When my grandmother was 9 years old she met Warren G. Harding. Her father worked for the railroad and so knew that the Harding's train would be stopping in town. So he brought his little girl to meet the President. But my grandmother never tells many people about it because, as she says, “He just wasn’t a real good president."
When she was in high school, my mother skipped school and headed over to Rice stadium in Houston to hear John F. Kennedy’s now famous, “Why Go to the Moon” speech. Later, as a freshman at the University of Houston, she sat across the dais from Kennedy as he gave a speech the night before he was killed in Dallas.
My family has always been into politics. And they have almost always gone Democrat
Just three weeks before he died in 1984, my grandfather was extreamly sick, and so his pastor came out to see him. The election was a couple of days away, with Ronald Reagan running for re-election against Walter Mondale.
“Pastor, who you votin’ for?” my grandfather asked.
“Now Charlie,” the pastor said, “you know my wife and I don’t discuss politics and religion.”
“Yeah… but who you votin’ for?” he asked again, undeterred.
“Well… who are you votin’ for Charlie?” the pastor asked back.
“Straight Democratic ticket all the way,” he answered.
“Well, we voted straight Republican ticket all the way.”
“So,” my grandfather responded, “who’s gonna take care of all the poor people then?”
I, on the other hand, didn’t follow in my family’s political footsteps.
When I was in 5th or 6th grade, I got to go listen to Ronald Reagan give a speech because I was in Boy Scouts, and they wanted a bunch of us in our uniforms standing around for the cameras.
I also met George W. Bush at a country western dance hall when he was running for governor of Texas for the first time.
But it was in 1992 - my freshman year of college - when I voted for the first time. George H. W. Bush was running for reelection against Bill Clinton. I came home for the weekend, and my parents and I went out together to an early voting poling station.
This being my first election, my mother brought her camera and took pictures:
Me signing in.
Me getting my ballot.
Me going behind the little partition.
Me putting my ballot in the box.
But she also took some pictures of my father, too. This was also his first election. After living in the country for 21 years, my father had finally become a United States citizen in 1990. Tonight was his first time to vote... ever.
As soon as we walked out the door, my father asked me, “So, who did you vote for?”
“George Bush,” I replied.
“You did what?”
Wrong answer. America was fresh off the Gulf War, and my father was no fan of Bush. He was no fan of Hussein, either. But Bush had bombed his homeland back into the stone ages to save on the price of oil, and now his first-born son had given his first vote to this man.
My father wouldn’t talk about it again.
I didn’t vote again until 2000, during the infamous Bush-Gore election. Once again, I cast my ballot for George W. Bush. That did it for my father. The depth of connection between father to son that can only be understood on a Middle Eastern level spilled all over. His son had voted against his father. And his son had voted for the son of that man.
I wish I could say I did so out of some sort of political conviction or understanding of the issues. But the truth is, I did it for one reason and one reason only: Because my church told me to.
To be fair, they didn’t broadcast it from the pulpit on Sunday morning or print it in the church bulletin. But the general consensus in conversations and Bible studies was that Christians can only vote one way, and that way is Republican. Vote any other way, and you’re no longer in God’s will. Good luck with your soul.
These folks were serious in the belief that God loved America if and only if a Republican was in the White House. Basically our country chose once every four year whether or not to be in God’s will.
The "Good News" was that God loved America... and if other countries and people also loved America then God would love them, too.
When Pat Robertson ran for President in 1984, I remember tables set up in the hallway outside the sanctuary with his campaign stickers and paraphernalia sitting next to the monthly Bible study guides and missionary newsletters.
When Bill Clinton cheated on his wife in the Oval Office and then lied about it in an investigation, I remember how many folks at my church loved that he had been busted.
They hated Clinton, and did not hesitate to say so. He was liberal. He was evil. He was immoral. When Clinton confessed that “he had sinned” and asked for forgiveness, they tasted blood. Never mind that so many of the parents who stated - with righteous indignation - that “how dare Clinton say he was a Christian like them” had kids of their own in the youth group who were shagging like Oval Office jack-rabbits.
