I just cast my vote for the second time in a presidential election. The event was rather mundane up to the front door and then indubitably thrilling as I walked in to hand my ID. No one harassed me; there were no police guards looking at me with threatening eyes and everyone around me acted and enjoyed their 30-minute walk to the front of the line with enthusiasm and enjoyment. We are unbearably unique in this respect.
Perhaps it takes a perspective from an outsider to appreciate the validity of voting in the United States. A quick drive in most roads in South America and voting booths across the world will give you a sense of the vast chasm between order and chaos when it comes to this American social practice.
But I have addressed this too often before, and now I am here only to state what a profound joy it is to vote in this country; to be able to live a life where religion is practiced freely without hindrance and where the inferno of idiocy is not always at the door as it is in Chile, Venezuela, and other nations.
In the early days of Puritan Massachusetts, voting was a fairly restrictive right. It was reserved for those considered “freemen.” The freemen were those who were invested in the financial well-being of the colonies. Eventually, the only voting members were those who possessed membership in a local church. You could have a general agreement with Christian principles, but yet not join a local church because one feared the commitments of a local body. In short, voting was a process left to those who treasured the local church and membership provided one the right to have a voice in the local decisions affecting everyone. If one was lucid enough to be joined to the local body of Christ, and assume those responsibilities, he had the right to speak into civic matters as well with his vote.
In our own day, voting is often mocked as if it is the new sacrament of the polis. In reality, it is merely an extension of the humanity of every being who is placed in a particular place (Acts 17:26) to live by God. The position that voting is too imposing is rather extreme seeing that even advocates of two-kingdom theology perceive an ordinary secular (saecularia) function for voting as legitimate. The farthest from Puritan political theory find voting compelling. Politics may not be within the sphere of the holy for them, but it is still a function of ordinary pilgrims in a pagan and disposable world.
Thus, to turn voting into a waste or an inadequate principle for citizens is to be contra those who spiritualize the church and those who see the Church as the pre-requisite of orderly citizenry. To refuse to vote is by all accounts an easy way out of the complexity of life. By Puritan standards, it would be to despise the citizenship of redeemed humanity placed within a sphere and called to express that dominion in the most local and tangible way.
But finally, it is also to despise the benefits of living in a free country. How many around the world would cherish a glimpse into an overall orderly structure (few exceptions aside) where voting is counted and where free citizens participate–in however a small fashion–in the process of seeing trajectories change both locally and nationally.
We must have a healthy realism about the fallen world we live in, but we should not assume that because of flawed candidates we are called to simply give up voting and pursue something more noble. We have been called to express our authority over all things, and if relinquish voting to a lesser and unnecessary sphere, we are abdicating our authority.
