Who Would Jesus Vote For?
What’s-his-name at PoM0 Musings (no, seriously. What’s his name?) blogged about this flash video. It’s about the Religous Right supporting Bush in the presidential election. Is God a Republican or a Democrat? What a surpise; He’s neither. The video and the proposed ad are less than neutral when it comes to Bush, especially in regards to the war, but that’s not what I want to talk about.
The ad proclaims on behalf of Christians everywhere who do not necessarily support the movers and shakers of the Religious Right (read: Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson): We are not single issue voters. I think they’re talking about the A-word, but I could be wrong. It might be Atkins not abortion their talking about. While abortion is important to me, so are the other things Sojourners (the ones behind the video and the ad) considers religous issues, e.g. the environment, poverty, and other social ills.
But doesn’t abortion seem to be the trump card? We need to be good stewards of the environment. But measured against a human life? I’d easily give up an acre of rainforest if I thought would save a person’s life. It gets tricky when you try to measure abortion against something like the ethnic cleansing in Darfur. We can stack the number of abortions in a year against the number of tribesman killed by the Janjawid militia. Then I can just vote for whoever will do something about the issue with the higher death toll. But is a potential life equal to an actual life with a family to support.
I don’t know which one of these candidates should be in the White House. I’m not that crazy about either of them, and I hate having to base my decision on who will do the least amount of damage. However, I do know choosing a candidate is more complicated than a single issue. Unless that issue is upholding the value of human life, regardless of whether they are unborn or 60 years old supporting a small family.
[tags]activism, Darfur, genocide[/tags]