A Christian Response to Single-Issue Voters

    

    There is a dangerous assumption among white evangelicals that God’s compassion through us is finite. If we care about one thing, we have used up that compassion and cannot care about other things. The most extreme form of this is the “single issue” voter. For these people, if they care about one issue and once every four years vote for a candidate who claims they care about it too, they have done their civic and Christian duty. Among white evangelicals, most “single issue voters” vote for whoever claims to be prolife, but throughout the diverse spectrum of Christian voters in America, people are also single issue voters on racial justice, immigration reform, gun control (both sides), immigration restriction in the name of safety, and religious freedom issues.

There are many ways to be a single-issue voter, but they generally are poorly informed about any issue other than their own and may even be hostile to those who believe other issues may also be important. A good single-issue voter is actively involved and informed on their issue like the prolife voter who volunteers with single moms or the social justice voter who educate their coworkers. But a shocking number of single-issue voters do not feel that their duty to their issue warrants that much effort. Just a few months ago, President Trump announced that he would sign an executive order requiring all babies born alive (even during abortions) to receive medical care. I was shocked by the outpouring of gratitude and support from my prolife friends because… well… George W Bush already passed that law in 2003. Further, President Trump never actually signed this executive order (maybe because it would have been redundant to the existing law). Or a few weeks ago when President Trump promised to add the KKK to the FBI domestic terrorist list and the social justice voters declared it a win…. except the KKK has been on that list since the 1920s! And was the first group the federal government labeled a domestic terrorist organization in 1870 before the FBI list even existed.

Is there a limit to the issues and people one Christian can care about? Christians do have different callings, but not a limit on who we love. “Love the Lord your God” and “love your neighbor as yourself” have been the standard for the behavior of the people of God since Moses. During Jesus’ earthly ministry, a religious leader attempted to parse that out, looking for a loophole, a group of people he did not have to bother with loving. Jesus responded with the story of the Good Samaritan, commanding his listeners to “go and do likewise” (Luke 10). Christians should love anyone who God brings across our path even if it disrupts our plans for the day or is not a people group we are “passionate” about. In the Great Commission, Jesus takes that further commanding Christians to “go” and look for those who need God’s love (Mt 28).

Christians can be called to serve a particular population more than others. Christians are never called to an issue; they are always called to people--- women affected by abortion, black people suffering injustice, people with disabilities, etc. Christian “callings” can be thought of like professions. A woman can be a nurse and still acknowledge that teachers are important. Nor does the nurse have the right to hate children or be cruel to the children in her life because she is not “called” to work with kids forty hours a week. In the same way, a Christian called to work with immigrants can still acknowledge the vital role that a Christian called to work with at-risk youths plays. And if an at-risk youth crosses their path, any Christian would be expected to respond with love.

In I Corinthians 10, Paul used the analogy of a body to illustrate that while Christians are all different, they are interconnected. The emphasis is that even though we have different roles, we are still to care about each other and what the other one is passionate about, “so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it” (I Cor. 10:25-26). When a social justice warrior wins a victory, the prolife volunteer should be the one throwing the party; when the refugee advocate is mourning over the slaughter in Syria; the safety issue voter should weep with them.

This requires these groups listen to each other. This means time. One of the classic Christian virtues is simplicity--- which has nothing to do with how we think, but about how we fill our space and time. Americans are insanely busy, but not necessarily productive. Many other countries spend fewer hours a week on their professions yet accomplish more. Extracurricular activities require more time from students and parents than ever before. Social media occupies 30-60 minutes of most Americans’ days and among young people that number jumps to epidemic, addictive levels. Americans average 3 hours of watching (TV, Netflix, YouTube) a day. Simplicity is about sweeping all these to the side, focusing on what is most important, and choosing and managing our indulgences, so that we each do have time to sit down with a Christian who is passionate about something we are not and have a conversation.

          There is no room in the Christian ecosystem for someone who claims to care for an issue, but exerts no energy, time, or resources to be involved in it. Incarnate Christian love is time-consuming. It requires more than occasionally resharing a tweet and every November pushing a red button. It requires educating ourselves on the issue and on other issues. Honestly, a single-issue voter should be the most educated on all the issues because they are saying that they looked at them all and decided this one is so important that they must vote on it alone. Christians vote on what is important to them more with where their time and money goes in the months between elections than who they vote for on one day in November.  

A good single issue voter is an expert on their issue, is well-informed about the other issues, regularly invests time and money into the people affected by their issue, supports Christians who are passionate about different groups of suffering people, and shows the love of God towards all. If Christians do these things, they will soon find they are no longer a single-issue voter, but that the endless love of God can flow through them in many avenues. They learn that it is possible for a prolife voter to also declare that black lives matter even after that life leaves the womb. A safety voter can sacrifice a little of that false sense of security to help a refugee family get a new start. An environmentalist voter can protect the polar bear and the baby with Downs Syndrome. In this, Christians fulfill the command of Christ to “love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).