election day

A photograph of the Rev. Martin Luther King hangs in a window in downtown Memphis, Tenn., on April 3, 2008 in advancce of the 40th anniversary of King's assassination. REUTERS/Mike Segar (UNITED STATES)

No Christian leader has influenced my faith and activism as much as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — but the day we devote to his legacy often leaves me frustrated. There’s a bitter irony in a nation that takes a day off to celebrate King’s life and work while that same nation is experiencing a deep backlash against racial justice.

Gina Ciliberto 10-30-2020

Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash

As Election Day nears, one thing is clear: We all need as many prayers as possible. After you vote, while you wait in line to vote, or while you anxiously tune in as votes are tallied, here are places that you can pray on Election Day.

Layton E. Williams 11-06-2018

Photo courtesy Sam Shields

"My faith informs my agency in the world and we are called to use whatever resources are at our disposable," Shields told Sojourners. "Luke 11: 5-13 is a story of persistence. And when I se injustice in our system or at the least, morally gray positions held by people in power, that is a call to act in the world. As a Christian, Christ calls us to the ministry of reconciliation, and that include the process of voting."

Joe Kay 11-06-2018

Photo by Casey Robertson on Unsplash

Vote today. Choose the candidates you think represent the best chance to bring God’s values of love, inclusion, justice, healing, and compassion into our world.

Jim Wallis 11-06-2018

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

In a time like this, prayer is not perfunctory, an add on, or a brief closing to a meeting. Rather it is an opening to what indeed has now become “spiritual warfare” as the New Testament describes.

Neichelle Guidry 10-24-2018

Photo by Eneida Hoti on Unsplash

And as we go to vote, we ask for your Spirit to draw us together en masse. Across every line, every neighborhood, every city and every state. Place us on the same plane, on one accord, to move fearlessly to our polls and to a new chapter in the narrative of our nation.

The startling finding of the 2000 census that by 2060 there would be no majority race in America sent shock waves through country, terrifying many white Americans. It also set in motion bold efforts to diminish the growing political power of African-American citizens. Among these were the census undercount, gerrymandering to dilute heavily black voting areas, and voter suppression. Today, at least 33 states have intentionally erected barriers to voting by enacting voter suppression laws.

    Image via RNS/Reuters/Kate Munsch

    Despite President Trump’s threat of a “Muslim ban” during the 2016 campaign, Hadil Mansoor Al-Mowafak, a 20-year-old international affairs student at Stanford University, was taken aback when he banned travel from seven Muslim countries, including Yemen, where her husband lives.

    “I didn’t think it was even possible,” Al-Mowafak said. “I thought he just used the Muslim ban during his campaign, and once he took power he’d face reality.”

    Image via Ken Rowland/flickr.com

    More than 800 congregations have declared themselves sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants, about double the number since Election Day.

    Leaders of the sanctuary movement say the pace of churches, and other houses of worship, declaring themselves sanctuaries has quickened, in the days leading up to the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump on Jan. 20.

    Gay Clark Jennings 11-15-2016

    Image via RNS/Reuters/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

    I fear now, as I have feared for months, the impact of his presidency on vulnerable people — including the white and working-class voters in places like my home state of Ohio who lent him their support.

    Christians always have disagreements about policy proposals or party platforms during election seasons. But this year, I wonder how white Christians who read the same Scriptures and hold many of the same beliefs that I do could support a man who in word and deed has flaunted the core teachings of our faith.

    John Fea 11-10-2016

    Image via RNS/Reuters/Mario Anzuoni

    I am upset by the results of the election, and I am particularly saddened that 81 percent of white American evangelicals got into bed with a monster on Nov. 8. But I am also encouraged and have not lost hope.

    Here’s why:

    Around 11:15 p.m. Tuesday, my 15-year-old daughter, frustrated by all she was seeing on the television, stormed out of the room and announced: “Dad, I am going to bed. I am embarrassed for my country.”

    Image via RNS/Reuters/Mike Segar

    As it is, white evangelicals made up a little more than a quarter of those who turned out to cast their ballots. And by winning 81 percent of their vote, Trump was assured the presidency.

