by Meg McArdle wonders, "I can’t see how you can have any sort of meaningful faith and divorce it from your voting decisions. Religious faith is supposed to tell you, among other things, what is right and wrong. How are you supposed to vote without reference to your notions of goodness?"
The answer is that I don’t, of course. I have to vote my conscience, of which Christian values make up a significant portion. Rather than say, as Meg does, that western societies have kept Christianity out of politics – something McCain and Obama disproved Saturday night – I say that we actively tolerate other belief systems, to the point that they can be tolerated, and vote more liberally that we otherwise might in order to accommodate the other.
There is also consideration that must be given to the corruption inherent in any man-made organization, up to and including the Christian church. As good as it is – and it is good, don’t mistake me – it cannot be trusted to govern nations on its own authority. We saw the results of that some centuries ago during the Inquisition.
For more current evidence, pop into a small church’s music committee meeting when the topic is transitioning from old-school hymnals to contemporary music and you’ll see that even true believers can’t live up to God’s standard for our management of His kingdom.
So long as man is imperfect, the American notion of distribution of power applies, even to matters of faith in the public square.
