SHOULD CHRISTIANS VOTE FOR THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS?

On the Christianity Today website (March 2, 2016), Baptist theologian Russell Moore tackled the Christian response question “Should Christians vote for the lesser of two evils?”  While Moore answered the issue somewhat abstractly, it doesn’t take a sharp, penetrative mind to see that Moore has the prospective upcoming Presidential election of Clinton vs. Trump in mind.

Indeed, this particular election bothers great numbers of non-church going citizens and as well as Christians—not just evangelicals but Catholics, Fundamentalists and mainliners too.  We have Hillary Clinton who is widely regarded as an underhanded liar and criminal.   We have Donald Trump who is broadly seen as a bigoted demagogue and blowhard.   (Whether these are fair perceptions of Trump and Clinton I leave as an open question here.  I am talking about how many Americans like Moore see the present political contest.)

With the prospect of two undesirable candidates (let’s just go with Moore on this one for the moment) very possibly being set before us, what are we to do?  Not vote at all?  Or go into the voting booth and choose between the lesser of two evils?  In this case, as Moore sees it, choosing between a crook and an intolerant loose cannon.   He writes:

 For starters, unless Jesus of Nazareth is on the ballot, any election forces us to choose the lesser of evils. Across every party and platform, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Still, the question is a valid one. Believing in human depravity doesn’t negate our sense of responsibility. By the standard of God’s law, every person is a liar, but that doesn’t mean we should hire an employee we know has a pattern of lying. Jesus taught that all who have lust in their hearts are adulterers, but that doesn’t mean a woman should shrug her shoulders when she learns her potential new husband is a serial philanderer.

"When considering the question of choosing between the lesser of two evils, we must begin with voting is within our system of government." In our system, citizen is an office; we too bear responsibility for the actions of the government. Just as the lordship of Christ made demands for public justice on office-holders in the New Testament (Luke 4:15), the same is true for those who rule as citizens.

Then he writes:

Can a candidate make promises about issues then do something different in office? Yes. Can a candidate present a sense of good character in public then later be revealed to be a fraud? Sure. The same happens with pastors, spouses, employees, and in virtually every other relationship. But that sense of surprise and disappointment is not the same as knowingly delegating our authority to someone with poor character or wicked public stances. Doing so makes us as voters culpable. Saying, “the alternative would be worse” is no valid excuse.

Think of military service, another office of public responsibility, as an example. Members of the military don’t need to approve of everything a general decides to be faithful to their duty to the country.  But if they're commanded to either slaughter innocent non-combatants or desert and sign up with the enemies of one’s country, a Christian can’t merely choose the least bad of these options. He would have to conclude that both are wrong and he could not be implicated in either. If a Christian doctor were forced to choose between performing abortions or assisting suicides, she could not choose the lesser of these two evils but must conscientiously object.

Moore asserts that it is the Christian’s obligation as a citizen to honor his government and submit his vote (a modern application of Romans 13: 1-7).   In the public square and at the ballot box, Christians must be more involved, not less.

The apostle Paul taught that the sword of Caesar is given by God to commend good and punish evil (Rom. 13:1-5). The Bible addresses the limits of this role, recounting those who use the sword in unjust ways and are held accountable to judgment (i.e., Revelation 13).

That said all political issues are not equal. I’ve voted for candidates I disagreed with on issues like immigration reform or family medical leave because I’ve agreed with them on the sanctity of human life. I could not, though, vote for a “pro-life” candidate who is also for racial injustice or war crimes or any number of other first-level moral issues. There are some candidates I agree on issues like economic growth or national security for whom I could not vote for because they deny the personhood of the unborn or restrict religious freedom for all people.

Given these moral convictions, there have been times when I’ve faced two candidates, both of whom were morally disqualified. In one case, one candidate was pro-life but a race-baiter, running against a candidate who was pro-choice. I could not in good conscience put my name on either candidate. I wrote in the name of another leader. Other times, I’ve voted for a minor party candidate.

Candidates from outside the two major parties sometimes win. Abraham Lincoln ran as a Republican in an era when the major parties were the Whigs and Democrats. Even when third-party candidates don’t win the election, they can introduce issues and build a movement for the future. Write-in candidates have occasionally won; US Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska won her re-election as a write-in candidate in 2010.

In the cases when I’ve voted for an independent or written in a candidate, I didn’t necessarily expect that candidate to win—my main objective was to participate in the process without endorsing moral evil. As Christians, we are not responsible for the reality of our two-party system or for the way others exercise their citizenship, but we will give an account for how we delegate our authority. Our primary concern is not the election night victory party, but the Judgment Seat of Christ.

When Christians face two clearly immoral options, we cannot rationalize a vote for immorality or injustice just because we deem the alternative to be worse. The Bible tells us we will be held accountable not only for the evil deeds we do but also when we “give approval to those who practice them” (Rom. 1:32).

The problem with Moore’s advice is that it is politically naïve.   The simple fact is that for better or worse we live in a two party system—not a parliamentary one.    In a parliamentary system, a minor party can exercise a great deal of power—power inordinately influential relative to its actual numbers.   Most often, the party which has won by a plurality but not a majority has to cobble together a coalition of several parties to form a government.   In the wheeling and dealing to form such an association, often one or more of the small minority parties are needed to seal the arrangement.  It is here a minority can secure concessions from the rest as part of the price for its cooperation.   In such a system, voting for a lesser popular candidate has a satisfactory logic behind it.

But in America, the two-party system as it has come to evolve is set more to allow the majority to hold sway.   Part of the “genesis” of our political arrangement is that it tends to bring all sides to moderate their views.   Even in a time such as our when the electorate is highly polarized, the two major parties each has to appeal to a wide swath of Americans to win the election.   Thus “radical” agendas are disfavored.    Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), this upcoming general election for President will be won by either the Republicans or the Democrats…period.   As a practical matter, voting for a third party ends up setting the table for votes being taken away from one of the majority parties.   One only has to remember the quixotic run of Ross Perot denying the 1992 election to George H. W. Bush in favor of Bill Clinton.   In effect, by voting for X, one actually is voting for Y.

In the real world, a doctor is not faced with choosing between performing an abortion or assisting a suicide.   Often he is faced with treating his patient with two or more undesirable courses of action.   One in my own experience had the doctor either performing a hip replacement a 90 year-old woman or only take palliative measures to ease her pain.    Replacing her hip would be a difficult procedure—sure to cause her great deal of pain—and there was a distinct possibility she would die during the operation.   On the other hand, by doing nothing except administering pain medications, the woman would be unable sit up in bed—sure to lead to dying of pneumonia within days.  

So what would you do?   I suppose one could pass the problem on to another surgeon; but I hardly think abandoning one’s patient like that is Christ-like.    Instead, one has to pursue the path of doing the least harm.   If (and I stress “if”) she did survive the operation, her recovery would be painful and agonizing; but she would live to be with her family a few more years.   On the other hand, by doing nothing except medicating her, she would die soon—perhaps peacefully but that is no guaranteed thing in itself.   Respectable arguments could be made either way.

Taking Moore against his direction, the principle in voting between two undesirable candidates should be discerning the path of “least harm”.    That is a matter of prudential judgment.   It is not a happy prospect; but no one said we were owed satisfying choices.  Moreover, as one famous economist put it, our job is less trying to get the right candidate than to get the wrong candidate to do the right thing.