With election week less than a week away, many of us are being regularly reminded, sometimes with more ads than we ever hoped to see, of the importance of voting. We are blessed to live in a nation where we have the right to vote and this is not something to take lightly! At the same time, as Christians, we should keep in mind that we are first and foremost citizens of heaven. How should this dual citizenship affect the way that we approach voting? In a recent Twitter thread, Joe Rigney, a pastor at Cities Church in St. Paul and professor at Bethlehem College and Seminary, offered some helpful principles to consider as we approach election day.
1. Voting is largely a matter of prudence.
Voting is largely a matter of prudence,” writes Rigney. “However, prudential doesn’t mean amoral. It means that, given the complexities involved, we must engage in moral reasoning to arrive at what is good & wise in our voting decisions.
Some Christians have “freedom fatigue.” I recently heard someone say, “I’m not sure if Christians should really be so concerned about religious freedom. It seems kind of selfish, and I think it hurts our witness.” This sentiment is growing increasingly common, both from Christians who have honest questions about the importance of religious freedom, as well as from opponents of religious freedomwhocriticize religious freedom cases as nothing more than a “weapon” for “control.
Our political engagement should always be driven by humble faith in God and love, not byfear and resentment or a desire to “get what we deserve.” But this does not mean that seeking to preserve religious freedom is a selfish endeavor or that Christians cannot speak up when religious freedom is threatened. Quite the opposite. Religious freedom is a matter of justice and as such, we should speak up to defend it.
When considering the value of religious freedom, we should make sure we understand what religious freedom is. Luke Goodrich, a religious freedom attorney for Becket Religious Fundoffers the following definition: “[R]eligious freedom is a basic issue of biblical justice, rooted in the nature of God and the nature of man.” Humans are created for relationship with God. If thegovernment interferes with that, either bycoercion or bytaking away the right to worship freely and practice one’s beliefs,they are committing an injustice by demanding that we render unto Caesar what belongs to God. Desiring justice is not selfish, because justice is not reserved for select groups. Supporting religious freedom means supporting religious freedom for all.
According to a recently released documentary,Pope Francis has expressed approval of civil unions for same-sex couples, saying, “Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it,” and “What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered.” Some have argued that the Pope’s comments are taken out of context and that the film misrepresents his position, but the Vatican has not yet issued clarification on this matter.
Pope Francis would not be the first person to call for civil unions as an alternative to same-sex marriage. While this may seem like a compassionate approach, affirming and encouraging people in a lifestyle that is at odds with God’s design is not a loving thing to do. In 2003, the Catholic church affirmed this by saying,
The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.
Earlier this month, a group of Evangelicals took to the internetwith the statement that they were “pro-life Evangelicals for Biden.” Their website states,
As pro-life Evangelicals, we disagree with Vice President Biden and the Democratic platform on the issue of abortion. But we believe a biblically shaped commitment to the sanctity of life compels us to a consistent ethic of life that affirms the sanctity of human life from beginning to end… Even as we continue to urge different policies on abortion, we urge evangelicals to elect Joe Biden as president.
In other words, this group argues that because they are pro-life, they will be voting for a candidate who is pro-abortion. This idea is woefully misguided. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are not simply not pro-life, they are both radically pro-abortion and committed to reversing the progress made by the pro-life movement in recent decades.
This group, and others who have madesimilar appeals heavily rely on the argumentthat state and local policies have a more of an effect on annual abortion rates than whether or not the president is pro-life, and thus whether or not a president opposes abortion should not be the main consideration a pro-life voter takes into account, or in the case of so-called “pro-life” voters supporting Biden, not a consideration that should be taken into account at all.
During this week’s Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing to consider her nomination to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court,Judge Amy Coney Barrett told the committee, “I would hope that no one would consider me to be nominated for anything if I didn’t have values… I have principles. I wouldn’t be fit for office if I didn’t.” Her principles and values, including her commitment to originalism and the rule of law, were on displaythroughout the hearing.
During the hearing, Judge Barrett held to what is called the “Ginsburg Rule,” following the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s example of refusing to offer an opinion on past rulingsor comment on matters that could come before the Court. This meant that, no matter how many times she was asked, she did not commit herself to a particular position on any case because the Court ought to play a judicial role, rather than a legislative role. “Judges don’t have campaign promises,” she reminded the committee.
