A Preacher Explains Who Not to Vote For in (Every) Election

            I’m going to tell my readers something you probably didn’t know about me. Forty years ago, in 1975, while taking a year off college, I got on my bike and rode it over to city hall, where I took out nomination papers to run as an independent candidate in that year’s provincial election. I was just nineteen and I was upset. You see none of the parties were willing to support choice in education. I thought I’d run on that one issue, because at that time I believed that Ontario should support private parochial schools, as in British Columbia and Alberta, and as John Tory would in his ill-fated run for Ontario’s premiership a few years ago.

            In any case, back in 1975, I never filled those nomination papers out. I was too busy earning money for college and playing baseball with my friends to get the 100 or so signatures I needed. But since I was a resident of Premier Bill Davis’s riding, in Brampton, Ontario, the press kept an eye on such things. So, the day after I took the nomination papers home, local papers reported it. Next, my phone started ringing—mostly friends, former teachers, and members of my church. I found I liked the attention. I didn’t have a campaign staff, didn’t have money, and didn’t have a prayer running against Bill Davis. But, a bit narcissistically, I basked in the limelight anyway.

The Prime Ministerial Candidates.

            That wasn’t the end of my political dabbling. In 2003, when I was a magazine editor in West Michigan, I wrote an article musing about a possible run for the United States Congress. I was pretty well known in my district because of the magazine. I could have been a credible candidate for the Democratic Party. A couple of people emailed me to say it would be a great idea. Again, I liked that. But the party establishment didn’t bite, and it is just as well, because Republicans had been elected out of that congressional district for about 100 years anyway.

            Now, looking back on those two times I dipped my toe in political waters, with the perspective of many years and hopefully, by now, a little wisdom, I can admit that one of the things that motivated me to even think about running for office—at least a little—was the glare of publicity. I enjoyed my fifteen minutes—or less—of being the centre of attention.

            Now, I can’t speak for politicians in general. Perhaps it isn’t ambition, or ego, or fame that motivates most politicians. Perhaps the politicians we love best are motivated by ideals, by a deep and abiding concern for the common good, and by a desire to serve rather than be served. Some undoubtedly are.

            But what I really hope--and this is the main point I want to make--is that the same holds true for us, the voters. Do we decide our vote on the basis of “me, myself, and I?” Do we vote on the basis of our needs, our wants, and our ambitions—or do we choose to vote on some other, more idealistic basis?

            I find it interesting that almost all the media attention, almost all party promises, almost all campaign ads are about what I will get out of this election—more security, maybe; a job, or day care, or cheaper tuition, or a faster commute, or income splitting, or whatever.

            This trend of focussing campaigns on the voters’ narrowest interests really came into focus during the 1980 Presidential campaign that pitted Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter. Ronald Reagan famously asked the electorate, “are you better off now than four years ago?” But it is much the same here. In fact, this past August the Toronto Star asked voters that exact question in a front-page poll.

            People seem to take it for granted that most politicians run for selfish reasons, and that most people vote for selfish reasons. But ultimately, I think a politics rooted in “me, myself, and I” first is going to leave a lot of important issues in the dust--especially for people who want to mirror Jesus' priorities.

            There is a recent trilogy of books and movies that are actually a parable about the “me first,” and “am I better off than four years ago,” style of politics. It’s called The Hunger Games. The movies starred everyone’s favourite Oscar stumbler, Jennifer Lawrence.

            The novels are not high literature, and the movies, though fun, are not classics. Both made a lot of money. The author, Suzanne Collins, pictures a North American country called Panem divided into twelve zones. One zone, the Capital, is home to a society much like ours. It is rich. Its citizens luxuriate in the latest trends, and especially coming up with new and bizarre fashions. The population of the capital is preoccupied with violent stadium games—Ultimate Fighting to the death. And they love gorging on the best food, parties, beautiful homes, and 7-24 entertainment.

            In contrast to Capital, the rest of the districts in Panem exist to support the Capital’s health and wealth. The districts mine minerals and manufacture, grow crops and provide human fodder for capital. And they are sinkholes of poverty. Until, finally, Jennifer Lawrence’s character, Katniss, leads—not always willingly—the districts in an open revolt against the capital.

            The books and movies are an allegory.  Hunger Games is about how the few with power on earth tend to live for themselves, and how the many pay the price.

           

The Hunger Games says that when inequality and lack of fairness gets out of hand, whether within or between countries; when the accident of birth matters more than character or heart or hard work; when my games, pastimes, and entertainment mean more than the welfare of all—in such situations, there will eventually be hell to pay.

            In Psalm 85 the Psalmist—who is a refugee, in Babylon, because the Babylonians have destroyed Israel and sent its people to live in other parts of the empire—the Psalmist is dreaming of a new and better Israel. In his vision, he says that a perfect Israel—a perfect nation—would be a place where “Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet, where righteousness and peace will kiss each other”  (v. 10). An more colloquial  translation might put it that the best society is one where “justice and shalom embrace.”

