http://www.sojo.net/blog/godspolitics/?p=3293

Voting as Damage Control
by Shane Claiborne 10-30-2008

Every day I am asked how I will be voting.

Principled Christian non-voters and secular anarchists have written to urge a public statement on voting abstinence. Good folks in both parties and plenty of journalists are frustrated that we won’t answer with a simple endorsement. That just seems too easy. Jesus was far too slick to get boxed into any political camp.

One of the ways the Religious Right went wrong was telling folks what to do rather than stirring people to think for themselves. Our whole Jesus for President project has been about provoking imagination and action. The decision we make on November 4 is an important one — perhaps no more important than how we live on November 3 and November 5 — but important nonetheless. We have done all sorts of discussions and studies to try and discern the most appropriate Christian witness to the state (by the way, if I might recommend one book for this week, it would be John Howard Yoder’s Christian Witness to the State). Let me share a few of the things I will be considering as I choose the most faithful action on November 4.

As a follower of the enemy-loving God, it is difficult to vote for a commander in chief of the largest military in the world, especially when no candidate seems to be preaching “blessed are the peacemakers” or creating a plan for turning swords into plows.

If you are completely paralyzed by imperfect choices, writing in “Jesus” is an option but should also come with grave responsibility. Just because you don’t vote doesn’t mean you can’t critique any more than owning stock should be a prerequisite for decrying the patterns of Wall Street. However, if we do not vote, we had better be spending every day of our lives trying to create alternative solutions to the questions of how 48 million folks can have health care, how we can live without fuel, how we deal with violent people … and on and on.

No candidate or party fully embodies the values of God’s upside-down kingdom. It’s hard enough to find one politician that embodies a consistent ethic of life when it comes to all issues (from abortion to death penalty to war and poverty). Perhaps a good answer when folks ask if you are a Republican or Democrat is: “On what issue?” I heard one preacher say, “I’m not a Republican or a Democrat… I am a Christocrat and it is Christ who forms my politics.”

It is not easy to make an imperfect decision. It just doesn’t feel right to say to the state, “Please kill less”… as it still holds an imperative “Please kill.” However, ideals can keep us from working for “better.” We make imperfect decisions all the time. For instance, you may try to avoid the large corporate Home Depot and shop at the local hardware store but then find out that the hardware store owner beats his wife, thus further complicating things. We always need to make informed decisions, though we may not endorse things that are imperfect manifestations of kingdom values.

One way for people of so-called “privilege” to act in solidarity with the poor and marginalized is to ask folks in poverty who we should vote for. Another experiment for white folks in this election might be asking people of color who have suffered so much historically whether we should vote or who we should vote for — and to honor their struggle by submitting our voices with theirs.

One way to look at voting is that it is damage control -– not so much voting for something as it is voting against something worse. We must do everything we can to reduce the destruction done by the principalities and powers, and voting may be one way to do that. Being an agent of God’s kingdom, transformation means calling out the best that the state can do, and not expecting it to be our savior.

More important than endorsing candidates is urging them to endorse the political manifesto of our commander in chief and to embrace the values of the peculiar, upside-down kingdom that blesses the poor, not just the middle class. Our central allegiance is to God’s kingdom, and we invite everything else in the world to align itself with the norms of that upside-down kingdom. That is what we endorse, and we stand behind everything and everyone that moves us closer to that — the coming of God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.” And we get in the way of everything that contradicts and works against God’s kingdom — interrupting injustice with grace.

So if you want to know what I do on November 4, ask me on November 5. I wouldn’t want to limit your imagination by pretending there is one faithful answer to this difficult but very important decision.