September 9, 2024
Greeting, friends,
Are you registered to vote?
Do you have a voting plan?
The summer is over, both Political Conventions have taken place (with a surprise twist for the Democrats) and we are looking at the fall campaign of an election year. This means ads on TV and social media (best to fact check them), tons of solicitations for money, and signs in yards and on car bumpers.
This is compelling for Presbyterians who, since the time of the Reformation with its declaration that all matters under heaven are part of God’s sovereign plan for the welfare of God’s creation, have urged civic engagement. Discipleship is not only a personal, individual calling. The sovereign Lord works not only in the depths of individual souls but also in the organizations, the institutions, and the movements of human history. All Presbyterians, therefore, have a political vocation. Beyond the general political vocation of citizenship there is the special political vocation of public office. Public officials are not to be despised but to be honored and to be challenged when they do wrong. We must be sure that the worthy calling of public service is not ignored or demeaned. To be realistic about politics is not to despise it but to learn how to use it as an instrument of justice. (And kudos to a number in this presbytery who have run for public office!)
As recently as 2018’s “Honest Patriotism,” the General Assembly has weighed in on “our church’s long commitments to active civic engagement, responsible citizenship and prophetic witness, believing these commitments to be rooted in our faithful response to God’s call to be stewards of Creation” and a witness to “the corrosion of democratic institutions.”
To voters considering staying on the sidelines during this or any other election because they believe government doesn’t work for them or is irrelevant or corrupt, “Honest Patriotism” has this to say: “As Reformed Christians we stand in support of a theological tradition which honors government as a good and stand in opposition to those who see government as a necessary evil, or worse. The casual denigration of government, the reflexive rhetorical impulse to understand government as an alien force that stands against us, must be resisted in the strongest terms if we are to be faithful to our theology.”
Presbyterians and others in the Reformed tradition don’t “embrace an uncritical endorsement of government in all its actions,” the study says. “The church, then, has a duty to the state: to maintain a prophetic voice, with which to constantly remind the state of its calling.” For the Reformed Christian, “active participation in civil society is not a luxury. It is not a right we can choose to exercise or not as our whims may drive us. It is part of our calling as Christians to be active participants in God’s ordering of the earthly commonwealth.
Here in Alabama we have a long history of voter suppression; our forebearers in this state literally risked their lives to vote.
Are you registered to vote?
Do you have a voting plan?
For help with that, if you live in the state of Alabama, please click this link courtesy of Wes Allen, Alabama’s Secretary of State. Other states have similar information on the Secretary of State’s website.
https://www.sos.alabama.gov/index.php/alabama-votes/voter/register-to-vote
And just to visualize the theological reasons we vote, click here.
See you at the polls!
As ever in prayer,
Sue