It was not just that they disliked his politics. It was that they hated his very Democratic soul. But their tune changed instantly when Bush entered the White House. Now, if anyone criticized the President on the smallest issue, they remained you that the Bible commands us to pray for your leaders and do what they say. When the United States invaded Iraq again, any debate on the war was ended with, “Yes, but God ordains his leaders and so we cannot question them.” Basically, if the leader was a Republican, then they had a free "Get Out Of Sin"card.
Democrat = not my President.
Republican = God commands me to pray for and obey that man.
(Of course, I have always wanted to know that if God ordains our leaders and we’re not supposed to question God's choices, then where does that leave us with Hitler and Hussein?)
It was during the second Gulf War that I began to question what I had always been taught in my church about politics. How was Clinton’s lying to get into an intern’s pants worse than Bush’s lying to get into war?
I became disillusioned while sitting in church services where the pastor preached against the horrors of abortion, but supported the horrors of destruction in the Middle East and the innocent children who suffer there. It didn’t make sense to me to sit in the pew during the “pastoral prayer” as the petitions went on and on against the sorrow of gay marriage, while I could count half a dozen women around me who were divorced because of cheating husbands.
Between 2000 and 2004 I realized I had been missing something. I realized that God is, as it has been said before, neither a Republican nor a Democrat.
Last year I typed a simple letter to my father. I dated it, and then wrote:
Dear Father,
I apologize for casting my vote George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election. At the time I did not imagine that my vote would support the death and destruction of your homeland of Iraq.
Since his illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 I have renounced my support and I now know it was wrong to ever give it in the first place. I tried to make amends for my mistake by voting against him in 2004. However, I know that alone does not suffice. Please accept my apology, for I am truly sorry.
I signed it. The letter now sits in a frame above his office desk.
My vote for Kerry in 2004 had more to do with sending a message against the policies of Bush than it did with voting for Kerry.
So this election, I have voted for Barack Obama. My father is thrilled. My grandmother, who was born in a time when neither African-Americans or women could vote, had the opportunity to vote for a woman in the primaries and an African-American in the general election. How cool is that?
But many close to me will say that for me to be a Christian and a pastor and then to vote for Obama is wrong. But I have learned that, as a Christian, no candidate - or party, or platform, or president - fully represents the values and convictions that Christ calls His people to.
For me, the Democratic candidate is closer to what I believe, though I don’t agree with everything. I have learned that to truly follow Christ means that to the conservatives I will look too liberal, and to the liberals I will look too conservative.
When God’s people in the Old Testament said they wanted a political leader, God responded, “Really? Are you sure?"
He didn’t think it was a good idea, but he answered their request anyway. In the end, it had a lot to do with their destruction and exile. Maybe that should tell the Church something: that putting too much stock in your President is dangerous. Maybe Christ is calling his people to something radically different than abdicating to partisan politics. Jesus said something to that effect in Luke 22 when he stated:
“In this world the kings and great men lord it over their people, yet they are called ‘friends of the people.’ But among you it will be different. Those who are the greatest among you should take the lowest rank, and the leader should be like a servant. Who is more important, the one who sits at the table or the one who serves? The one who sits at the table, of course. But not here! For I am among you as one who serves.
So what do I now look for in a President? Well, Thomas Merton says it best, and based on his standard I don’t know if I will see this man or woman in my lifetime:
“Will you end wars by asking men to trust men who evidently cannot be trusted? No. Teach them to love and trust God; then they will be able to love the men they cannot trust, and will dare to make peace with them, not trusting in them but in God. For only love – wich means humility – can cast out fear, which is the root of all war.”
Last month I was given the opportunity to share at Central United Methodist Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I was given the final Sunday in a series on Abraham (which also happened to be World Communion Day).
