Here in the USA, it’s almost time to step into the voting booth and make a choice between a shady grandma and an offensive grandpa. (Is my patriotic fervor palpable?) Shoving our current reality aside, let’s talk about our philosophical approach to politics.
To that end, Tony Evans wants you to stop asking “Who should I vote for?” and begin to ask the better question, “How should I vote?” If we study that question and look to the Scripture, we might find an answer to our other political questions.
How Should Christians Vote?
The Good
The idea that we should be voting according a Christian worldview isn’t new, but Evans expands it beyond the typical boxes that we tick–i.e. pro-life, pro-heterosexual, etc. He wants Christians to cease being single-party, single-issue voters and begin to vote for the candidate or party that is best aligned with God’s whole agenda. This requires not only a faithful reading of Scripture and prayer but also a reasonable and thoughtful analysis of the policies represented by all the players in the political arena.
Evans words are so cutting and clear at various points that, when I taught a class using this book as my source, I found myself wanting to merely hand out a copy to every person in the class and engage in choral reading. It really is that good.
The Bad
This book represents just a tiny piece of Evans’ “Kingdom agenda” teachings, and I’m not entirely comfortable with it. In fact, there are a few places in this book where I wasn’t terribly confident that the points Evans was making were as sound as I would have liked. That said, there was nothing overly wrong, and in the end, his conclusions are quite sound.
Wrapping Up
I always worry about saying anything bad about a book because I don’t want to undercut my recommendation. So, let me make this clear: if you want help looking at politics as a Christian, you should start here.
This is a clear and concise book that does a great job of cutting through the tradition and talking points to present what’s truly important: using God’s agenda as a standard by which we judge political candidates.
– Readability (5.0)
– Breadth/Depth of Content (4.0)
– Helpfulness/Inspirational (5.0)
Recommended? – Yes, if you truly care about voting according to God’s will over your party’s will.
How Should Christians Vote? is by Tony Evans.
You can buy it from Amazon.
A copy of this book was provided to me by my library for a portion of my property taxes.
Chris Wilson says
Sounds really interesting Phil. I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently especially as I graduated with a Politics degree and help out with a Political party in the UK for a while. I find it very interesting to see how US Christians look at voting compared to here in the UK. There are certainly more left wing politically Christians here (then again, we probably have more liberal christians groups as well). Anyway I might have to check this book out.
Phil Schneider says
Yes, I’d hazard a guess that your “conservatives” are far more liberal than ours. I’d be curious to hear how you take the book. I don’t remember it being extremely US-centric, but maybe I’m just blind to it?