513 Problem With Voter Guides Part 2
“Clothman, loved your last column about churches telling people ‘what’ to think more than teaching them ‘how’ to think. But didn’t you just do the same with regard to voter guides? You didn’t give any practical tips to help people learn ‘how’ to vote.” -Dana
Touché Dana. I included myself in last week’s critique for good reason – I spent most of my preaching years telling people what to think and old habits die hard. Let me see if I can do better this time.
As I said last week, political groups (Christian or otherwise) tend to create a 'litmus test' from a few non-negotiable issues which they then apply to the candidates running for office. They call this a voter guide. Constituents are then encouraged to only vote for candidates who score well on their voter guide.
While voter guides can be helpful they are very limited. For example, a candidate can ace your church’s voter guide in the areas of abortion and homosexuality and yet be a total failure on issues such as racism, global poverty and the environment. Truth be told, most folks using a voter guide don’t even know where the candidates stand on issues other than those on the voter guide.
Thankfully, there are some groups who see the limitations of voter guides and are now providing additional materials which help teach Christians how think politically and vote accordingly. Two of the best are Catholic Answers Action (www.caaction.com ) and Sojourners (www.sojo.org).
In an excellent short essay called “Voting God’s Politics,” Sojourners says, “While we must be careful about translating scripture directly into positions on public policy, the following principles and policies provide a critical framework to shape our perspective on public policy and political leadership. We encourage you to use this guide to educate yourself, then find out the positions and priorities that candidates have taken on these issues.”
Sojourners uses Proverbs 31:9 as their starting place. “Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” They then outline seven principles to help you become a more informed and active voter.
1) Compassion and economic justice. 2) Peace and restraint of violence. 3) Consistent ethic of life. 4) Racial justice. 5) Human rights, dignity and gender justice. 6) Strengthen families and renew culture. 7) Good stewardship of God’s creation.
Of course, they go into some detail on each of these.
You may or may not agree that these are God’s priorities for our political leaders to be focused upon, but you can agree that this is a great improvement over the typical ‘litmus test’ voter guide. This is informative, not directive. Imagine if Christian leaders gave a series of talks on these topics prior to an election instead of stuffing their church bulletins with voter guides?
I’m sure you just said to yourself Dana, “And what if Clothman wrote a series on these topics instead of merely passing the buck off onto others?”
Because Dana, it’s a lot easier to tell people what to think than to teach them how to think. To do the later I’d have to think these issues through for myself first. You don’t really expect me to do that do you? Do you? Dana…
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