A local preacher told me he was planning a sermon on the concept of "voting scripturally," a phrase he'd heard from a congregant.
In the course of that sermon's preparation, this preacher was seeking my views and those of selected others in the community as to what "voting scripturally" meant to us.
The value of my input apparently was a special perspective: I endured an adult and fatal dose of fundamentalist religion as a child and now I write heathen political things in the newspaper.
I ignored the preacher man, but he pressed.
Agitated, I shot him a digital communication to the effect that I had no idea what "voting scripturally" meant and that neither did he or anybody else.
He replied that I'd pretty much nailed the answer.
There was a time when the more conservative and fundamental Protestant Christian denominations--your Baptists and your Churches of Christ, and others--were the staunchest defenders of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state, and of electoral politics and preaching. They believed their free religion would be threatened if the government began picking and choosing among religions.
But then certain blowhard right-wing preachers decided to get political because there was big money and celebrity in fomenting fear of a godless government that would allow people to do things that these blowhard right-wing preachers deemed sinful--like get an abortion, even after rape or incest, or act on a natural attraction for a person of the same gender.
So they signed on with secularists who were anti-tax economically or pro-aggression militarily. It was a less than holy alliance, unnatural and tenuous, but it was the best strategic hope to do God's supposed will within the government and keep women from having rights over their bodies and gays from having rights based on their natural urges.
Through it all, there has persisted a declining element of fundamentalist church membership by persons seeking to remain true to their church heritage--to the general theology and values thereof--while also adhering to an entirely separate personal political philosophy that is more progressive, less discriminatory and, gasp, Democrat-inclined.
Several of those people have lately sent me the link to a special editorial statement in the latest Christianity Today, which is a widely read and much respected voice for so-called conservative Christianity. The piece has warmed their hearts, and it does no damage to mine.
Headlined "Speak Truth to Trump," meaning the vulgarian Donald, the editorial iterates that the publication makes no endorsement in political races--a glorious concession to separation of church and state--but feels a need to say something about the dilemma facing conservative Christians today in the context of this distressing presidential campaign.
It's a long piece, but I will synopsize: Conservative Christians must consider the troubling liberal and globalist views of the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, as well as her secrecy; but, at the same time, they must speak out against the clear "immorality" and wholly non-Christian essence of the Republican candidate.
Here's the choicest excerpt: "Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord. They see that some of us are so self-interested, and so self-protective, that we will ally ourselves with someone who violates all that is sacred to us--in hope, almost certainly a vain hope given his mendacity and record of betrayal, that his rule will save us."
Can I get an amen on that?
More impressively, the piece tackles the concept by which many conservative Christians are making their bed with Trump because of the calculated likelihood that he would nominate Supreme Court justices more likely to take rights from women and gays.
Such a position is itself a form of idolatry, the editorial contends, by worshipping a secular political strategy instead of standing and speaking against the ungodly essence of the man with whom these strategic secular thinkers were making their unholy bed.
The editorial tells no one how to vote. It simply provides a call to arms to professed conservative Christians to be true to what they profess and stay out of bed with this essence of a sinner named Trump.
It's an admirable, indeed courageous, position, reflecting that the option to "vote scripturally," beyond being eternally undefinable, may not remotely exist on the Nov. 8 ballot.
That Hillary Clinton actually has a long history of devoted Methodist religious practice, grounded in the Wesleyan concept to do all the good you can for as many as you can for as long as you are able ... well, I'm pushing it there.
For today, let us limit ourselves to the wise and brave counsel of Christianity Today that speaking out against Trump is a greater Christian imperative than excusing him in deference to the idol-worship of a secular political strategy.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 10/18/2016