Faith Matters: As Election Day nears, remember to exercise your freedom … and your faith

Primary Election Day (Aug. 28) is almost here.

It is time to vote and I hope that each of you will take that freedom and responsibility seriously. Elections are particularly interesting events in the lives of the faithful.

Questions about separation of church and state always get brought up, especially when influential faith leaders stump for their candidates from the pulpit.

I’m one of those pastors who believes in that separation, but I also believe that we are called as followers of Jesus Christ to engage in the electoral process.

Jesus was not afraid to have a voice in the secular world, nor was he afraid of taking on politics that crept into the hallowed halls of the synagogue.

In Mark 12:17, he reminds us that we should essentially pay our taxes and “render unto Cesar what is Cesar’s.” He’s also the one who flipped the tables of the moneychangers doing business in the temple.

If we are to be in the world, but not of it, then followers of Christ should feel an extra weight of responsibility when it comes to elections.

If the world votes based on who has the most money (the most signs, mailers, robo-calls, etc.) and we do the same devoid of any other compelling reason, we have not taken our responsibility seriously.

If we vote party line, simply because it is party line, without investigating our candidates, we have chosen the world above our calling to care for it.

And there are issues where a Biblical faith demands our attention to specifics.

For those who have read my column over the years, you know that I have a son with special needs. So when we approach a school board election, it is impossible for me to remove my faith from the process because Jesus repeatedly demonstrates a heart for the “least of these.”

Our most vulnerable children -- those who are homeless, who have special needs, who struggle to survive -- certainly qualify as the “least of these.” And if they are important to Jesus, then they are important to me, and they need to be important to anyone seeking my vote.

It would be foolish, albeit hopeful, to patently assume that just because someone runs for the school board means that they truly have done so with the “least of these” in mind.

Likewise, the Scripture is abundantly clear that God has tasked His people with care for creation. I am by no means a qualified environmentalist or scientist, but I have seen our shoreline over the last month and if we were to give account for how we’re doing in caring for our environment right now, I’m not sure we’d land on a positive.

So, if we are tasked by our Creator with the care of creation, we probably need to determine which candidates take that responsibility seriously. That’s very hard to tell from a sign on the side of the road.

In this column there is no way to list every potential issue with a corresponding Biblical precedent, but the idea is that those who claim to be people of faith have a responsibility to live out their faith in the world by knowing how their faith speaks to the world and determining which candidates and issues best engage those understandings.

So, Aug. 28 is only a couple days away.

It’s time to exercise your freedom … and your faith.

The Rev. Hope Lee, lead pastor of Kirkwood Presbyterian Church and The Well, can be reached at 941-794-6229, hope@kpcbradenton.org or biggreenchurch.org. Faith Matters is a regular feature of Saturday’s Bradenton Herald written by local clergy members.