September 1, 2026
Alas, another election year is upon us with political signs polluting the roadsides and lying politicians appearing in television commercials.
Although the general election is not until November 3, primary elections began in early March, and won't end until the Delaware primary on September 15.
Churches all over America have urged their congregations to vote in these primary elections, but the real push is to get Christians to vote in the November general election. However, churches and denominations are not united on which party to vote for.
I find these Christian voting wars comical.
The Progressive National Baptist Convention (PNBC), a historically black denomination, held its annual meeting this past July. Speaking in a ballroom at the Omni Shoreham Hotel on July 22, outgoing president of the denomination David Peoples, who pastors a church in Lexington, Kentucky, made a plea for the denomination's churches to do everything they could to get their congregations to vote. He declared: "You ought to tell them we have no choice but to vote. It's a sin if you do not vote." He threatened to stop welcoming nonvoting members of his family and his church to his home. Peoples is not happy with the state of the country under President Trump:
What I am seeing in this country is a cruelty, is an evilness, is an intentionality to disenfranchise, to make sure that it's harder for people to vote, make sure that it's harder for people to live, make sure that it's harder for people to come up in life. When I think about the man that currently occupies the White House, I am convinced that he's evil.
Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), who spoke at a PNBC women's luncheon, stated: "We've got to turn the vote out this year like never before because they're trying to rig the election, and what we've got to do is make our turnout too big for them to rig."
Although it may never be said out loud, the speakers at the PNBC annual meeting and the pastors of the PNBC churches don't just want Christians to vote. They want them to vote Democratic. If they were honest, they would say that they don't care if a Christian doesn't vote if he was going to vote for a Republican.
Throughout the primary season, all over the country, predominately white conservative, evangelical, and fundamentalist churches have urged their congregations to vote in the primary elections, with their main goal being to get Christians to vote in the November general election. Christians in these churches are being told not only that voting is their civic duty, but that it is also their Christian duty.
But just like the church and denominational leaders in the PNBC, the leaders of conservative, evangelical, and fundamentalist churches and denominations don't just want Christians to vote. They want Christians to vote Republican. If they were honest, they would say that they don't care if a Christian doesn't vote if he was going to vote for a Democrat.
I don't blame conservative Christians for not wanting anyone to vote for a Democrat. As editor-in-chief of The New American magazine Gary Benoit recently wrote: "The Democratic Party is no longer your granddaddy's Democratic Party. It has moved so far to the left that it has become the party of wokeism, welfarism, and progressive socialism."
The Democratic Party is the party of feminism, larger and more intrusive government, organized labor, public education, increased government regulation of the economy and society, social justice, climate change hysteria, government-mandated employee benefits, universal healthcare, an ever-increasing minimum wage, anti-discrimination laws, affirmative action and DEI, government-funded child care, healthcare and education as constitutional rights, more welfare with fewer work requirements, higher taxes on "the rich," defunding the police, and "gender affirming care" for minors. During COVID, they were the party of lockdowns, mask mandates, and forced vaccinations. In some blue states, abortion is legal at any stage of pregnancy.
But I also don't blame progressive and liberal Christians for not wanting anyone to vote for a Republican, although we may have different reasons why. The Republican Party supports many of the same unconstitutional and illegitimate government programs as the Democratic Party.
When was the last time a Republican member of Congress called for the elimination of farm subsidies or foreign aid ? Republicans rail against socialism at the same time that the Republican Party platform calls for saving Social Security and Medicare-two of the most socialistic government programs in existence-for future generations of American seniors. It was actually Republicans who are responsible for the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (MMA) which established Medicare Part D. Republicans are ardent drug warriors who defend President Trump's ordering the extra-judicial murder on the high seas of suspected drug smugglers. The national debt just reached the milestone of $40 trillion. That figure is more than double what it was when President Trump took office the first time in 2017. Interest costs have totaled nearly $1.2 trillion during fiscal year 2026, which ends at the end of September. Trump blames it on the Democrats. But it is the Republicans who have absolute control of the House, the Senate, and the presidency. And it was Republicans who controlled the House during the last two years of Biden's presidency. But as the former executive director of the House Republican Policy Committee, Cameron Smith, recently stated: "Whenever handed the keys to governance, GOP lawmakers routinely treat the federal checkbook like a maxed-out credit card." Republicans in Congress, supported by conservative think tanks, keep giving billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to Ukraine and funding Trump's immoral and disastrous war in Iran. No Republican candidate for Congress is running on a platform of cutting off aid to Ukraine and ending the Iran war. They are all sycophants for Trump, lest they incur his wrath and lose his endorsement.
With only a handful of exceptions, Democrats and Republicans in Congress, those running for Congress, and those running for state legislatures, are evil. Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil. That is why I, as a Christian, cannot in good conscience vote for Democrats or Republicans.