    Now, evangelicals are expecting much in return from a president-elect who did not mention God in his victory speech, who was “strongly” in favor of abortion rights until he was against them, who has said he does not believe in repentance, who has made lewd comments admitting to sexual assault.

    the Web Editors 11-08-2016

    Trump's campaign sues over polling location that allegedly stayed open late for voters. 

    David Gushee 11-07-2016

    Image via RNS/Reuters/Kevin Kolczynski

    People need to believe in something, or someone, or Someone.

    This human need to believe is a very powerful force. It can overcome a great deal of countervailing evidence. One place this is obvious is in politics.

    Image via RNS/Election Day Communion 2016

    The idea for an Election Day church service came to the pastor as he was pouring juice into little plastic cups.

    Mark Schloneger was preparing for Communion that day in 2008, in the kitchen of Waynesboro Mennonite Church in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The phone rang. It was a robocall from Sarah Palin, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee that year. She was imploring Christians to go to the polls, vote for her party, and take back the country.

    the Web Editors 11-01-2016

    Image via pne/Shutterstock.com

    You should call the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law hotline 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) if you, or someone you know, are notified that you can’t vote, or can vote only under certain circumstances, and you suspect that unlawful practices are to blame for the difficulty.

    Likewise, you should call the hotline if you notice at the poll any of the following eight possible signs of voter suppression, or if you notice blatant voter intimidation.

    the Web Editors 10-28-2016

    Image via Mark Van Scyoc/Shutterstock.com

    On Oct. 28, in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI director James Comey announced that the FBI will investigate newly discovered Hillary Clinton emails, reports NBC News

    Image via /Shutterstock.com

    A quarter of U.S. adults do not affiliate with any religion, a new study shows — an all-time high in a nation where large swaths of Americans are losing faith.

    But while these so-called “nones” outnumber any religious denomination, they are not voting as a bloc, and may have little collective influence on the upcoming presidential election.

    The rapid growth of the religiously unaffiliated, charted in a survey released by the Public Religion Research Institute on Sept. 22, is raising eyebrows even among those who follow trends in American religiosity.

    Angela Denker 11-07-2014

    Polling place illustration, Ron and Joe / Shutterstock.com

    I'll never forget the time I was handed a Voting Guide when I walked into church on Sunday morning.

    It was 2008 and I was a 23-year-old single woman, attending a large Southern Baptist congregation in Florida for the very first time.

    The high school football coach I'd just written a profile on for the front page of the sports section had recommended I attend his church. He was, I'd ascertained, a good man and a genuine Christian. Plus, he and all the other football coaches from the area attended church here. There was the potential of additional scoops, plus an opportunity to make friends - or more - with some of the younger assistant coaches.

    It was an impressive campus, all palm trees and white arches. We sang some familiar music, and to be honest, I don't even remember the sermon.

    I remember the seemingly harmless Voters Guide. It was 2008. On the second page, listed in alphabetical order, was the man who would become our nation's first black president.

    BARRACK OBAMA

    It could've been a simple typo, an auto-correct. But as we were all told to bow our heads and pray for awhile to end abortion, I figured out this little Voters Guide might have a slight political agenda. And perhaps that little agenda might have contributed to them not bothering to spell the Democratic candidate's name correctly.

    Much as I would have loved going to the church of the football coaches, I couldn't go back after that.

    Phil Haslanger 10-31-2012
    Voting symbols, VectorPic, Shutterstock.com

    Voting symbols, VectorPic, Shutterstock.com

    As the winds and the rain of Hurricane Sandy settle down, one bit of the aftermath is going to be another round of conversation about how climate change is affecting our world.

    It’s not a conversation you have heard much of in the presidential campaign this year. Climate change is one of a quartet of issues that will have a huge impact on the future of this nation that have gotten short shrift by both President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney.

    Poverty. Guns. . Drones. Climate change.

    Bring up any of those issues and watch the candidates make a quick nod of concern and then scamper away from any specifics. Yet those issues will be with us long after Nov. 6, so it is incumbent on those of us in the faith community to be laying the groundwork now for how we will address them in the coming year.

    That work has already begun, of course. The challenge is not to let the post-election exhaustion sweep away those concerns like they were potted palms on a pier in the midst of the hurricane.