Jesus and Politics

Would Jesus Vote?

Photo by Steve Houghton-Burnett on Unsplash

I always find election season interesting.

It’s usually a time where, in Christian circles, people come to the shocking realisation that we do not all hold identical beliefs to one another. For some, this can be genuinely disturbing.

When we are ‘out there’ in the world, we expect to rub shoulders with people whom we disagree with. It’s a normal part of life. But in church, we expect to come together once a week to pat ourselves on the back and remind each other that we are the Correct Ones and will one day be vindicated at the final judgement.

It can be quite a shock when we discover that we have brothers and sisters in the faith who read the same Bible but have radically different political beliefs to our own. I used to know people who ran short-term missions trips with young people from Britain, America, and a a few other nations. The American kids were often viscerally disturbed when they discovered that many Christians in Britain do not like the Republican Party, for example.

I was raised in post-Apartheid South Africa, and I had a grandmother who was known for her radical activism against the regime. The church we were part of at the time has been ahead of the curve in actively encouraging racial integration in its congregation and seeking restorative justice. For us, our Christian faith compelled us to fight racial and economic injustice because we had seen how evil can thrive if we sit back and do nothing. It was unthinkable to be Christian and vote for the right, because the right in our context had put structures in place that were genuinely demonic.

As you can imagine, it was quite a shock for me to then move to Australia at age nine, to then discover that most Christians in that context were centre-right. For them, Christian politics mostly revolved around sexual ethics and preserving the family unit. Most people I knew from school or church had never encountered an oppresive, tyranical regime, so politics for them felt less urgent. I hardly knew any kids who had regular discussions with their parents or grandparents about the importance of the vote, or the need to remember the evils of the past.

Now, I live in the UK, and I have come to an even more shocking discovery: there are Christians here who simply do not vote at all! With no recent memory of extreme tyrany (like South Africa), and no compulsory voting (like Australia), there are swathes of Christians who simply do not want to engage with politics at all.

So, in this short series, I would like to answer the following questions. First, would Jesus have voted if he could? Second, if so, how would he have voted? Third, how is it possible for Christians to read the same Bible and yet come to radically different political conclusions?