AN HONOR, A PRIVILEGE

“The Americans are the first people whom Heaven has favored with an opportunity of deliberating upon and choosing the forms of government under which they should live,” so wrote U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Jay. 

Voting is a gift from Heaven, a privilege that millions of people in other parts of the world can only dream about. Still, a vast majority of eligible Illinoisans choose not to exercise that privilege in history-making elections.

This past spring, only one out of seven registered voters participated in the General Primary. Of over 7.5 million registered voters, only 1.6 million voiced their opinion as to who they would want to be their party’s gubernatorial nominee in the General Election.

Even worse, national polls indicate that almost half of those whose votes are determined by candidates’ values stayed home and let some one else speak for them in the 2000 General Election.

Voter apathy in Illinois and nationally is at an all time high. We, as people of faith, are literally rejecting a gift of our Almighty God when we refuse to participate in our government by not going to the polls.

THE INFLUENCE OF FAITH

Author Jim Nelson Black, in his book When Nations Die, wrote: “One of the greatest reasons for the decline of American society over the past century has been the tendency of Christians who have practical solutions to abandon the forum at the first sign of resistance. In the parable of the talents, Jesus Christ did not warn us to run away, to flee to the hills, or hide our eyes, but to go into the fields and bring forth the harvest.”

Our faith in God should influence our values in life, and that includes the political arena. We shouldn’t be bashful about injecting notions of right and wrong into public debates. These ideas come from moral standards, which are essential to a free society such as ours, to prevent it from sliding into social chaos. People of faith, grounded in moral truth, must be prepared to discern those candidates best able to uphold moral values.

As Christ’s representatives on earth, we are under a mandate to be “salt and light” in our culture (Matthew 5:13-16). Dr. James Dobson wrote, “We live in a representative form of government where we are its leaders. It means that every citizen has a responsibility to participate in the decisions that are made and that includes people of faith [using] his or her influence for what is moral and just.”

VOTING YOUR VALUES

Here’s more sobering news: Many believers fail to consider their biblical values when voting, often choosing candidates whose positions are at odds with their own beliefs, convictions, and values.

A recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans say their faith has little to do with their voting decisions. But Charles Colson, founder of the Prison Fellowship ministry, highlighted the need for something more than voting the party line when he wrote:

"Societies are tragically vulnerable when the men and women who compose them lack character. A nation or a culture cannot endure for long unless it is under-girded by common values such as valor, public-spiritedness, respect for others and for the law; it cannot stand unless it is populated by people who will act on motives superior to their own immediate interest.

Keeping the law, respecting human life and property, loving one’s family, fighting to defend national goals, helping the unfortunate, paying taxes — all these depend on the individual virtues of courage, loyalty, charity, compassion, civility and duty."

A DUTY

Voting is not only an honor and a privilege, our forefathers encouraged their peers and their posterity to think of it as a duty – a solemn responsibility that comes with the sacred trust of being a citizen of the United States .

Daniel Webster passionately told a group of women at a public reception in 1840:

"Impress upon children the truth that the exercise of the elective franchise is a social duty of as solemn a nature as man can be called to perform; that a man may not innocently trifle with his vote; that every elector is a trustee as well for others as himself and that every measure he supports has an important bearing on the interests of others as well as on his own."