By Joshua Hoke

opinions@kykernel.com

My father is a Republican. His mother and his father were both Republicans as well. In fact my grandfather, Eugene, was the president of Transylvania University Young Republics and worked to help Louie B. Nunn in getting elected back when Kentucky was not a mainly Republican State. I tend to be a true independent, I don’t identify with either party much but that isn’t really important.

We have a lot of political conversations in our house and one day we discussed this concept of red, white and blue Christianity and I found it rather surprising because of my dad’s perspective.

My dad has a Master’s in Divinity from Asbury. He is a bible scholar and a strong Christian and he posed to me this question: “Would Jesus vote Republican?” I can’t say that I can give you the answer but I can say this: religion is always going to affect your politics, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

It does, however, take a dark turn when American Christianity becomes a political tool for drumming up a voting base.

Despite being a political science student I can’t say how precisely this has happened, I can only say that through my time around other Christians of many denominations, I can see this vein of logic permeating our society and our culture creating norms around Christianity that I believe have no place in Christianity itself.

Somehow, through political discourse, social groups and news media, the block of folks that are Republican have become the churchgoers of our country, with the exception of Presbyterians, Unitarians and Catholics (please consider this a limited generalization, I don’t wish to pigeonhole anyone). While the other denominations of Protestants being the norm of upper to middle class Christians. Within this circle, it’s strongly Republican.

Since when did the message of Jesus limit itself to Republicans?

It is terrifyingly easy to only associate yourself with people like you, who think like you think, vote like you vote and live like you live. To some extent we can all be guilty of this but this is certainly not the Christian message. I don’t want to preach or give you some biblical theology for deriving a voting platform but I will say this: Jesus’ disciples came from multiple walks of life; Matthew was a tax collector (think upper class), Bartholomew is thought by scholars to be of noble birth, and the other assortment of the 12 were fishermen or not much is known.  What we can take away from this is that Jesus drew people from all walks of life, and all classes. He ministered to the poor and the rich (think Zachaeus).

In regard to finding Jesus’ political philosophy, when asked directly about taxes and Caesar, Jesus said very simply: give to Caesar what is Caesars. This provides an extremely loose framework in which to vote on, in short Jesus said pay taxes. You can’t really pick a candidate on that. Jesus ministered to people who needed the Gospel, you cannot pin him politically.

Republicans have taken us into two wars recently, and post 9/11 it somehow became unpatriotic to question the wars. In some respects it has also become un-Christian to question them as well; especially with some of the Islamophobic speech that is casually tossed around in conservative circles. Having a differing view politically has become difficult in these circumstances. The Gospel, and in some regard Christianity, has become a Republican thing. We saw a bit of this problem burgeoning in the Democrat Convention with God and Jerusalem being taken out of the Democratic platform and then suddenly being foisted back into it.

God is not a Republican, nor is he a Democrat. We created these parties for useful voting blocks. I sincerely doubt God is worried about the future of either. I don’t think that God wants to raise or lower taxes. Pretending that somehow one party is morally superior and thus more Godly is an affront to me and should be an affront to any person in either party.

The Bible, and the Gospel message is one of being moral and helping those around you to achieve the same things. It is not about helping the rich stay richer, nor is it about the next government solution to help poor people.

Red, white and blue Christianity is a farce and a divisive technique drummed up to garner votes for a politician or a party. As a Christian it is your responsibility to maintain right standing with God. Not vote for any particular individual. This does of course mean you can vote with your conscience and what you think is the most moral (and in that way, most Godly) choice.

But for heaven’s sake, don’t let a politician use God to get your vote.