Voting and Religion

      We went to vote in the primary last week.  When I got to the polling place, I was asked for my drivers license as a form of identification.  This will be mandatory in the general election, but it was started in the primary as optional.  I offered the observation that is was a shame that we  have to show our pictures in order to vote.  One of the poll watchers seated at the table said to me:  “This is because there are so many people who look like the president.”  I was appalled at this remark and I told him that I thought it was disgusting that he should say such a thing.

It got me to thinking about how prevalent racism is in our society.  The Jim Crow culture was challenged by the Civil Rights movement in the sixties and many of the overt laws that separated the races were swept away and many of our places of education were integrated, but we still have the nagging, constant problem of unstated racism that still lives in many, if not most of our hearts.  That is what I experienced at the polling place last week.  A not-so-subtle racist remark from someone who ought to know better, and also an unmasking of the reason for the imposition of picture identification at the polls:  an attempt to discourage minority voters from exercising their franchise.  It is supposed that many of them will vote to support the president.

The lesson from the eighth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, where Philip is told by an angel to go to the chariot where an Ethiopian eunuch was riding and reading a passage from the prophet Isaiah.  Philip joined the eunuch in the chariot and explained to him how the Isaiah passage was a prophecy about the coming of Jesus and his crucifixion and rising from the dead.  The eunuch was impressed by this and wanted to be baptized.  They stopped where there was some water, and Philip baptized the eunuch.  This story impressed me because it is a story about two races meeting one another and sharing the story of  Jesus life, death and resurrection.  How powerful this is when we think of the pervasiveness of whiteness in our culture.  How black congregations are looked at as anomalies, or are caricatured as people who are always singing spirituals and listening to fevered preachers.  There are certainly congregations like that, but there are also many African-American people who worship in other congregations with other traditions.

I served as an interim rector at an  African-American church in Charleston, West Virginia for a year and a half.  These were some of the finest Christians that I have ever met.  They had become a Jubilee congregation in the Diocese of West Virginia because of their wonderful outreach programs.  A small congregation that did excellent work in taking care of the poor and the outcast in their city.  I was proud of them and glad to be able to use my talents to lead them in their work.  It is galling to me to think that these people would be targets of disenfranchisement at the polls.  True, they aren’t in Pennsylvania, but the principle is the same.  I know that the people in that congregation, and the myriad of other minority voters across the country will do what all of us do at the polls:  vote for the people whom we think will do the best in our government for all of the people.  That isn’t a racial thing at all, it is simply what we all want in our democracy.  Isn’t it interesting how we try always to limit our democracy to those to whom we think are entitled to it?  That would be the wealthy, the educated  and the talented.  We will find ways to limit the participation of others who don’t quite qualify.

That is what is so disgusting about the “voter identification” law.  It is an attempt to limit participation in our government to those whom some people think will vote in the “proper” way.  That flies in the face not only of our constitution, but also of our bible, where all people are accepted by our God because of the unlimited love that is expressed through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  We all  participate in that love,  regardless of our race, our level of wealth and education or any other limiting categories.  Thank God for that love that trumps all of our prejudice and selfishness and gives us finally the gift of each other in all of the ways that we show up.