As we approach the critical elections of 2024, it is vital that Christians carefully consider the role of the Church in politics. Does the Creator of heaven and earth care about how society is ruled? How could he not? He is King!
All politics deals with morality—what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior. Yet, for many years, the American Church has shut itself inside its buildings when it comes to equipping and calling our congregants to participate in the political process.
Most pastors consistently neglect to inform their congregations of the biblical view on issues affecting us all, implying or outright insisting that the church should stay out of politics altogether. But is that the biblical position? Where in the Bible are Christians commanded to avoid politics and cultural battles entirely? Jesus was crucified because he confronted the Pharisees who were the “rulers” over the Jews. What do we do with repeated commands to be “salt and light”(Matthew 5:13-16, Luke 14:34), or “watchmen on the wall” (Ezekiel 3:17, 33:1-6), or to “demolish all ideas that come against the knowledge of God” and “expose evil” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5, Leviticus 5:1, Ephesians 5:11)?
Author Eric Metaxas recently resurfaced a quote attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and wrote, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. God will not hold us guiltless.”
When Christians don’t vote, we will lose on every moral issue that affects us!
Some Facts
There are approximately 255 million adults of voting age in America, but only 161M (63%) are registered to vote. Of that total, about 34% (58M) are evangelical Protestant Christians.
Evangelical and Born-again believers make up about one-third of all prospective voters in the nation.
However, barely half of those believers (28 million) normally exercise their voting rights in presidential elections. Further, fewer than 24 percent (17.5M) generally vote in off-year (non-presidential) elections. In local elections, typically less than 10 percent of Protestant Christians (7.6 million) cast ballots nationally.
It has been estimated that if just 10% more informed Christians voted in these elections, the Church would again own the culture.
A Relevant Example
Consider the 2023 school board elections in McKinney, Texas, where three strong “Pro-Christian-Value” (PCV)[1] candidates challenged incumbents who refused to hear parents’ cries to remove harmful books and curriculum from the ISDs classrooms and libraries.
The Results:
In a city of 220,000 residents with over 50,000 Christians registered to vote, two of the three PCV candidates lost by only 50 votes each out of an average of only 2,000 total votes cast! Only 4% of committed Christians voted! If 10% more had cast ballots, both candidates would have won, affecting 24,000 students.
If Christian leaders had encouraged their congregations to vote, having informed them of the candidates who held Pro-Christian Values (PCV) in these recent local elections throughout Texas, we would have likely seen huge victories in the key moral issues we face today.
The Bottom Line
It is manifestly clear that our families, churches, and nation are suffering because the pulpits refuse to equip the saints to stand up and vote for righteousness. If we do not face this reality and deal with it, we will lose everything we hold dear—families first.
Where does your church stand? Maybe you can be “iron sharpening iron” by urging and assisting your pastor to get involved. We need the churches to speak up.
Here are a few suggestions:
Start a ‘Salt and Light’ ministry at your church. Contact Salt and Light Council (SLC). They can equip you with display tables, updates on the issues and candidates, and voter guides for your area.
Conduct voter registrations at your church (which is totally legal. SLC can provide legally-vetted info to assure and you and your church).
Ask your pastor if you or the church staff can make announcements as needed to inform the people on critical issues. (SLC can help here, as well).
Christians are the army of the Lord. When we work as a team, “No weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD and their vindication from me, declares the LORD.” (Isaiah 54:17)
If you wish to research what the Bible says about our responsibilities to take part in the political process, I would encourage you to get GTI’s short booklet, “Christianity and Politics: What is the Christian’s Role?”
[1] Pro-Christian-Value” (PCV) candidates promote:
- Supporting parents’ rights to oversee the content of their children’s curriculum
- Removing obscene, pornographic books from Texas school libraries.
- Removing all Social Emotional Learning (SEL), Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs in all forms from classrooms.
- Returning to traditional academics, i.e., reading, writing, math, science.