            What would that look like? Well, in scripture, justice is always measured by how the alien—the foreigner, the refugee—how the alien within our gates or city is treated; by how the orphan and the widow—traditionally the poorest people in Israel—were cared for. And shalom was not only international peace, but a national culture where all debts were supposed to be forgiven every fifty years; where prosperity was not limited to a few; where the rich were required to leave enough in the fields after harvest to feed the poor.  In ancient Israel, justice and shalom embracing was a world where no one had to look out over his or her shoulder in fear, because everyone else was looking over their shoulder, for your best interests.

            Of course, as a parable, The Hunger Games is full of exaggeration to make its point. And unlike the world of Panem, we are also a democracy. And what it is going to take for us to steer clear of environmental apocalypse, even more minorities in jail than there are now, reconciliation between First Nations and the rest of us, between racial minorities and the rest of us; what it is going to take to avoid more terrorism and more military missions; what it is going to take beat climate change and beat poverty and homelessness . . . what it is going to take is citizens like us voting for the embrace of justice and shalom rather than just voting for the party that we think will leave us, personally, better off in four or five years.

            Look, I won’t want to tell anyone how to vote. God knows, all the parties think that it’s your pocket book that is most important to you. But we collectively have an ancient vision rooted in Psalm 85. When you vote, do so in the best interests of the neighbour that we are called by Jesus to love, rather than merely for your private interests. Don't Vote for yourself, but for your neighbor. It’s a radical idea at the root of almost every political ideology out there, from Marxism to Conservatism—and yet it is the one idea we hear far too little about in this election campaign. 

Two Elections and One Christian

            As a dual U.S./Canadian citizen, I have two elections to keep track of at the same time. I’ve watched both the Canadian and the American debates on television, and I’m a pretty dedicated political news junkie too. 

            Oh, and I’m a pretty dedicated Christian.

            Now, I know that on the Republican side in the USA, at least, all the candidates claim to be pretty dedicated Christians—more or less. And they tailor their policies to the political agenda of the religious right. But that means they’re trying to take down Planned Parenthood, guilty of multiple barely concealed slurs against Muslims, are trying to marginalize migrants, want to roll the clock back on gay marriage, will sympathize with any Israeli government military move, want more American military moves, and want to teach creation science in the schools, rather than real science. I don’t have much sympathy for the Christian Right and don’t recognize much by way of real Biblical thinking in that camp.

            But, even though I’m a United Church pastor in Canada, I’m not the New Democratic Party at prayer, either. 

            The truth is there is as much diversity among Christians on the issues as there is among people who have never darkened the door of a church. Be that as it may, I am going to have to make up my mind when I go to the polls, soon. So as a Christian, what matters to me? Lots, but here are a few issues I’m thinking about now.

1.         My neighbour’s pocket book. The economy matters, but I’m totally frustrated by the presumption that the election is about whether I’m going to do better with this or that party in power. What matters more is how my neighbour—and especially my poor neighbour, or my homeless neighbour, or my refugee neighbour, or my mentally ill neighbour, is doing. If love is the key moral value in scripture, it is every neighbor that is supposed to be its recipient.

2.         Racism. It doesn’t matter whether you live in the US or in Canada. The number of minorities in jail is the canary in the mine in both places. Our society is racist. Very racist. Remember that when the elderly Greek women were being left out of the food distribution in the early church, the church’s response was to put the Greeks in charge of the money. What would that look like in Canada or the United States?

3.         The environment. Look, long before the Israelites published God’s ten commandments, God is said to have told Adam and Eve to make his beautiful garden grow. It wasn’t enough that Eden was paradise, it had to be improved! Let’s do it. It may already be too late.

4.         Military spending. Take Canada. From its first foreign military exercise, during the Boer War to its latest bombing exercises in the Middle East, too many of our wars, in hindsight, were strategic and moral failures tinged by racism and fuelled by nationalism. We can do better. I’m not saying spend less, or that we ought to be pacifist. Still, it’s time Canada, at least, looked to the North and its coasts, to renewing its historical role as a peacekeeper, and to leading when it comes to humanitarian crises. The truth of Jesus’ warning, “those who live by the sword will die by it,” is coming home to roost.

5.         Infrastructure. The short news cycle makes infrastructure spending over the long haul a no-win political gambit. But shortsighted too. Wise infrastructure spending could also be great for the environment, for our reserves, and for jobs. And I won’t even mention commute times.

6.         Education. The GI Bill after WWII is the right model for higher education. 

7.         Guns. We need to move to a society where the only people who have handguns or machine guns are criminals and law enforcement. American murder rates, in particular, are not only off the charts compared to world rates, they can be lowered significantly.

