Your Guide to Christian Voting Guides
Your Guide to Christian Voting Guides
With days left before Election Day, it is time to figure out how you will vote. Voter guides are one way that political groups can help you with this decision. Some are very informative. Most are not. All of them are biased, some more so than others. Here is a run-down of voter guides aimed at evangelicals and other religious voters this election season.
Guides for Red vs. Blue Voters
The goal of most voter guides is to simplify the election into two stark choices. Many groups cannot legally endorse candidates, but they can "educate" voters by telling them how the candidates stand on key issues. On one side of the guide is the good guy. On the other is the bad guy. And if you support the group issuing this type of voter guide, this is a very helpful tool as you decide for whom to vote.
Ralph Reed's Faith & Family Coalition, Gary Bauer's American Values, and Family Research Councileach offer social conservatives a flyer outlining how Barack Obama and Mitt Romney differ on the issues (spoiler alert: Obama and these groups apparently do not agree on anything). These guides cover the expected social issues like abortion, marriage, and gay rights. They also include economic and fiscal issues including the estate tax, "Cap and Trade Energy Taxes," and the Keystone pipeline.
According to the FRC voter guide, Mitt Romney has had several "etch-a-sketch" moments since the Republican primaries. But rather than moving to the middle (as candidates tend to do between the primary and general elections), Romney has apparently become more in line with the FRC since he became the GOP nominee. On the FRC primary voter guide, Romney was listed as "mixed" on four issues: federal funding of stem cell research, federal prohibitions against all human cloning, the estate tax, and support for "strict constructionist judges." In the general election voter guide, Romney is now listed as completely supportive of the FRC position on these issues.
The FRC also has specialized voter guides. For those in the military, there is a guide that drops discussion of Planned Parenthood, human cloning, and some gay rights (marriage and workplace discrimination) in favor of new positions on defense spending and the federal debt. There is also a special Vice Presidential voter guide for Catholics, which lists issues touched on by Catholic social doctrine. The FRC also provides a Spanish language guide. The Spanish guide is identical in content to the generic English language guide. There is no discussion of the FRC's positions on immigration or support of English as the nation's official language.
Voter Guides That Don't Pick Sides
The trouble with these types of "voting for dummies" guides is not that they are too simplistic (they are) or that they use slanted language (they do)—a guide, after all, is supposed to tell you what to do.
Sojourners' voter guide is long on issues and values and short on candidate positions. The Sojourners "Endorsement for President" is a statement that they won't endorse a candidate, and their "voter guide" doesn't provide any information on candidates. It is more like a party platform than a guide for voters.
"Christians have a moral and civic responsibility to participate in the political life of society" write Sojourners. "We must, however, remember that God is not a Republican or a Democrat, and prayerfully measure the policies of all candidates against a range of Christian ethics and values."
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J Thomas
Obama is no friend of Christians. He is no advocate. Let's count some of the ways: 1) Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC - the Obama Administration tried to take from churches the ability to hire according to faith preferences, 2) Obama presided, over and signed off on, the first time the democrat party removed references to "God" and "Jerusalem" from the party platform, 3) Advocacy of the Arab Spring which led to the further exclusion of Christians from the political process in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya and led directly to increased persecution of Christians and the fleeing of Christians from communities, 4) The Executive Order that Wasn't - Obama lied to representatives in religious districts that he would not allow the Health Care bill to include taxpayer-funded abortions, which he went back on as soon as the bill passed, 5) the Abortion/Sterilization/Contraception mandate - forces the faithful to sin by funding sinful activities 6) Denigrated rural PENN believers with his "Bitter Clinger" bit.
Jon Trott
"Obama is no friend of Christians." This comment by a previous poster is bearing false witness, and therefore an obvious sin on his part. It is fine for people to vote for Romney if their consciences compel them; I support Barack Obama's re-election but won't ape the Christian Right and suggest that only a vote for my candidate is truly a vote for "biblical values." But when we step into overt judgment of another's salvific state -- and the above quote is certainly that -- we pass into ungodliness. Barack Obama has expressly said -- over and over -- that he is a believer, that he has encountered and does encounter Christ in his prayers and his decisions. Believe him or don't believe him, but (to preach a little smoke and fire of my own) usurp God's role as sole Judge at your own peril.
J Thomas
Neither Obama or Romney have traditional theological concepts of the Christian God. It's absurd to suggest that one is worse than the other because of their theological foundations because neither of them are adequate. But in terms of behavior, it is evident that Obama is not a man of integrity and does not have the best interest of Christians in mind. Romney at least has to address the grievances of Christians because they make up a large portion of his base. Obama is no friend of Christians.