Christians, voting alone won't bring needed change

By Jeff Myers, Op-Ed Contributor Saturday, September 03, 2022

If a recent poll conducted bysummit.org and McLaughlin & Associates is any indication, freedom-minded Americans are falling into a trap that will ensure the continued leftward takeover of our culture.

Political pundits on the right have confidently asserted that progressive liberals have once again overreached by attacking religious freedom, parental rights, free speech, and that if conservatives simply vote, the pendulum will swing back in our favor.

But the results of the recent polling show that conservatives turning up to vote is not the issue. Those identifying with “conservative values” were 17 points more likely to vote in elections than their more liberal counterparts, 76% to 59%, respectively.

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By all measures that should indicate a win for traditional American values. Yet this probably won’t happen. This is because one major rule has not changed. Regardless of who has controlled Congress over the last 50 years, the values and influence of liberals have steadily grown on college campuses, in public schools, in entertainment, and in the corporate world.

The polling shows that in everything except voting, the overall involvement of liberals far outstrips that of conservatives. Liberals are more than twice as likely to be active in political campaigns (14% to 6%), and far more likely to support companies that advance their agenda and boycott those that don’t (38% to 25%). They are more likely to join organizations advocating for their viewpoints (28% to 19%), and nearly twice as likely to attend rallies and events where they can make their voices heard (21% to 11%).

In short, liberals are more passionately involved in influencing culture across the board. We see the implications of this everywhere we look.

An employee wins a religious freedom battle in the workplace, but HR departments are still dominated by liberals. People of faith celebrate when an occasional movie showcases conservative, Judeo/Christian values, but the left controls the other 166 hours of weekly programming on America’s more than 1,700 TV channels.

Conservatives rejoice at winning an election cycle, while liberals have their eye on permanently controlling the federal government’s 400 agencies through a hiring pipeline of young progressives fresh from college.

For the last 4 decades, it’s been drilled into the faith communities that the highest duty—perhaps the only duty — is to vote every two years. But there is no historical, nor biblical support for this mindset. In truth, voting is the least one can do to impact culture.

As people of faith, we need to be reminded that our forebearers secured liberty, educated the masses, championed the rights of women and children, hastened the abolition of slavery, produced economic prosperity, and kept the government from getting out of control. Almost none of this was done through voting. It was done through personal involvement. People of faith led the way because they believed truth really existed and that it would make people’s lives better.

They were fulfilling their God-given mandate to cultivate and grow their community and culture.

But in America today, who has the stronger faith that their vision is the best for culture? It’s progressive liberals, not conservatives and their Judeo/Christian values.

The ballot box is not the only way we get a vote in our culture. We vote with our minds by getting informed, with our dollars by giving money to businesses that don’t undercut our values, and with our voices by speaking truth to our world.

But first, we must stop pretending that filling in little circles on a piece of paper every two years is all that’s needed to bring the change we hope for.