Boundaries in voting for Leaders

So we’ve all heard the hoopla, “Hear, hear, anyone who votes for ______ is an idiot and destroying the homeland!” These complaints haven’t been absent from the Christian community, either from within or without. However it’s given a religious twist, “Hear, hear! any Christian who votes for ________ is a hypocrite and an idiot and….” Behind this hollering is a boundary view of voting, i.e., the Christian is voting in a way that is out of bounds for a Christian. But is this how voting actually works?

The two chief complaints that you hear are (1) no Christian can (consistently) vote for an immoral person, and (2) no Christian can (consistently) vote for someone who promotes abortion (because it’s murder). Christians throw these bombs back and forth at each other and non-Christians are happy to stand back and launch grenades at whomever is getting in their political way. But are (1) and (2) true? Can Christians vote for an immoral person or someone who promotes murder? Consider the following examples:

Example 1

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, there are two candidates running for office we’ll call them Flopsy and Endr. Now Flopsy has publicly declared her support to keep abortion legal (assume all of her other positions are pretty mundane). Contrariwise, Endr is vehemently pro-life. However, Endr also wants to kill all the Jews (or Blacks or Arabs or Anglo-Saxons, or Christians, or Vulcans, or Muslims, etc. Feel free to choose your own adventure). He’s pledged to wipe them off the face of the earth if he’s elected. So, who do you vote for? What’s the right decision?

I’ve never actually heard anyone respond, “Vote for Endr!” This includes even self-identified ‘single issue voters’ whose single issue is abortion. After shying away from Endr, the only remaining discussion centers around whether they should refrain from voting at all or vote for Flopsy. To help answer that question let’s put a finer point on the example. Suppose in this galaxy far far away, you are the last person to vote and you know the tallies. If you vote for Flopsy she wins, if you don’t vote at all Endr wins. What should you do? What do you think the Jews (or Muslims or Armenians, etc.) about to be obliterated would think of you if you abstained?

Example 2

Now, consider a different case where we have a choice between Antoninus and Sextus. Antoninus is a rigidly moral, honest, forthright, constant sort of person. Heck—he doesn’t even drink. Sextus on the other hand is a dissolute womanizer. Here’s the catch, Antoninus is a religious exclusivist. He wants to stamp out all other religions by any means necessary. Sextus, on the other hand, is for religious freedom—anyone should be able to choose their own gods. Who should the Christian choose? Antoninus, the one who is unequivocally moral in his personal life but promises a bloodbath against both the Christian and other religious minorities, or the dissolute Sextus, who promises freedom for all?

Again, I’ve never heard someone say, “Yeah, lets go with the persecutor of religious freedom!” Perhaps a Christian will say refrain from voting—but note, this will lead to a great loss of life of both Christians and non-Christians.

The significance of a vote

What these examples show is that our two principles: 1) no Christian can (consistently) vote for an immoral person, 2) no Christian can (consistently) vote for someone who promotes abortion, are rather simplistic. They only seem to work at all because of our cultural context. However, when we try and take them as universal principles they run headlong into counterexamples, counterexamples that even their proponents don’t want to swallow. It would seem that there are times when voting for the abortionist is the right decision (in our example, when it will save many lives). Similarly, there are other times when voting for the personally immoral guy is the right thing to do (again, in our example when it would save many lives).

What should we conclude from this? My answer: voting for someone is not a personal endorsement of that person, nor does it mean an endorsement of all that person’s policies. These are by no means the only arguments for this one can make, consider a couple more. 

Personal endorsement

A personal endorsement is saying that you can vouch for that person’s character—the type of person he is and how he acts. We can see personal endorsements at work in the legal world when someone acts as a character witness. However, there is a legal requirement for being able to serve as a character witness, “The character witness must show some acquaintance or direct contact with the defendant.” Here’s the problem, most of us are not an acquaintance nor had direct contact with the people we vote for. In fact, given that there can be millions of people voting for someone, it would literally be impossible for the vast majority of them to meet and have a personal knowledge of the candidate. But to serve as a character witness, to personally endorse the candidate, one would have to have a personal knowledge of that candidate.

