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Prayer as Threat?

Written by Wes

Monday, 07 May 2007

I don't know if I just haven't noticed it before the last several weeks or if it's something completely new, but lately I've been seeing bumper-stickers with the phrase, "I pray, I vote." Is this where the push for Christian involvement in politics has taken us? Using prayer as a threat of political retaliation?

Maybe it's because I came to faith in a Mennonite context, where the idea of political power was generally shunned in favor of serving from the margins, but I really do not understand why on Earth Evangelicalism™ doesn't get why the idea of using faith as an expedient means to power is a bad idea. Good grief, take a look through the world today you can see any number of places where faith got twisted this way - it leads to people being dehumanized, and all sorts of atrocities. I'd really rather not participating in taking Christianity down that route (again), thank you very much.

Why do we need to turn the Christian faith, which is service to a King who rules a Kingdom which is (at the same time) over the whole world and yet not of this world, into another lobbying group? I mean, look at some of the other bumper-stickers with the "I vote" motto:

Freethinker, and I vote
I'm a stoner, and I vote
I hunt, I vote
I'm gay, and I vote
I'm pro-choice, I vote
I have a dog, and I vote

Is anybody catching this? The way that Evangelicalism™ "markets" the Chrisitan faith ends up telling people that it's no different than being an athiest (aka free-thinker), stoner, hunter, pro-choice, gay, or a pet owner. It's all the same thing because, after all, it can be distilled down into the same political sentiment of any other lobbying group in the country. If fact, I don't know what makes me more sad: the fact that this type of bumper-sticker warfare is the LCD of political expression in the country, that Evangelicalism™ fails to see how it's destroying the faith, or the fact that "liberal Christians" have conceeded that the faith is actually about political power (hence the calls for a new "religous left").

Please, make it stop. The Christian faith is not just another lobbying group making sure it's "constituants" are kept near the halls of power. Good grief, we were given a commission from a guy who claimed to have all authority in Heaven and on Earth and Christians have settled for the scraps of the political process? Doesn't anyone see how wrong this is?

I pray, I vote? How about skipping the bumper-sticker, and praying where no one can see us? What ever happened to that?

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