Thu 14 Apr 2011
Faith and Politics: The Christian’s Civic Duty, or Why Christians Must Vote
Posted by Mathew Block under Main, Theological Musings
[2] Comments
Just in case you haven’t noticed all the attack ads, lawn signs, and the last two days of televised debates, we’re in the middle of a federal election in Canada. You’d be forgiven for thinking it was all a case of déjà vu. This is, after all, our fourth election in seven years. To many Canadians, it all seems like a bad dream: one that we’re apparently getting tired of. In the 2004 election, only 60.9% of eligible voters cast ballots. And while that number rose to 64.7% in 2006, the general tendency has been downward (2006 excepted, voter turnout has dropped every election since 1984). In 2008, voter turnout plummeted to 58.8% – the lowest turnout in a Canadian federal election ever. If the trend continues, even less Canadians will be bothering to vote this time around.
That growing political apathy has no doubt infected Christians as well. But unlike the populace at large, voting is less of a right for Christians than it is, properly understood, a God-given responsibility. You see, as Luther reminds us, every Christian is a citizen of two kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. Both are ruled by God, but he exercises his authority over each realm in different ways. The first is the invisible, spiritual realm we inhabit as people redeemed by God. This is the realm of faith, which God governs directly. The second (or left-handed) kingdom is the visible world, in which God exercises his power through human agents. Here, in daily life, he rules through civil governments.
That’s the gist behind Paul’s words in the thirteenth chapter of Romans: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment… [The governing authority] is God’s servant for your good” (Rom. 13:1-2,4). All people in positions of authority are placed there by God; we are to obey them because God uses them to serve us in our earthly needs (even if they do not recognize that God is working through them).1
Many Christians interpret the Scriptural account of our civic responsibility solely as an obligation to obey the law: to pay taxes and the like. At best, they may take time to pray for those “in high positions” (1 Tim 2:2). But if someone should suggest our responsibilities go further, that we are in fact to actively participate in the political process, that failure to do so is itself a sin – well, that’s just a step too far.
And yet, why should it be? Few of us seem to realize that democracy has startling implications for our interpretation of being “subject to the governing authorities.” You see, democracy comes from the Greek for “rule of the people.” And we – you and I – are “the people.” Therefore, we are among the rulers of this nation. And if it is God who appoints rulers in this world, then it stands to reason that God has appointed us to be rulers in Canada.
That position comes with responsibilities. As the Scriptures make clear, rulers are not appointed to serve their own ends; they are instead to be God’s instruments to work for the good of the nation. That means we must, as rulers appointed by God to serve the nation in which live, work diligently for the good of Canada.
Perhaps the most obvious way in which average Christians are called to exercise their authority is through the voting process. Through elections, we have the opportunity to help ensure the government will be “a servant for good” in our nation. Christians cannot therefore be apathetic about politics. They cannot simply ignore their responsibilities as co-rulers in Canada’s democratic system. We have been appointed by God to be citizens; failure to execute the duties that position entails is itself sin. If we do not vote, we become complicit in any evil perpetrated by our government, for we could have done something and yet did nothing. Nor can we vote hastily, without first examining all of the issues carefully and weighing the various parties’ platforms. We are to be wise rulers, lest we contribute to oppression and injustice by the thoughtless election of corrupt officials.
Of course, our position as “rulers” in Canada is limited. Elected representatives, premiers, the prime minister, the members of our justice system, and various others hold authority over us. But we have been given some small measure of authority in this nation: authority to vote, to make ourselves aware of the issues, and to hold our leaders to account. That’s the calling God places on each of us as “rulers” in a democratic system. May we constantly seek God’s help to exercise that authority as we ought.
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1That isn’t to say rulers can’t abuse their positions of authority. In Romans 13, Paul is referring to rulers who rightly fulfill their duties as “servants of good”; when leaders act as tyrants and oppress the people, they are sinning against the vocation God has appointed them as rulers. Christians can and should resist such sins against the vocation of rulers.
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Let me tell a parable. You are captured by a gangster, and he tells you to kill your best friend. He then gives you two options; you can either kill him slowly and painfully, or quickly with relatively little pain. He tells you that, if you refuse to make a decision, you cannot decry the outcome, because, after all, you were given a choice.
