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The Rev. Ben Cooke is the pastor at Emmanuel Lutheran Episcopal Church in Augusta.
Election season is in full swing; in-person voting in the midterms is now only a few weeks away. So I’d like to take this opportunity to encourage everyone to get out and vote.
As an Episcopalian priest, I regard voting as a Christian duty. It’s our duty because, as Christians, we are called to love God and to love our neighbors as Jesus would love them. Jesus who was always with the poor and the oppressed, the downtrodden and the marginalized.
Voting is an opportunity for us to support policies and platforms that will benefit the least in our society, as Jesus did and commanded us to do. As activists Ken Butigan and Patricia Bruno say on Christian calling: “Our vocation as Christians is to respond to God’s call to join in the divine dance of compassionate and nonviolent love, collaborating with God’s healing power to fashion the conditions for true peace.”
That does not mean we will always agree on how to go about joining the dance of faith. We do not all vote the same, but it does mean we will faithfully seek to live out our Christian values in the way we vote. Elections are not perfect; frequently our candidates fail to live up to their campaign promises.
Despite the human feelings of elected leaders, democracy is still one of the greatest safeguards of the poor. As former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said: “Democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the others we have tried.”
Despite democracy’s failings, I believe the right to vote is a fundamental safeguard of our ability to love our neighbors as Jesus would love them. When you have the vote, you matter to those you elect; without it, we are all dependent on the whims of those in power.
Alongside the right to vote, the right to protest is another of democracy’s great protections for the poor. In the Book of Common Prayer, used in worship in my tradition, many of the prayers are called petitions; these are our prayers that ask God for something.
In America, we know petitions as letters of protest presented to legislatures. They are more than just this. Petitions are complaints to someone in power, asking for or even demanding justice for someone who does not have power.
The right to protest nonviolently is a cornerstone of our ability to petition those with power in our nation. Through protest, we demand that the powerful do justice for the poor. Without this right to petition through protest, we don’t even have a prayer for justice for the poor.
I encourage you to not only exercise your right to vote this November, but to nonviolently join “No Kings: Vote Early” protests on Oct. 17 around the state. Let us petition our elected leaders, the powerful in this land, through peaceful protest. Making it clear that the people of Maine wish to continue to choose their government in accord with their faith and conscience. That we do not support monarchy, the unitary executive theory, one-party rule, or any other obstacle to free and fair elections. So shall we all be empowered to make God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.