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IPFS News Link • Books

Should Christians Vote?

• https://www.lewrockwell.com

I don't normally review books that are more than a year old, and certainly not books that are more than two years old. I am making an exception because I think the subject this book addresses is an important one that also happens to be extremely timely.

Although the book was published in 2008, I did not find out about it until after the presidential election of 2012. After obtaining the book, I put it on my stack of books to read and possibly review. Since I never got around to reviewing it, the book eventually made its way to the Christianity and Politics/Economics section of my library, where it sat on a shelf until about a month ago. While looking for a different book, I came across Electing Not to Vote, read it, and determined to write a review of it by Election Day.

Polls Apart: Why Believers Might Conscientiously Abstain from Voting

When There Is Nothing to Vote For: Liberalism, John Howard Yoder, and the Church

Freedom of Voice: Non-Voting and the Political Imagination

Serving by Abstaining: Karl Barth on Political Engagement and Disengagement

Electing Not to Vote: Whether Choosing Red or Blue, Politics Is Love of Mammon

When the Lesser Evil Is Not Good Enough: The Catholic Case for Not Voting

Voting with Our Lives: Ongoing Conversations along the Path to Pentecostal Faithfulness

The Folly of Not Voting: Reflections on the Incoherence of the Church

The "Presidentialdom" of God: Our Conversation with Pilate

The author of the last chapter, Ted Lewis, also wrote the introduction and serves as the book's editor. He is an acquisitions editor at Wipf and Stock Publishers, and writes articles and book reviews for Mennonite periodicals. But don't make the mistake of thinking that the book is written solely from a Mennonite perspective. The authors, none of whom are household names, belong to Mennonite, Baptist, Catholic, Pentecostal faith traditions. One of the Mennonite authors is a black woman originally from Trinidad. There are brief bios of the contributors at the end of the book. The book also contains footnotes and a bibliography.

1 Comments in Response to

Comment by PureTrust
Entered on:

Of course Christians can vote, sort of. After all, when you sign up to vote, it is only one of your "persons" you sign up with. It is your new voting person. Consider. You have a mortgage. The person on your mortgage is not a man or woman. It is one of your persons. The same for your gas bill person, your electric bill person, each of your credit card persons, your drivers license person, etc. After all if your son or daughter, or anyone else living at your house, has the exact same name as you do, that doesn't mean they are you. Make a few more of your "persons" at your house, and get them all to vote. After all, it ain't illegal, or dead persons wouldn't be voting.