The problem with such a scenario is of course that this is a false choice; most people would recognize that, whatever happens, it is really the gangster who is culpable here, and not the one to whom he gives the “choice.”
But what if the same can be said of elections? What if Caesar says we can be co-rulers, and we even get a choice in the matter: we can worship Mammon, ourselves, or the powers and principalities that will rectify our wrongs? And what if we are thrown into a lion’s den or a furnace if we refuse to choose, because, after all, we were given a choice?
My point is this: Christians no doubt have some kind of duty to ensure that the least wrong happens in the world wherever they can ensure such things. But this is far different than pretending that Christians have a public duty to vote. Surely it must be a wrong things to vote “just because we ought to,” even if one has no grasp of the issues – there must be something wrong (and I think I can back this up scripturally) with taking up power when we know full well we don’t have the proper wisdom to do so. I also think non-voters have a perfect right to complain; just because one refuses to choose the means by which one kills one’s friend doesn’t mean we can’t complain about the killers. And besides, even those who do not politically vote may be “voting” in other ways – the fact that one is frustrated by the government doesn’t mean that one is cynical about change altogether, or has stopped trying to do good when one can. The Samaritan may care little about politics, but he still might stop to care for the wounds of the Jewish man lying at the side of the road. When politics can convince me of the demonstrable connection between these things – the spin and rhetoric of politics and the people lying beside the road who actually need help – I will take up politics with fury.
Please be clear; I am not saying that Christians should not vote, and I fully intend to do so myself. It’s just that I think we need to stop talking about it as a spiritual imperative, thereby conflating service to Christ and service to the state. At moments like these, I think of the silence of Thomas More, who could betray neither Christendom nor his king. Many would presumably say he was foolish and should have just gotten his hands dirty – caved to the king, and then tried to keep things in check in a more diplomatic way later. But he was one who refused to believe that the way thing are is the way things have to be; he was used to imagining alternatives, as shown by his fictional work, Utopia, and in this political case the alternative he could imagine was nothing less than the place he was sent for his dissidence, the kingdom of heaven. No, I do not say that we should not vote. But we should remember Thomas More as we do so, and should wear the black garb of mourning when we go to the polls.
Hi Karl,
As always, your thoughts have challenged me to more fully explore what I believe and why I believe it. In this case, I’m afraid I can’t quite agree with your ideas, even as I recognize their intellectual coherence.
I have to say, though, that I can’t quite buy your murder-at-gunpoint analogy. There is, after all, a rather stark difference between being given power to commit evil in one of two ways (as per your story), and being given power to bring about the greatest good possible. I tend to think less in terms of the “lesser evil” and more in terms of the “greatest good” when it comes to politics.
Secondly, the power to vote brings with it more than one possible outcome. In your analogy, your decision, no matter what will result solely in evil. It’s true that in an election, one may be forced to vote for a party that will do something evil; but generally speaking, I can’t think of an election where every choice would have absolutely no good at all.
I will agree that, in the end, the elected leaders are the ones responsible for the actions they take, and not the voters (or the non-voters). But citizens who do not vote may nevertheless be culpable of a different crime: if not in what they have done, in what they have left undone. They could have attempted to do good, even if in the end that attempt would fail. Those who do not vote cannot excuse themselves by simply saying, “It’s not my fault; it wasn’t I who elected this government.” It smacks of Pontius Pilate’s defense: “I wash my hands of this man’s blood.” [There is, I feel the need to point out here, a difference between those who simply do not bother to vote and those who, fully aware of the issues in the election, choose to spoil their ballot or otherwise reject the choices before them. In my article, I am criticizing the former (the apathetic, who neither know nor care), not the latter (those who both know and care, and because they know and care, reject the choices before them.]
I find your depiction of Caesar making us co-rulers an accurate account of what we see in the world, but fear that you neglect the spiritual significance of the authority we have been granted. I agree democracy is a human invention, and thus an earthly thing; but Scripture is also very clear that all rulers derive their authority from God. So while it might be true to say that it is Caesar who makes us co-rulers, it is nevertheless also true that God is the one who has given us the authority of co-rulers.
