What Americans call the “mid-term” elections—the biennial elections happening in the middle of the four-year presidential term—will take place on Tuesday. All House members and one-third of the Senators are up for election this year (but not the president), as well as a full slate of state and local offices.
Should Adventists vote? Bettina Krause, the editor of Liberty Magazine and the Associate Director of the NAD’s Public Affairs/Religious Liberty department, has published a thoughtful and well written article in the Review asking, “To Vote or Not to Vote.” But the real question isn’t whether to vote, but what to vote for.
As Krause points out, the denomination’s first guidance on voting was given at the third General Conference session in 1865:
“Resolved, that in our judgment, the act of voting when exercised in behalf of justice, humanity and right is in itself blameless, and may be at some times highly proper; but that the casting of any vote that shall strengthen the cause of such crimes as intemperance, insurrection, and slavery, we regard as highly criminal in the sight of Heaven. But we would deprecate any participation in the spirit of party strife.”
In this statement, made when the Seventh-day Adventist Church as an organized denomination was only two years old, we can discern the outlines of the Adventist philosophy of voting:
1) Do not participate in the “spirit of party strife,” meaning cheer-leading for one party or another.
2) Vote for “justice, humanity, and right.”
Vote for “justice, humanity, and right”—in other words vote a Christian or biblical worldview on discrete issues—and vote against “intemperance, insurrection, and slavery”—but do not vote for a party.
Do Not Vote for Party
Note carefully that the General Conference in 1865 did not say: “vote for Republicans and against Democrats,”—even though, in the summer of 1865, it was very clear to everyone that the Democrats had been and still were the party of slavery and secession, whereas the Republican Party had recently been formed specifically to stop the spread of slavery in the territories, and then became the party of preserving the union and freeing the slaves. Even given such a clear and obvious moral dichotomy between the two parties, the church nevertheless counseled strongly against partisan strife, or pushing party politics.
Likewise, Ellen White warned against identifying so closely with one party or the other that you automatically vote for that party notwithstanding its platform or the moral character of the candidates it puts forward for office:
“We cannot with safety vote for political parties; for we do not know whom we are voting for. We cannot with safety take part in any political schemes. . . . It is a mistake for you to link your interests with any political party, to cast your vote with them or for them.”
So it is clear that we are not to allow our church, or ourselves as individuals, to become associated with a political party.
By All Means, DO Vote on Issues
As we noted, the 1865 General Conference session urged our members to vote against slavery and alcohol. Ellen White was particularly enthusiastic on the subject of voting for prohibition of hard liquor. She warned us not to vote for intemperate men (and, in her understanding, temperance meant abstinence): “Intemperate men should not by vote of the people be placed in positions of trust.” Temperance, 254.
Her son, Arthur White, quoted her as telling Adventists to vote on Sabbath if that were necessary in order to vote against alcohol:
“Shall we vote for prohibition?” she asked. “Yes, to a man, everywhere,” she replied, “and perhaps I shall shock some of you if I say, if necessary, vote on the Sabbath day for prohibition if you cannot at any other time.”
“The advocates of temperance fail to do their whole duty unless they exert their influence by precept and example—by voice and pen and vote— in favor of prohibition and total abstinence. We need not expect that God will work a miracle to bring about this reform, and thus remove the necessity for our exertion.”
“What can be done to press back the inflowing tide of evil? Let laws be enacted and rigidly enforced prohibiting the sale and use of ardent spirits as a beverage.”
“Let the danger from the liquor traffic be made plain and a public sentiment be created that shall demand its prohibition. Let the drink-maddened men be given an opportunity to escape from their thralldom. Let the voice of the nation demand of its lawmakers that a stop be put to this infamous traffic.” Ministry of Healing, 346.2
The odd notion that Adventists should not vote their own morality and their own biblically-informed conception of a rightly ordered society has been frequently expressed in Liberty Magazine. But that periodical was not always so lamentably misguided. In Ellen White’s day, and even long after her death, Liberty carried the following statement:
“The liquor traffic is a curse to the home, to society, and to the nation, and a menace to civil order, and should be prohibited by law.”
Ellen White had no qualms whatsoever about working with other Christian groups on political issues of common interest, such as prohibition. She advised Adventists to work closely with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union:
The [WCTU] is an organization with whose efforts for the spread of temperance principles we can heartily unite. The light has been given me that we are not to stand aloof from them, but, while there is to be no sacrifice of principle on our part, as far as possible we are to unite with them in laboring for temperance reforms.... We are to work with them when we can, and we can assuredly do this on the question of utterly closing the saloon. Daughters of God, 125.3
What is so very remarkable about Ellen White’s counsel to unite with the WCTU on prohibition is that, even then, the WCTU was also promoting Sunday legislation, working to outlaw Sunday activities they considered wrong, including golf.
Whence came the absurdity, nay, the heresy, that Adventists are not to cooperate with other Christian groups on common issues of Christian morality? How often during the past few decades have Liberty Magazine and Adventist PARL officials counseled us not to cooperate with—or even to work against—the “religious right” as they urged Christians to vote for family values and Christian morality, based on the fear that perhaps, someday, the “religious right” would promote Sunday legislation? Yet Ellen White urged Adventists to work with the WCTU on the shared goal of prohibition, notwithstanding that the WCTU was even then promoting Sunday legislation!
