Vote for us, because in the economy of God, there is no them

I never have told anyone — not even my children — how to vote. Today, though, I shall ask you to consider for whom to vote, if you have not already.

I encourage you to vote for your neighbor, for it is the only way we cast the right vote for “us.” Vote for us, because in the economy of God, there is no “them.” When we vote with an us-versus-them worldview, we never escape voting against them, or against some imagined enemy within. When we vote with “us” in mind without “them,” we do a fundamental Christian thing — loving our neighbor.

Here are 10 specific ways to vote with “us” in mind.

First, please vote for soul freedom. We Baptists claim soul freedom as one of the tenets of our expression of the Christian faith. However, we Baptists have no monopoly on it; for soul freedom is an individual’s right, competence and total prerogative to relate directly to and with God for their own selves, without the mediation, imposition or regulation of government, especially, or any other person.

Soul freedom deters the believer from imposing their beliefs on another and it impels the believer to decry someone attempting to impose their religious beliefs upon another.

Soul freedom frowns upon religious agendas colluding with political power, designed to compel masses to live according to the narrow religious beliefs of a few.

Christian nationalism — which is neither Christian nor patriotic — is the denial and demolition of soul freedom.

“As true Baptists, would you please vote for soul freedom?”

As true Baptists, would you please vote for soul freedom?

Second, please vote for religious freedom. This is another tenet of Baptists’ expression of the Christian faith. Religious freedom declares the freedom of an individual to have and hold a religion, and even to have and hold no religion. We respect — we don’t ridicule — atheists or people of other faiths or no faiths.

Those who hold religion should not only refrain from imposing their religion upon others, but they should actively advocate for those upon whom religious imperialism, or supremacy, or positions are being imposed and enforced, especially by government.

Baptists were born 405 years ago by dissenting against state religion — the religion of government. We forget that to ours, our neighbors’ and our nation’s peril. Once again, Christian nationalism — which portends grave danger especially to people who shall faithfully imitate Christ — assails religious freedom.

As true Baptists, would you please vote for soul freedom?

Third, vote for a wall of separation between church and state. This phrase and this concept were first articulated by Thomas Jefferson, the third American president, in a reply to (American) Baptists in Danbury, Conn., who wrote him in consternation at the Congregational Church in Connecticut’s assuming a posture of state church — the very thing that birthed Baptists in Amsterdam 193 years earlier and made them flee England in 1638.

Although politicians from every stripe in America claim faith, there are some — even without that faith — who now make narrow, corrupt, erroneous, ascetic and harmful expressions of it their political platform, a political force designed to oppress rather than liberate. They shape, or promise to shape, public policy on those corrupt interpretations of faith with dangerous and deleterious consequences on the masses.

“None who read of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Hitler’s Germany can overlook the frightful comparisons.”

It is the very definition of fascism, and none who read of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Hitler’s Germany can overlook the frightful comparisons. Once again, Christian nationalism — evil to the core — is not Christian.

Better than to vote against that, evil as it is, we can vote instead for the wall of separation between church and state and the religious freedom and soul freedom both rigorously implied within. Those will take care of Christian nationalism, the enemy of both Christians and nation.

As true Baptists, would you please vote for the wall of separation between church and state?

Fourth, please vote for our neighbor-sibling Puerto Ricans among us. They are not garbage; neither do they come from a garbage heap out there in the Caribbean Sea. They are warm, beautiful and hospitable people who enrich America and enrich our faith.

As true Baptists, would you vote for the dignity of your Baptist siblings, our Puerto Rican beloved ones?

Fifth, please vote for our Latino siblings. Americans from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia and the Dominican Republic did not bring crime. They did not bring drugs. They did not bring disease. They aren’t loosed from asylums. All of them, beyond anyone’s assumption, are good people.

“We not only should welcome them; we should vote for them.”

Depending on how far back in our American history we are prepared to go, some of them come from lands that once belonged to their nations, which those nations did not sell, happily, to America. We not only should welcome them; we should vote for them.

Sixth, please vote for your neighbor-sibling Congolese among us. One of our most treasured pastors in our area hails from the Democratic Republic of the Congo — he and many others in his electrically alive congregation. Their fervor, faith and beauty are a dazzling testament to joy in the Lord.

But “the Congo” was quoted by a certain man as among certain immigrants supposed to be “lunatics, convicts and disease-infested peoples poisoning the blood of America.” Yet, these are our beloved friends, neighbors and siblings in Christ.

