Who's on God's Side - Conservatives or Liberals? Home

Who's on God's Side - Conservatives or Liberals? Here's an excerpt from a story in the Washinton Post: Pollsters are finding that one of the best ways to discover whether a voter holds liberal or conservative value stands is to ask: How often do you go to church? Those who go often tend to be Republican, those who go rarely or not at all tend to be Democratic. Frequency of church attendance has become a better indicator of partisanship than income or education: Among whites who go to church more than once a week, Bush won by a decisive 79 percent to 20 percent. Among those who never attend religious services, Gore won 59 percent to 33 percent, according to VNS. There's a reason why 79% of people who go to church more than once a week voted for Bush and 59% of those who never attend church voted for Gore. The reason is America's system of plurality voting and the binary nature of moral rules. Plurality voting means the candidate who gets the most votes wins, even if neither he nor any other candidate gets a majority. In 1992, for example, Clinton got only 43% of the vote. But because this was more than either Bush or Perot, Clinton won the presidency. The fringe groups in U.S. politics - which increasingly include the Democrats - have been hard at work to eliminate plurality voting in local elections. They want a parliamentary system as used in Canada, Britain, and almost every other democracy. Under the parliamentary system, any group that gets over a certain small minimum number of votes is entitled to representation. The parliamentary system makes it much more difficult to make policy along lines that are morally black or white. The larger number of different viewpoints demands more compromises and shoves policy into morally gray areas. But America's system of plurality voting tends to reinforce the lines between policies that are morally right or morally wrong. Voters realize that voting for a third party candidate who has little chance of getting more votes than other candidates means they are throwing away their vote. It is this characteristic of America's plurality voting system that has kept the U.S. a two-party polity. Having a two-party system forces the parties to split along lines that represent the difference between following moral rules or ignoring moral rules. Moral choices are binary, we either murder or we don't, we either commit adultery or we don't, we either steal or we don't. Most folks, unfortunately even Christians, do not realize that politics cannot be separated from morality, which means it can't be separated from religion. Politics is simply a word that means how we choose leaders and make law and policy. Law and policy are simply society's written statement of what is right or wrong. This means politics is the area of human endeavor where the underlying reality of spiritual warfare is most active and most visible. Look at the issues that really divide the parties: Democrats support abortion; Republicans do not Democrats support homosexuality; Republicans do not Democrats support legalized theft by taking income from those who have earned it and redistributing it to their favored constituencies; Republicans do not Democrats, from Clinton to Dan Rather, will use lies to advance their cause; Republicans do not Democrats think Americans are stupid and must be controlled by their betters; Republicans do not Of course, the differences between the parties are not perfect. There are some Republicans who support abortion and homosexuality, but most do not. The lesson here is that if we want to live in a nation that follow's God's moral rules the most effective political action we can take is to lead others to Christ. Only when citizens have a relationship with God through His Word and His Son will they agree with God's moral rules and want to see those rules be made the basis of law and policy.