What will your church do with
evangelical Obama-voters?
I recognize
we Americans are right smack in the middle of the most negative two weeks of
political campaigning of the year and the kettle is boiling really hotly—it is
easy to get scalded in the next two weeks, no matter who your favorite
candidate is. But I don’t want to address the political question at hand. I
want to think ahead and ask what your church (and all
evangelical churches) are going to do after November 4th with
the Obama voters who want to keep coming to church.
Things may
change, but it now looks like from 18 to 24 percent of evangelicals will cast
their vote for Obama in spite of the vast majority of evangelicals voting the
other way. Mark
DeMoss, a well-known PR executive whose clients
include Focus on the Family, Franklin Graham, and Campus Crusade for Christ
believes even more than 24% of evangelicals will vote for Obama (I don’t
believe him). But lets say ‘only” 20% vote for Obama—what will we do with one
out of five evangelicals who want to keep coming to church but voted for Obama.
Even more so, what will the church do with the even larger percentage of
younger evangelical who vote this way?
I like
politics but I treat it like watching a Colts game—it is fun to watch and I
root for one side but I don’t really take it that seriously. But most folk take
it real seriously—and once they’ve
voted against the flow of most evangelicals what will we do with such people in
our churches?
As church
leaders we ought to be thinking about how to handle even as low as 20% of our
people who are Obama-voters. After November 4 what will evangelicals do with
these people? I see four general approaches but I hope you’ll help by adding
some other options.
1. Drive Obama voters out.
We could
simply make it uncomfortable enough for those who voted for Obama that they
leave our churches and go elsewhere. This is what my denomination did to
Charismatics in the 1970’s and we could do it again—get rid of them and say
good riddance. We could give them time to repent and if they don’t regret their
vote then simply make it so uncomfortable for them that they find another
church.
2. Gently show Obama-voters their
error.
A softer
approach would be to gently work to persuade them they were wrong and gradually
disciple them to vote for the Republican candidate the next time. This is what
my denomination does to people who insist on drinking alcohol. We don’t reject
them or drive them away (usually) but we try to gently persuade them to give it
up and “live rightly.” This is a sort of discipleship approach.
3. Parse the issues showing where
each party is wrong.
A totally
different approach would be to parse the issues and condemn both parties when
their approaches and issues are not in line with the teachings of Jesus. This
approach would make loyalists to either party angry some of the time but it
would fit with Shane Claiborn’s approach in Jesus for President.
This modified Anabaptist approach is popular with some younger people today but
it gets you hammered from both sides.
4. Withdraw from politics completely
and focus on “spiritual things.”
An even
more radical approach would be to withdraw from political action altogether and
focus on individual piety and “spiritual things.” This is how I was raised in
the Pilgrim
Holiness Church. My father used to follow politics but always said, “I
wonder who they will elect as
President?” By that he meant who the pagans would elect as the President of
their pagan nation. He considered himself an alien who was just passing through
this land as a “pilgrim and sojourner.”
5. What else?
I’m
probably missing other approaches—can you add them?
NOTE: The
question this week is about the church
not the national political campaign. I will delete all comments trying to
persuade people to vote one way or another, or even defending one kind of vote
or another. This column is about the
church—and how we should handle people who vote for Obama yet still want to
keep attending evangelical churches. Stick to that question and try to be
mannerly—even though the pagans can’t be kind these weeks we Christians should
be able to talk kindly and intelligently to one another about this.
What do you
think evangelicals will do? What will your
church do?
So what do you
think?
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