When Faced With Choosing The Lesser of Two Evils - Choose Neither

As voters go to the polls tomorrow in the Senate special election in Alabama, they are basically faced with two horrible candidates to choose from. In recent years this has increasingly become a problem that Christian voters face. Joe Carter proposes a simple solution: don't choose either one.

Convictional inaction refuses to support any political candidate, organization, or party that advocates for or turns a blind eye to gross immorality and injustice. Every Christian in America would refuse to vote for any candidate—regardless of political party—who supports such gross injustices as abortion or covers up immorality, such as sexual assault.

If every evangelical committed to convictional inaction, politics in American would change within four to five years (about two election cycles). Knowing they were truly at the whim of Christian voters, both parties would be forced to make radical changes. Convictional inaction is a nonpartisan approach that solves our political crisis by literally doing nothing.

The flaw in this approach, of course, is the collective action problem. It would take a majority, or at least a critical mass of convictionally inactive voters to make it functional. And as we see in Alabama, there simply aren’t enough Christians willing to risk letting their political opponents win any temporary victory. 

Still, I hold out hope that this approach will catch on. Politically conservative evangelicals today have been catechized by Fox News and talk radio. But there are a growing number of churches teaching what it means to live as ambassadors of the kingdom of God and not as partisan dupes in our current political cults.

Read the whole thing.