Voting is a Religious Act

You may have noticed:  There is an election going on.  The prayer, For an Election, found on page 822 of The Book of Common Prayer, gives a good theology for elections:


If those sentiments are correct, both our behavior and choices in an election are part of our account with God.  So, we need to take our work in this election seriously.  Voting is a religious act.


I learned that in January of 1994.  On Sunday morning, I was in a dilapidated church at the end of a dusty road in a desperately poor black township not far from Capetown, South Africa.  I was to be the preacher, a rather difficult task since the congregation spoke the native language Xhosa.  We waited and waited for the translator to show up, but apparently his dory had broken down (not uncommon), so we kept singing English hymns in perfect four part harmony, turning them into majestic African anthems, accompanied only by the steady beat of well-calloused and too-tortured hands against cheap, imitation leather Bibles sent by the Foreign Missionary Society that few could read but all could thump.

Finally, an older woman stood from the center of the congregation; everyone called her Auntie, clearly she held great respect, and she spoke far more English than I Xhosa.  “Father,” she yelled out, “Tell us how to vote.”  Then she translated her request to the group, and the room fell silent and eyes bored into me.

Was this a test? I wondered.  Would I encourage them to vote for Nelson Mandela in the election to be held in a few months, the first election in which they would be permitted to cast a ballot, or did they think I was there to represent the party of F.W. De Klerk and the white ruling minority?  At a loss of what to say as a foreigner, not knowing of possible threats to my safety, I started to make some innocuous, complimentary comments of both men.  Then Auntie yelled out, “Don’t tell us who to vote for!  Just tell us how to vote.  How is it done?”

I realized that not only had these good Christians never seen clean water in their township or electricity in their home or real schools for their kids, they had never seen a polling place, voting booth or ballot.  Auntie took my hand and pulled me to the rusty corrugated tin wall, where one poster had been taped over another poster.  The poster showing was voting instructions, a copy of the ballot, instructions on identification needed at the polls, and so on, but only in English and Dutch.  “There are no instructions in our language, and I can’t read the English,” Auntie said.  “Can you make sense of this?”
I did my best, the congregation near rapture at the sheer joy of the idea of voting.  “Is it true,” Auntie asked, “that in America you vote many times in one year?”  “Yes,” I answered, “there are so many elections that sometimes we forget to vote.”

The look of shock on her face still pains me.  Then she said, with utmost conviction, “I have waited my entire life to vote.  After I make this vote, then God can call me home.”

Not knowing what to say, remembering all the elections I had missed, I turned back to the election poster, lifting it to see what was beneath it.  There was Jesus, in a classic Sunday school drawing sent with the Bibles.  With chestnut hair, a trimmed beard, clean clothes and deep blue eyes, the poster depicted Jesus emerging from the tomb on Easter morning, resurrected, conquering death with life, vanquishing hate with love, and subjecting evil to the good.

“This Jesus,” Auntie chuckled, “who is he?  So we put this election poster on him.  This is Jesus to us.  This is Resurrection.”

It was the only sermon preached that morning.  We broke the bread, shared the cup, and went home.  She taught me that I can’t tell you who to vote for, but I can tell you that you have to vote.  To do so is sacred.  It’s resurrection practice.


Now, I urge the American Christian is to translate the political values of Christ’s life into contemporary political machinations like our current election.  But let us avoid the tragedy of believing that Jesus has a picked a candidate for us, and either we vote God’s way or the wrong way.  

God is neither Republican nor Democrat, and people of faith can discern to vote for either John McCain or Barack Obama for reasons deeply rooted in faith.  Whatever our choice, we each must ask,  “is our voted rooted in the reality of that prayer, that when we vote we must give an accounting to God of the powers and privileges entrusted to us?”

In the annals of American history, there is no church, or pulpit, more entwined with American politics than Christ Church.  Seven signers of the Declaration of Independence buried here, and five signers of the Constitution.  On July 4th, 1776, in a supreme act of treason, the rector crossed the king’s name from the prayer book and refused to pray for him.  During the revolutionary war, William White served as chaplain to Washington and the Army and the Congress.

But in 300 years, it has never been about the candidate, but about the causes.  The values of God, the causes of Jesus, are eternal while the candidates come and go.  We all fail before God and the challenge of the kingdom.  But we as Christians must remain relentless to our commitment to God’s values even as the political machinations turn them into sound bites.  Our concerns are poverty, peace, persecution, hardship, healing, freedom, inclusion, love, acceptance, food, and water, just as surely as they are the issues of our own taxes, security and retirement plans.

An arrogance from which many in America suffer is the conviction that God takes sides.   Do you remember Bob Dylan’s protest song:


What a mistake we make when we think that God could take sides, that God could compromise the absolutes of the Kingdom to be seen as favoring one candidate over another.  Personally, I don’t think God has the time or the stomach to wade in the morass of the current election.  God’s values are clear; the candidates are imperfect; we must do our best in selecting; we will be held to account.  But, God does not endorse.

