In order to serve God and our nation as Christian citizens,
we must participate in the legislative process and work to
elect Godly leaders. Mark Twain said,
"Whenever a Christian votes, he votes against God
or for Him,... God is an issue in every election; He is
a candidate in the person of every clean nominee on every
ticket; His purity and His approval are there, to be voted
for or voted against...He takes precedence of party, duty
to Him is above every claim of party.
If Christians would vote their duty to God at the polls,
they would carry every election, and do it with ease. They
would elect every clean candidate in the United States,
and defeat every soiled one. Their prodigious power would
be quickly realized and recognized, and afterward there
would be no unclean candidates upon any ticket and graft
would cease. No church organization would be found in the
country that would elect men of foul character to be its
Shepard, its treasurer and superintendent of its Sunday
school.... Yet every Christian congregation in the country
elects foul men to public office while quite aware that
this is also an open and deliberate insult to God.
It is the Christian congregations that are responsible
for the filling of our public offices with criminals, for
the reason they could prevent it, if they chose to do it.
They could prevent it without organizing a league, without
framing a platform, without making any speeches or passing
any resolutions... They could accomplish it by each individual
resolving to vote for God at the polls... That is to say,
vote for the candidate whom God would approve. Can a man
imagine such a thing as God being a republican or a democrat
and voting for a criminal... merely because party loyalty
required it? Then can we imagine that a man can improve
upon God's attitude in this matter and by the help of professional
politicians invent a better policy? God has no politics
but cleanliness and honesty and it is good enough for man.
If the Christians of America could be persuaded to vote
for God and a clean ticket, it would bring about a moral
revolution that would be incalculably beneficent. It would
save the country -- a country whose Christians have betrayed
it and are destroying it. The Christian vote -- it alone,
is the master of the situation, and lord of the result."
(Christian Citizenship by Mark Twain, Collier's Magazine
(Sept. 2, 1905: 17 - Originally published anonymously)