In recent years, abortion activists have attempted to argue that since the word “abortion” is not in the Bible, the Bible has nothing to say on the matter so Christians should not oppose abortion. It seems that this argument has begun to affect the thinking of many Christians—a recent study found that 44% of self-identified Evangelicals, 62% of Mainline Protestants, and 58% of Catholics believe that the Bible is ambiguous on abortion. How should we respond to this trend?
It’s true that the word “abortion” does not appear anywhere in Scripture, but just because the word itself does not appear in the Bible does not mean the Bible has nothing to say about abortion. When figuring out how to apply Scripture to the issue of abortion, we should consider what it has to say about life, including life in the womb, as well as what science has to say about when life begins.
I received my first library card some time in 1958, when I was 9 or so. I've been a library user ever since. Traditionally, libraries have presented themselves as family-friendly organizations. In my early teens I could visit either the local branch library or the central library on my own. My parents had no reason to be concerned. The one and only time a librarian questioned my choice was to be certain I wasn't overextending myself as far as reading level was concerned. When she saw that I was doing fine, she had no further issue.
I relied on the library for many years for entertainment and information, but only as a user. This changed when I started my library career. I began working with the St. Paul Public Library in November 1979, and retired in December 2019. For two years I was a library clerk. For 38 years I was a library associate (27 years as a paraprofessional reference librarian, and 11 years as a cataloger).
During the 1990s I started to notice that teen fiction was becoming more sexually explicit. Not overtly at the time, but enough that I started cautioning parents to read the synopses when I saw them browsing the shelves to find books for their children. I also spotted the occasional nonfiction books aimed at teen readers who wanted to explore their sexuality and didn't want to talk about this with their parents. This trend has only accelerated since then.
Parents should know what happens in their children’s schools and they should be informed immediately if their child is experiencing or mental health struggles while they are at school. This is basic common sense. Unfortunately, Madison Metropolitan School District adoptedan update to their policies and guidelines handbook in 2018 allowing and encouraging teachers to deceive parents of children struggling with gender dysphoria. Under these guidelines, students are able to socially “transition” behind their parents back, adopting a new name and using opposite sex pronouns while at school without their parents ever knowing. The district encouragedteachers to exploit a legal loophole in order to conceal information from parents by filing “Gender Support Plans” in their personal notes instead of in the student’s official records. Earlier this year, a group of concerned parents filed a lawsuitchallenging this harmful policy and this week the court issued an injunction prohibiting the school district from deceiving parents. The injunction will be in place until the court rules on the case.
A policy that encourages children to live a double life and enables teachers to hide important information about a child’s mental health from their parents is unhealthy and troubling. In an expert affidavit, Dr. Stephen Levine wrote,
For a child to live radically different identities at home and at school, and to conceal what he or she perceives to be his or her true identity from parents, is psychologically unhealthy in itself, and could readily lead to additional psychological problems.
In a TEDx talk called “I have one more chromosome than you. So what?” disability rights advocate Karen Gaffney commented to her audience, “Imagine that, ladies and gentlemen. Here we are… removing barriers to education, making inroads into a full and inclusive life for people like me, and we have those who say we shouldn’t even be born at all?”
Born in 1977, Gaffney grew up in a time when the neglect and mistreatment of people with Down syndrome had recently been brought to light by disability rights advocates who were calling for reform. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the beginning of the end of mass institutionalization, but as recently as the 1980s, babies with Down syndrome could be denied lifesaving treatments and even food and water until an act of Congress prohibited this kind of discrimination.
The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court has brought renewed attention to the urgent need to overturn Roe v. Wade. Over 61 million babies have lost their lives to abortion since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, with the U.S. committing an estimated 98 abortions per hour. This is an evil that must be stopped, which means that ending legalized abortion is absolutely necessary. As Abby Johnson pointed out when she spoke at Minnesota Family Council’s annual dinner in September, in order to make abortion unthinkable, we must make it illegal. The appointment of a justice who recognizes the humanity of the unborn is an important step in that direction.
Tragically, our society often fails to grasp the true horror of abortion. The pro-life movement is frequently met with the glib response, “Don’t like abortion? Don’t get one!” as if abortion was merely a matter of personal preference, like a tattoo or a haircut, rather than the destruction of a human life. Because abortion is legal, people often assume that it is morally acceptable, or if nothing else, morally neutral. By legalizing abortion, the Supreme Court rendered a moral opinion on abortion, creating an uphill battle in the fight to build a culture of life. As long as abortion is legal, it will be treated as if it morally acceptable.