At the end of the civil war, all expected Abraham Lincoln to say that God has blessed the North and condemned the South, that because slavery was an evil sin and God’s judgment on the South was a devastating and destructive war.  But Lincoln said in his second inaugural address:

“Both [the South and North, slave holder and abolitionist] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes [God’s] aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both [North and South] could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”

The upcoming election will leave some exuberant, some defeated.  Lincoln’s words still speak to us:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in. . . .”


I wanted to speak about the upcoming election today because the gospel reading for today turns on the drama of  paying taxes.  In this election, we are hearing a lot about paying taxes.  It was the same 2000 years ago.  Jesus was entangled in a political campaign of sorts, and the question came up of his position on taxes.  Jesus is asked, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

Two different religio-political parties have approached Jesus--the Pharisees and the Herodians.  As a matter of adhering to the law, the Pharisees want to throw the Roman Empire out of Israel like colonial revolutionaries wanted to run the British out of the Americas.  The Herodians, like the Loyalists in the 1770’s, wanted the Romans to stay, because they liked being Roman Citizens, and the strict adherence to their God and God’s law didn’t seem that important.  Further, they had become rich, happy, and fat on the money that Roman taxes and protection generated.  All Jews, the Pharisees were the religiously zealous, and the Herodians the compromising sell-outs.

The only thing that would bring these two disparate groups together was the desire to discredit Jesus, and have him arrested, even killed.  He was such a threat and revolutionary.  

They concoct a good rabbinic question, a common practice of the day, but they know that there is no answer that can please them both:  “Teacher,” the Pharisees ask Jesus as the Herodians look on, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?"  The Pharisees want civil disobedience from Jesus.  They want him to say, “No, pay nothing to Caesar and the Roman princes, for our religious mission is to rid Caesar and his armies from our land, and return to one nation under God.”  But if that is his answer, the Herodians, who hold the magisterial power on behalf of Rome, will have him arrested, and the threat to the Pharisees and their authority will be gone.

But, if Jesus advocates civil obedience, “Of course, you must pay your taxes,” then the Herodians will be secure, but the Pharisees will condemn Jesus as a charlatan, an infidel, and certainly not the Messiah.  By calling for civil obedience, Jesus commits religious disobedience in the Pharisees’ eyes.  Hence, he cannot be the messiah, for at the heart of the messiah is revolution over principality and power.  The messiah is to be the restorer of Israel and the liberator of the people.  

But Jesus gets the best of both groups.    “Show me the coin used for the tax.”  At this moment, at least the Pharisees must have known they were caught.  Jesus has no Roman coin.  We must be archaeological for a moment.  On the Roman coin was an image of the Emperor, described as a God.  A coin was not only money, but propaganda in Rome’s attempt to control the distant territories.  Regulating currency was a powerful form of control. For an observant Jew to carry one would be idolatry and a violation of religious law--that is why money had to be changed in the Temple in Jerusalem; any image of Caesar in such a holy place would be sacrilege.    To carry the coin, to use it, was a violation of the commandment, “thou shall make no graven image.”  Further, to carry the coin was admission that you gave Caesar and his kingdom authority over your life.  Jesus has no coin, for he is the member of one kingdom--God’s kingdom.  When the Pharisee produces Caesar’s coin, Jesus exposed him as being hypocrite.

Having trapped the Pharisees with the coin, Jesus takes it a step further. “Whose image is this, and whose title?” Jesus asks. Jesus is so righteous, so tuned toward God, the kingdom, he doesn’t even know who is Caesar. The Pharisees should just keep their mouths shut, but they have praised Jesus, in their attempt to catch him, for always telling the truth, so they must tell the truth. You can hear them swallow across the centuries. “It’s Caesar, and it says he is a god.” They haven’t caught Jesus; Jesus has caught them.

Then comes Jesus’ brilliant reply: “Render therefore to Ceaesar the things that re Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

How do we give back to God the things that are God’s.  Jesus is using the language of paying off debts.  If Caesar is owed, then pay him.  But, don’t confuse paying one’s debt to God with paying the debt to Caesar.  That would be a far greater mistake than the nationalistic theology that proclaims, “God is on our side.”

To give back to God, one must be aware of what God has given us.  Simply, God has given us our life, and blessed us with memory, reason and skills.

Every moment of our life, and every moral decision that we make within it, is a process of giving our life back to God.  That’s why I like that prayer, “Almighty God, to whom we must account. . . .”  The conduct of our lives is an accounting to God.  The living of our lives is a giving back to God the life that has been given us.

Yes, the election is about self-interest, defense, employment, the stock market, taxes, and on and on.  But, we must not forget that the election is more than just the winner for president.  We give some of our life back to God in the voting booth, just as Auntie did in her first election in South Africa.  The voting booth is sacred ground.  Whomever we vote for, we must know how our choice is part of giving account for the powers and privileges given to us.