That same basic idea underlies the concept of the doctrine of vocation. Sinful beings can do nothing good (all our righteous acts are filthy rags, after all). And yet there is good in the world. How do we explain this? The answer is simple: God is the one who works good in this world (every good and perfect gift is from above). And the ways in which he generally accomplishes this is not through special, overt intervention (though sometimes he does), but rather through the day-to-day life of human vocation: God works through doctors in their vocations as they heal; he works through the vocation of parents as they raise their children; likewise, he works through the vocation of children to bless their parents; etc, etc. Finally, he also works through the vocation of rulers to maintain order, punish evil, and to promote the well being of citizens.
My point is that, if Caesar appoints us to be co-rulers, our authority to be co-rulers comes from God. And if we have been placed in that vocation by God, it is through the understanding that God can work through that vocation to do good.
That was a somewhat lengthy response to a rather short sentence of yours, and so I apologize. But I do think it is too simplistic a view to identify the existence of human authority without at the same time recognizing the divine mandate which supports it.
As for the choices Caesar grants us, I again fear that you oversimplify matters. To be sure, much of the election process glorifies self-indulgence (we look for the promises that will most benefit ourselves). But again, while this and other sinful things are present, that does not discount the possibility that some good will be present. And if there is some good to be accomplished, I think that is enough justification to vote. If, in the extreme case, all the options were utterly or overwhelmingly evil (if, for example we had only the choice between a modern-day Hitler or Stalin), I would pray to do more than, out of apathy, simply not vote. Which is better: to just stay home voting day (and thus to make no waves), or to deliberately stand up and confront tyranny (which is, in essence, the misuse of authority for evil purposes rather than the good God intends). Your reference to Daniel is more an example of the latter than the former: he didn’t remain apathetic about King Darius’ unjust law; no, he deliberately broke the law. He did not apathetically ignore the political system; he opposed it.
You write: “Christians no doubt have some kind of duty to ensure that the least wrong happens in the world wherever they can ensure such things.” I would like to expand that to also say that Christians have a duty to ensure the most good happens in the world wherever they can ensure such things. We can, after all, be held sinful for “what we have done, and what we have left undone”: in acts of commission and of omission. Voting allows Christians, depending on the issues of any given election, sometimes opportunities to attempt to prevent evil from occurring, and sometimes opportunities to promote good. If we’re not busy preventing a tyrant in Canada, we can still be concerned about promoting the welfare of widows and orphans.
For those reasons, I think that Christians do have a duty to vote – but I never suggested they should do so “even if one has no grasp of the issues.” In fact, I deliberately suggest the opposite: that Christians, because they have a duty to vote, also have a duty to be informed voters: “Nor can we vote hastily,” I write, “without first examining all of the issues carefully and weighing the various parties’ platforms.” I’ll buy that you can find Scriptural precedent to back up your claim that “taking up power… [without] the proper wisdom to do so” is wrong. But I think there is an important distinction to make between those who are actually aware of their inabilities to rule, and those who simply have not bothered to stay informed. The first is the thoughtful recognition of real limitations; the latter is just the shirking of responsibility.
I will of course not deny that we can work for change in areas of our life other than just voting (for example, as “Samaritans” on the road, as you suggest). But my point, particularly in relation to vocation, is that we are to serve the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and minds – in other words, holistically. We are to serve God in every area of our lives, to allow him to serve others through every vocation we find ourselves in. We must serve our parents while children, and our children as parents. We serve (as God serves through us) friends as friends, students as teachers, and teachers as students. And we also serve in our vocation as citizens, as co-rulers in the political system we have in this country – knowing all along that we serve not because this world appoints the task to us; but rather instead because the authority we wield has been given to us by God. And we exercise that authority, trusting that God will be able to work some good through us despite our deficiencies.
Well, that’s a mouthful (a screenful?), and I’m guessing (having not reread any of it) that its much longer and more convoluted than the original article was. Thanks for making me think through my thoughts Karl. I always appreciate your ability to challenge me to more clearly understand what I believe and why I believe it. I hope my response is as interesting to you as yours was to me. And I do hope that my post here hasn’t come off as offensive, even if it does come off as a little blunt. I’m afraid I didn’t edit it for tone. Mostly I was enjoying engaging with the intellectual challenges your put forward, though (as you know) I sometimes lose sight of people while I’m debating the pros and cons of an argument.