The reductio type argument here is straightforward, if voting is a form of personal endorsement, but the vast majority of people can’t personally endorse candidates because they don’t know them personally, then the vast majority of people can’t vote for anybody! But this is obviously wrong! As for me, I can say that I have never voted for anyone that I could personally endorse because I’ve never met any of them—but surely this doesn’t mean I’ve done something wrong by voting for them! In fact, I’ve never met anyone who thinks this is the way democracy works.

Complete Policy endorsement

Similarly, voting can’t mean that you endorse all a person’s policies—odds are nobody holds the exact same positions as you. And even if in the past there was a person who voted exactly as you would have, there’s no guarantee that person will vote the way you would in the future. Consequently, if voting is an endorsement of all of a person’s policies, then we’d never be able to vote for anyone. One must be able to vote for a person that he disagrees with to some degree or else the whole system crumbles. Hence its at least theoretically possible, as we saw in the example above, that a Christian could disagree with abortion but still vote for an abortionist.

Conclusion

Consequently, if voting for someone is neither a personal endorsement, nor a total policy endorsement, there is no problem with voting for less than perfect candidates. But if those are the wrong ways to think about voting, what is the right way? What does a vote signify? A vote signifies that you believe voting for that person (or not voting) is the best overall thing for the country (or state, or office, or county, etc.). That’s it—just that when everything is taken into consideration, that person being in office is the best option (even if it’s only the best option of a bad lot).

Questions & Objections

Single issue voting

The conclusion we’ve drawn seems to be entail that no one should be a single-issue voter because a vote is for what is best – all things considered. But some people self-identify as single-issue voters, where that one issue determines their vote. Is this wrong? Irrational?

Well, I actually don’t think anyone is a single-issue voter in an absolute sense. As I said earlier with regards Example 1, I’ve never seen anyone choose a pro-life genocidal maniac over a pro-choice anti-genocidal leader. What ‘single-issue voting’ really means is that in a normal world (excluding extreme examples like the above), this one issue is so much more important than everything else that it determines the choice of candidate. This position is completely consonant with the idea of voting given above. It is the belief that, all things considered, the best overall thing for the country rests much more upon one issue than any other.

Political theology: two kingdoms vs neo-Kuyperian 

On one side there are those who think that there are two kingdoms, the heavenly kingdom and the earthly kingdom. While Christians live in both kingdoms, they are not the same. The kingdom of heaven does not have a political structure and hence we are not trying to set up a Christian kingdom. This doesn’t mean Christianity is irrelevant to politics, but we don’t have a goal to Christianize the political structure of the world.

On the other side we have those who in some sense follow Abraham Kuyper, author of the famous quote “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” Not only is all the world God’s but He has given directions for how the world ought to be. Consequently it is the duty of the Christian to try and make the world conform to God’s law and this necessarily means we conform the world’s political laws to God’s laws.

So how does this view of voting relate to this debate? The answer is….  it doesn’t. All I’ve said is that a vote signifies that you think voting for that person is the best overall thing for the country, and that there aren’t hard and fast boundaries—one must look at the whole context. However, this does not tell you what the best thing overall is. It is there that the debate over political theology takes place. Is the best thing overall to deliberately Christianize the government? Or is that a terrible idea? One can agree with everything I said about voting and take either side (or neither) in this debate.

Bible primacy

We’re now near the end and there hasn’t been a mention of the Bible or theology or Christian worldview yet. But shouldn’t we start with those? Shouldn’t we begin with theology and end with philosophy, rather than start with philosophy and end with theology?