It is clear that Adventists should be voting on moral issues, and we should be voting for a biblically informed vision of the rightly ordered society.
What issues should Adventists be voting for? The following is my suggested list.
It is Time to Halt the Holocaust of the Unborn
Thanks to President Donald John Trump’s three Supreme Court nominations, the issue of abortion is back within the political process. Whether or not to outlaw abortion has been returned to the states, who under our constitution have the general police power, the power to regulate health, safety and morals (the federal government is a government of enumerated delegated powers).
Adventists should be the clearest, loudest voice in the American electorate for protecting the lives of unborn children. I cannot say it better than Dr. Michael Hess:
“The entire Christian religion is about the triumph of life over death . . .Scripture clearly states that God hates the hands that shed innocent blood. We are duty bound by the laws of nature and nature’s God to stand for the weak, the defenseless, and the innocent. . . . What is more innocent and helpless than an unborn child?”
In my interview with “Pro-Life Andrew” Michell, he states that abortion is the slavery of our time, I agree. If our church urged its members to vote against slavery, we should just now be urging them with equal force to vote for life and against abortion wherever the issue is on the ballot, as it is in Michigan, California, Vermont and Kentucky. We should also be voting for candidates who promise to protect life, and have a track record of voting to protect the unborn.
Children Must Be Protected From the Trans Lunatics!
“Haven’t you read the Scriptures?” Jesus replied. “They record that from the beginning ‘God made them male and female.’” And he said, “‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.”
Why do some people think that it is less important to uphold the created sexual order than to uphold the Sabbath? It isn’t. Both are creational distinctions, created by God “in the beginning.”
Sex is determined at the moment of conception by your father’s donation of an X or Y chromosome, and if you think you are other than your genetically determined birth sex, you are mentally ill. People who indulge you in your delusion, doing radical medical intervention in support of what is likely a transitory mental illness, are dangerous criminals who need to be in prison.
What the trans-fascists are doing to children is sick and twisted. Chemical castration, mastectomies—cutting off the breasts of young girls—giving pubescent children opposite-sex hormones. This is Josef Mengele-level stuff, and if we don’t vote to outlaw it we’re certainly no better than the German Adventists who supported Hitler.
We need laws in all fifty states outlawing any trans-treatments on people under 18 years of age. The medical profession is grotesquely corrupt and will not police itself; anyone who has watched the Covid/vaccine fiasco knows that.
Stop the Vaccine Madness!
Forcing people to take an extremely dangerous and ineffective/minimally effective clot shot in order to keep their jobs is intensely evil. This is a moral issue that is just as urgent as stopping the trans-mutilation of children. It needs to stop. Vote for politicians who promise to end mandates and statutorily remove the power of arbitrary health dictatorship from governors and other officials.
In addition, vote for candidates who promise not to close churches while keeping bars and massage parlors open. Worshipping God in a church is an “essential business” that needs to be kept open. Any candidate who disagrees should not get one single vote from a Christian.
Close the Border!
Over 100,000 people died from drug overdoses last year; the main killers were synthetic opioids such as Fentanyl. Most of it is made in China and comes into the country through the wide-open southern border. Much human trafficking, mostly sex trafficking, is carried out across the wide-open southern border, which is being left open on purpose by the current presidential administration. Vote only for candidates who promise to close the border and stop the human trafficking and the flow of drugs.
This is a simple issue, but difficult to get traction on. The voters in both parties want the border closed; the donors to both parties want the border open, and donors tend to get what they want, while voters tend to be lied to. Extreme vigilance and careful follow-up is necessary, because the trend in recent decades is for politicians to tell their voters that they will close the borders, while quietly working in Washington to keep the borders open and their donors happy.
Inflation is a Moral Issue
Inflation is debasement of the currency that is caused by the government (or the authority issuing the currency, which in our case is the Federal Reserve) creating too much money, too fast. There’s a moral element to inflation; debasing the currency is a fundamentally fraudulent act.
Prices do not rise uniformly like water in a bathtub. Rather, the first person to get the new money (historically, the government) gets the benefit of the old price structure, whereas the last person to get the new money, after the new money has filtered through the economy, has been paying the higher prices (reflecting the dilution of the value of the currency) long before the new money reaches him. So inflation is a form of theft in which the first people to get the new money are effectively stealing real value from the last people to get the money. (Historically, this is exactly why currencies are debased.) We should not vote for anyone who favors theft by inflation.
Typically, we create new money to finance the federal government’s deficit spending. Federal spending is really insane. I believe that 2007 was the last year that Congress had a normal budgeting and appropriations process (maybe it was 2009—the Google folks carefully hide that information). That was 15 (or 13) years ago. The national debt has gone from $9 trillion in 2007 to $30 trillion in 2022, more than tripling in 15 years. To finance this continual, unabated, insane deficit spending, the government must print a lot of new money (technically, the Fed buys the government’s bonds and pays for them with digitally created money [but we still have to pay interest on the money that was electronically created to loan to us, figure that one out]).
So in order to deal with inflation, we have to deal with deficit spending. Again, this is a moral issue. Do not vote for anyone who will not promise to end deficit spending.
I’m sure there a lot more moral issues to vote on, but it is late and I am tired.