“Well,” I said very knowingly to someone much older, smarter, and wiser than me, “I just don’t believe we should let our religious beliefs influence how we vote.” I said this expecting not only total agreement, but maybe even some measure of admiration that someone my age (I was 23 at the time) had figured this out.
I had grown up in a church environment that expressed very conservative social values and identified closely with the Republican party. I attended the school attached to the church, so it really was my primary community and one of the most significant influences shaping my young life. My 8th grade year coincided with the 1992 presidential election between George Bush and Bill Clinton. My teacher had us do our own election in the classroom. Out of 25 kids, 24 of us voted for Bush.
Which, of course, is so funny to me looking back because how “we voted” was just a simple reflection of our parents’ political preferences. I remember looking at that one girl who “voted” for Clinton. How odd, I thought, that she would do that. Didn’t she know that Christians don’t vote for Democrats? And she’s even admitting it in the class? She seems unashamed? And I explicitly remember thinking, “Well she doesn’t even go to our church. She’s a Presbyterian. Who knows what they believe?”
So here I was 10 or so years later talking with this older, smarter, wiser man about politics, and what’s more he was a Christian and a leader in my new church. I was living in Los Angeles and I was an Episcopalian now – newly minted. The political landscape of my new church home fascinated me. Most of the people I met seemed very politically liberal, but not all for sure, and a member of the Bush family even attended my church from time to time – George H.W. and Barbara Bush were famous Episcopalians. Some of my new friends there really loathed Ronald Reagan, but when he died they said his name in the church during the prayers and the flag out in front of the church was lowered to half-mast.
I myself had begun some kind of political shift. To call it a leftward shift would be a gross oversimplification, and didn’t really reflect my feelings. It would be more accurate to say I had come to believe that no one political party had cornered the market on a Christian worldview – that following Jesus would actually sometimes put me at odds with both the Republican and Democratic parties. And I had grown so weary of people using their understanding of Christianity as a political bludgeon. I figured the best way to approach politics was to separate it completely from my personal religious beliefs.
And, like any twentysomething who is on some kind of journey of personal discovery, I was eager to impress one of my elders with my new way of thinking. So I said, “I just don’t believe we should let our religious beliefs influence how we vote.” He just cocked his head and said, “Oh, I do.”
I was not expecting this. I asked him what he meant.
He said, “My faith in Jesus affects how I see people and how I believe they should be treated. How could I not let that influence my vote?”
It took me another decade before I even began to understand what he meant.
He was not talking about voting in such a way that ensures everyone is Christian like me or even that Christian values are the law of the land. Incidentally, the term “Christian values” is so nebulous and ill-defined that there is no way Christians could even agree on what they are. I have been told time and again, for instance, that Christian values mean banning gay marriage and policing women’s bodies. Neither Jesus nor his followers ever mentioned either of these things. But if I say that Christian values mean feeding the hungry and housing the homeless – I’m not a Christian but probably a dirty Communist.
Christian values, then is a toothless phrase, empty of meaning, and often just a tool of coercion.
The question for me as a Christian is not how do I make this a Christian nation? America is not now nor has it ever been a Christian nation. America was clearly and intentionally founded as a nation with no established religion. It was meant to be inclusive and honoring of people of every (or even no) religious tradition. And what’s more, Jesus never said “Make people believe what you believe,” or “If you want to follow me, make others live like you live.” Making my version of Christianity the law of the land is antithetical to the way of Jesus. Christian Nationalism is fundamentally unamerican and anti-Christ.
So what was my wise friend getting at? I think he was asking himself a different question. I think he was asking, “How do I let Jesus’ understanding of humanity, of society, of culture, shape my own vision of these things?”
That’s different from Christian Nationalism. This is not about converting anyone, not about getting others to believe all the things I believe, not about centering the Christian religion in the culture and the structure of our government.
Rather, it begins with the Christian asking a simple, but defining set of questions: How can I see the world through Jesus’ eyes? How can I love the world with Jesus’ heart? How can I work for this world with Jesus’ hands?
Jesus sees every single human being as made in the image of God. Jesus sees every single person as beloved and belonging. Jesus was not known for converting people: He was known for healing. He was known for helping. He was known for making people’s lives better, more manageable, more connected in real and practical ways. Jesus became well-known, amassed followers drew people into his circle by insisting that God was present and active and concerned for justice and reconciliation, and then by practicing what he preached: by living a life centered in the truth of God’s love – an outward facing life, one that focused on the healing, reconciliation, and care of others.
Likewise the letters we have to the first Christian communities focus primarily on our belonging to one another, our responsibility to each other, our interdependence – as if we are all one body. They speak on a practical level about how to create community across difference, how to live together, how to understand ourselves connected both to God and to one another, how to mobilize us for action, doing the work Jesus did.
So when the Christian asks how can I see through Jesus’ eyes, love with Jesus’ heart, and act as Jesus’ hands – this is not a navel-gazing question: It’s action oriented. It’s transforming how the Christian relates to the world. If I, as a Christian, believe that every single person is made in the image of God and is beloved and belonging – how would that not influence how I vote?
So it should and it does. My faith influences my vote. Not, I hope, in a way that insists upon uniformity, or conformity to my religion. Instead, I hope to vote with integrity, with a clear conscience, and in a way that supports my Christian hope for a world in which all people are valued, all belong, all are beloved.