The issue we examined here is quite narrow. The question was, ‘What significance does voting for candidates have in a democratic republic?’ But the Bible doesn’t really discuss democratic republics or what votes signify and so doesn’t really weigh in on the question. We have to look elsewhere to find an answer. Remember there’s actually two errors to avoid here. Yes, one problem is ignoring what the Bible has to say. However, the other problem is reading into the Bible the things we want it to say or expect it to say. Not trying to force the Bible to speak on issues where it is silent is a good thing. We don’t get heavenly brownie points for using Bible references to badly support our claims.

Note that I’m not saying that the Bible is irrelevant to how we vote! If our goal in voting is to act for the best of the community, we need to know what the best is, and that requires looking at the nature of justice, fairness, government, etc. The Bible has lots to say about all these things! If I’m right about what voting is, it requires us to go to the Bible so we can judge what is the good and better and best! (And we’ll get into this next time more with the issues surrounding abortion).

Real life Comparison: John Piper & the 2020 election

So how does this work out in real life? During the 2020 election influential pastor and scholar John Piper caused a bit of stir when he declared that he would (probably) not vote in the election. How does Piper justify this as fulfilling his “civic duty”?

I will not develop some calculus to determine which path of destruction I will support. That is not my duty. My calling is to lead people to see Jesus Christ, trust his forgiveness for sins, treasure him above everything in this world, live in a way that shows his all-satisfying value, and help them make it to heaven with love and holiness. That calling is contradicted by supporting either pathway to cultural corruption and eternal ruin.

You may believe that there are kinds of support for such pathways that do not involve such a contradiction — such an undermining of authentic Christian witness. You must act on what you see. I can’t see it. That is why I said my way need not be yours.

When I consider the remote possibility that I might do any good by endorsing the devastation already evident in the two choices before me, I am loath to undermine my calling (and the church’s mission) to stand for Christ-exalting faith and hope and love.

There are three things I want to draw out of this.

First, Piper does not see how his vote for either candidate will not undermine an “authentic Christian witness.” However, if a vote for a candidate does not signify either a personal endorsement or agreement with all their policies then there is nothing intrinsically undermining of an authentic Christian witness. It is perfectly consistent to say that you find both candidates odious, both platforms terrible, and still vote for one over the other because you think one side is less awful (i.e. more betterer 😉 than the other.

Second, he says he “will not develop some calculus to determine which path of destruction I will support.” The problem here is that it is impossible not to form some calculus / algorithm / decision making paradigm for deciding how to vote (more on this in a couple of posts). Indeed, Piper did calculate who to vote for and his answer was no one! We cannot avoid having a decision making paradigm that determines what we think is for the best of the community and how we ought to act for it. 

Third, none of this means what Piper did was wrong. Non-voting can be just fine—it simply signifies that you believe not voting is the best overall thing for the country. So even while I disagree with Piper (I think) about what voting means, that doesn’t necessarily entail that he was wrong not to vote. Now of course there are bad reasons not to vote, like laziness or forgetfulness, but non-voting is not intrinsically unpatriotic or uncivic. However, a decision not to vote must be justified according to some calculus in the same way that a decision to vote for someone is justified. Both must use some set of criteria that helps show what the best thing for the country is. So perhaps Piper’s action was best—but that depends on the goodness of his criteria. This is a point that’s open for debate, just look at the responses from Wayne Grudem, and Abby Johnson.

(There other ways to justify non-voting than Piper’s. One might, for instance, justify non-voting by arguing that low voter turn-out is the only way to force a political party to change direction.)

Conclusion

Despite all the words here, the conclusion is quite limited. It consists in affirming 1) A vote only signifies that you believe voting for that person (or not) is the best overall thing for the country and 2) there are no universal boundaries to voting; each vote must be justified by some calculus / decision making paradigm that takes into account the whole context (including things like the candidates’ character, policy, history, competence, morality, experience, etc.).  

However, despite its limitations, this is still a significant conclusion. It means that we can’t just throw somebody under the bus for voting for an immoral person or a pro-abortion person.  Both the issues and the decision making paradigm must be evaluated.