8.         Israel. It’s a great country. It absolutely needs secure borders. And it also needs to start searching for a solution to its problems with its neighbours that isn’t based on violence and occupation. And sure, that goes for Palestine too.

9.         Refugees. We felt no compunction about helping create the mess they’re running from. It’s time to open our borders wide. Lots of Biblical stuff about loving neighbours and caring for the refugees within our gates to back this up, and nothing on the other side of the scale.

10.          Prisons. They turn too many hard luck cases into hardened criminals. They are full of minorities. They don’t work. We must do better.

            The hardest part of being a Christian, of course, is that no party perfectly aligns with any Christian’s priorities. Going to the polls is always going to be an exercise in compromise. So I’ll compromise. But—at least if you’re not a right-wing Republican—that’s the art of politics.

Is Supporting Palestine Anti-Semitic?

            I recently heard a Christian radio DJ say that every Christian had a responsibility to support Israel. I can buy that.

            But as I continued listening, it became clear to me that the announcer wasn’t just asking for Christians to pray that Israel would be a just, prosperous, happy nation, like others. No, he thought that Christian support for Israel required lobbying President Obama to go easy on Israel’s West Bank settlements. He thought that Christians had to support Israel by lobbying American’s Congress to support a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And he seemed to suggest that anyone who supported the Palestinian right to self-determination was probably anti-Semitic.

            Earlier this year, six hundred clerics, activists and academicians gathered in Bethlehem to critique current Israeli policies. They published a “Christ at the Checkpoint Manifesto,” that called on Evangelical Christians to help bring peace and justice and reconciliation to Palestine and Israel. They said real injustices are taking place in the Palestinian territories, and the suffering of the Palestinian people can no longer be ignored. They said that all forms of violence must be refuted unequivocally.

            But rather than discuss the merits of their critique, this group of mostly Christian activists was simply roundly dismissed as promoting racist doctrine and policies. The B’nai B’rith said the event was anti-Israel and anti-Jewish. A Wiesenthal Centre spokesman writing in the Jewish Post said the participants were working with toxic theology. Jurgen Buhler of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem said that the conference could easily lend itself to “anti-Semitism and anti-Israel propaganda.”

            Really? Since when is it wrong to argue public policy or human rights in democratic nations? Since when is it wrong to call for peace and reconciliation between warring peoples? Especially if you are a Christian?

            In our democratic society we’re encouraged to have intense public policy debates about hot-button issues like homosexuality, the war in Afghanistan, and how we treat Native-Canadians—who, after all, have as much and as long a historical claim to this country as the Israelites do to Palestine. But the minute we debate similar issues with respect to Israel’s security, or the West Bank Barrier, or the aspirations of Palestinians born into occupation, some supporters of Israel insist we must be racist.

            But that is ridiculous.

            I believe in Israel’s right to exist as a nation. I believe that the holocaust was so evil that modern Israel deserves a nation-state with secure borders to call its own. I have no problems with the West guaranteeing Israel its security. I reject terrorism of all kinds.

            But by the same token, that doesn’t justify the second-class citizenship of Palestinians in Israel, or the continued military occupation of their territory, or the building of illegal settlements on the West Bank, or the stranglehold on Gaza, or some sort of Israeli carte blanche right to occupy all of Jerusalem all of the time. Defining support for Israel as unquestioning support for policies that have, for fifty years, done nothing to bring peace to the Middle East doesn’t make sense. I’m not saying I know the best way forward on any of these issues. But that is what public policy debate is for.

            Some Christians muddy the waters further by thinking of Israel not so much as a modern secular state, but as kind of special Biblical protectorate. They say Western support for Israel is required because Biblical prophecies about the State of Israel’s role in apocalyptic end-time scenarios demand a powerful Israeli state. I very much doubt the wisdom of making a highly controversial, nineteenth century doctrinal innovation called premillennial dispensationalism the basis for Canadian or American foreign policy, as the Christian radio announcer I was listening to did. But even supposing there are apocalyptic prophecies that are yet to be fulfilled in the modern State of Israel (something I don’t believe for a minute), why would anyone really think God needs a pro-Israel lobby in Washington or Ottawa to get those prophecies done? If God has a plan for Israel, he’ll figure it out how to get it done without our trying to set it up, first.

            If there is anything in the Old Testament that does seem relevant to the modern State of Israel, it is that God and his prophets often did call Israel’s public policies into question. There was far too much oppression of the poor, rejection of the stranger within the gate, and militarization of Israelite life to suit God back then. He warned Israel, over and over, not to depend on horses or chariots for their security. I’m not sure God would think much differently, today, about the modern State of Israel or any other country.

            So what is the Christian’s responsibility to Israel, today? I’d say it is using whatever peaceful means we have at our disposal to bring about an equitable, lasting peace in the Middle East, for the Israelis and Palestinians both. We are, after all, ambassadors of reconciliation for the whole world (2 Co 5:18-21) rather than champions for one country over another.