Would you please vote for our siblings, these beautiful Congolese Americans?

Seventh, please vote for our other siblings in Christ. Right here in Indianapolis, we work with Baptists from Burundi, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Benin, Nigeria, Kenya, Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, the Philippines and Malaysia. These beloved ones are scattered across our region in a quarter of our region’s churches. They belong to us; they are part of us and our family.

And yet, nearly all of us in that roll call above hail from countries labeled as “latrine-hole” (euphemism applied) by an American who may yet wield immense and unbridled power. We are your siblings in Christ! We are members of your body! We all smell good!

“We are your siblings in Christ! We are members of your body! We all smell good!”

Can we depend on you, our Baptist family, to cast your vote for us or at least, speak up for us, especially since “families can be deported together”?

Eighth, please vote for our Burmese siblings among us. They and their thousands among us, enrich our region, are among the most generous herein, and most fervent in their intergenerational faith. And yet, they are among the refugees and immigrants against whom increasing unwelcome and hostility is emerging.

Although they have not yet been singled out by name, has not deportation been threatened against not only immigrants here illegally, but also those, here legally? Many of our Burmese friends hold an immigration status that potentially exposes them to that danger.

Will you vote for them?

Ninth, would you vote for our women and girls? No matter what you believe about abortion, can we, in the land of the free, and in view of our principles of soul freedom and religious freedom, respect the competence of gynecologists and the soul freedom of grown women and family units to make decisions for themselves, rather than the government, regarding their own unique health needs, or even for their raped 8-year-old-now-pregnant child?

Would you consider, (even if in your soul freedom you didn’t accept) that other important and necessary feminine health care needs have been now denied our women and girls, the absence of which have deadly consequences for them because of draconian governmental interference, based on religious supremacy rather than science?

Would you consider (even if in your soul freedom, you would not accept) there is a difference between zygote and fetus, between fetus and baby, and between viable and unviable?

Would you consider (once again, even if in your soul freedom, you would not accept) that when human life begins is quite debatable, especially when science and both “sides” of the Bible are applied to the question?

Would you consider (even if, in your soul freedom, you would not accept) that abortion is a highly personal and a highly complex decision, despite your default ethical or spiritual position on it?

And would you, when you think of abortion, also consider that people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Treyvon Martin, the 20 kids at Sandy Hook, the 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the 49 people in the Orlando gay nightclub, the 58 in Las Vegas, and Clementa Pinckney and his eight parishioners were aborted?

Would you vote for our women and girls and trust and respect their soul freedom as much as you trust and respect your own?

Tenth, would you vote for our LGBTQ Christians? Would you vote for them as humans; for them, as belonging; for them, as Christian siblings? They are a minority, but we cannot not see them; a few are here among us.

“We are a secular republic and democracy in which there is ‘liberty and justice for all.’”

Once again, I appeal to your Baptistic soul freedom and religious freedom and add church freedom here, the third of those fragile freedoms we Baptists uphold and sometimes don’t enjoy. America is a secular nation; and no matter what we would like to believe, a correct reading of history and civics reveals that America was neither established nor ever intended to be, a Christian nation.

We are a secular republic and democracy in which there is “liberty and justice for all.”

Baptists should advocate for liberty and justice for all — even for those with whom we may disagree on biblical, religious and ethical positions (for soul freedom gives us that right).

Because of soul freedom, church freedom and religious freedom, there is, and can be, no uniform Baptist position on LGBTQ matters. While this is a cause for consternation for some, the fact is that people within our churches who so identify should — on the basis of civics and the justice for all that reposes in a secular nation — never be denied the rights the rest of us enjoy, regarding whom they naturally love and how they identify.

Please hear this coming from me, a Christian with decidedly conservative moorings! Disagree with it if you will on a faith or ethical basis; disagree with it in your congregation if you will; but in a nation that promises liberty and justice for all, as Baptist Christians, we should vote for liberty and justice even for our minority LGBTQ siblings.

Such a vote shall do justice (giving others their due), love mercy (giving others more than we think is their due), and walk humbly with God (the attitude to bypass one’s own prejudices and judgments to offer justice and mercy).

So, today I have stuck my neck out, not for myself, but for the others who are all part of us. I encourage us to vote for us all — not against “them.”

Michael Friday serves as executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of Greater Indianapolis and is author of And Lead Us Not into Dysfunction: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, of Church institutions and Their Leaders. He has served Baptists in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and the USA.