one question, in our two-party system: Which candidate will do less harm and more good with the sword I am giving to them? For after all, a vote is a sword or the tacit permission for the candidate to hold the sword.
Thinking big picture, our vote gives power to some people to make and carry out and enforce laws over the rest of us. What matters is who is getting that power and what we expect them to actually do with it. If we were the only ones voting for a President, we would need to approach it like we choose a babysitter. But it is not like that at all. It is 328 million people not like that! It’s much more like blob tag, as I’ve heard it called—where a few children lock hands as they try to run and catch the rest of the other children. Blobs are big, imprecise, and messy. Hardly anyone likes a blob. But that is what a nation is trying to decide on its leaders. This is an all things considered approach in a system designed for concessions.
Don’t like the options for President? Before you call your neighbors to repent (which you may need to do), consider whether you were engaged in the processes that led to that party nomination, not only in the primary election process of this election season, but the local and state and federal elections that form the party ecosystem that gave rise to the party candidates. We cannot throw shade or accept shame for being involved in politics and then complain about the outcome of the political processes we’ve neglected.
At any given stage in the process, we can ask ourselves this question: which candidate’s platform will do less damage with the power they will receive—to humanity, to our cultural and political inheritance as Americans? At a healthier stage in America’s history, the question could be more positive: Which candidate’s platform will do more good?
Sadly, we are not in a good place with our nation and its elected officials. And looking only at the presidential candidates, we can all admit that some form of judgment appears on the horizon. On the balance, I agree with Edward Feser’s helpful essay, “Trump has put social conservatives in a dilemma.” Many of the reasons conservatives voted for him in 2020 (for the way he appointed pro-life judges) have been opposed by his own positions this go round.[12] It is not only okay to wish we had better options, but also right to do so. Yet I heard wisdom in this recent comment by a friend: “I vote for the person and the platform in the primary election. I vote for the platform in the general election.” The ethical calculation changes depending on the stage of the process. He gets it.
12. This is arguably partially the fault of some conservative evangelicals who were less pro-life in principle than Trump was in practice in his first term. We might wish that Trump were more principled in his pro-life position. But given that he responds to political incentives, we might also wish that such evangelical leaders were more principled in theirs.
All things considered, the two candidates are not equal.
Delegating Power, Engaging in Prayer
There is more to say. That’s why I said more to my congregation in subsequent articles back in 2020. Christian Americans must understand what they are doing as Americans. But then we must engage the political process as Christians, which means taking our view of humanity and of human government into the public square and into the voting booth. [13] That will demand our greatest care. Yet, whatever is required of us in this age politically, being a Christian means reserving our greatest energies for the most lasting society, the church. The church’s work was the focus of my final article for our church.
13. Colin Smothers offers a helpful framework for voting as Christians in our current political moment in his piece, “Voting as Christians: The Creation Order Political Scorecard.”
Every generation has its different challenges. Under conditions of slavery pastors were right to engage in making controversial public arguments for its abolition. We will make arguments in the face of our own challenges, some better or worse. When we make arguments on the internet, we might be heard by Christians across town or across the country. But the most important believers I write for are those that make up my congregation in Greenville, South Carolina. Better than so many talking heads on so many podcasts, I pray our people are blessed by a pastor who loves them enough to risk speaking to the political dimension of our discipleship in these times. I see no other way to love them well.
In and through it all, let us be on our knees. Here’s the prayer I prayed for my church to close out that series on politics, a prayer as fitting today as it was four years ago.
Father in heaven, you are in heaven and you do all that you please. You are more powerful than the most powerful office over the most powerful nation on earth. No one checks your power because you are the source of all power and authority. No one fact checks you because you are the source of all truth. No one judges you because you are the standard of all righteousness.
You, the God of heaven, have put us on earth in this place for this time. You guide the nations on the earth, and you steer the hearts of kings. Would you steer our land and our leaders to righteousness, to enact and carry out and enforce laws that are good and not evil? Would you show our lawmakers that the freedom of American citizens to exercise their religion free of compulsion is a sacred duty? Would you see that we may live peaceful and quiet lives? Would you save our neighbors from the tyranny of sin and guilt and of Satan and the fear of death? Would you make them, with us, citizens of your glorious and everlasting society, your church?
America is great. But we, your church, have a perfect leader, a more perfect union, and a more powerful story. Bless this country and especially your church.
In the name of Christ and for his kingdom,
Amen
