As a follow-up to my previous posts on some issues facing Christians in the elections this fall, I thought the following article might be interesting. It’s a piece in the NY Times about the impact on catholic voters in swing states like Pennsylvania who are struggling and dividing over the issue of abortion.

A struggle within the church over how Catholic voters should think about abortion is once again flaring up just as political partisans prepare an all-out battle for the votes of Mass-going Catholics in swing-state towns like Scranton.

The theological dispute is playing out in diocesan newspapers and weekly homilies, while the campaigns scramble to set up phone banks of nuns and private meetings with influential bishops.

Progressive Catholics complain that by wading into the history of church opposition to abortion — Mr. Biden brought up St. Thomas Aquinas, Ms. Pelosi discussed St. Augustine — Democratic officials are starting a distracting debate with the church hierarchy.

Catholic conservatives, in turn, until recently had worried about a resurgence of the progressive forces in the American church. Now they are reveling. “The Democrats have actually given back some of the progress they had made,” said Deal Hudson, a Catholic conservative who worked with President Bush’s campaign and is now advising Mr. McCain’s.

And this paragraph surprised me

After the 2004 election, progressive Catholics started to organize and appeared to win some victories. In 2006, the bishops’ conference all but banned outside voter guides from parishes. And last fall, the bishops revised their official statement on voting priorities to explicitly allow Catholics to vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights if they do so for other reasons. And it also allowed for differences of opinion about how to apply church principles. The statement appeared to leave room for Democrats to argue that social programs were an effective way to reduce abortion rates, an idea the party recently incorporated into its platform.

Anyone in the audience wish we had these kinds of arguments in Canada?

Is there anyone planning to vote on the basis of this issue?

Update: Tony Campolo has blogged about his experience this year drafting the democratic party platform which commits to trying to reduce abortions.  It’s a rather significant change and worth taking a read.

I posted last week about a series Scot Mcknight is doing on voting and how he thinks about it as a Christian in the Anabaptist tradition.

His latest post in the series is up.  He contemplates life after an Obama victory.

Here’s my favourite quote:

I don’t think he did very well in the famous Rick Warren interview. Obama’s a bright guy, but speaking in those situations means “give your point and clarify” instead of “give your nuances and build toward a complex solution.”

UPDATE: Here’s a post from the blogger who inspired the series that Scot McKnight is doing.  his post is worth reading and he has a summary of the different blogs who have taken up the conversaion.

(via Paul Wells) here’s a link to a blog covering how the media are covering the election.  It’s hosted by the Carleton Journalism & Communication Faculty.  Wells seems pretty confident they’re all heavy hitters.

This is the stuff that Christina gets way more excited about than I do.  Journalists are a curious breed.

So there you go, just in case you needed one more RSS feed.

This is going to require some participation from the silent readership…

I happen to find the picture below hilarious.  I pulled it from one of those forwarded e-mails and I laugh every time I see it.  So here’s a contest: “Who can suggest the funniest caption to this photo?”

I can’t promise a prize, but there may be something rolling around my desk worth giving away.

Submit your captions in the comments.

If you read this blog, there’s a good chance you’re surrounded by one election campaign or another. Whether it is the recently begun federal election campaign here in Canada, or the marathon south of the border which is ramping up into it’s final stages, or even the municipal elections taking place here in BC, we’re all going to face the question of whether to vote and if we do, whom to vote for.

For those of us in the church, It raises the question: is there such a thing as voting like a Christian.

In light of all the campaigns swirling around these days, a friend of mine sent me a G.K Chesterton quote this week, that he thought I would enjoy. It’s from What’s Wrong With the World:

“Seemingly from the dawn of man all nations have had governments; and all nations have been ashamed of them.”

It’s a good quote.  It’s good for a laugh and it’s probably true, but it isn’t exactly encouraging.

Over the course of this past week, friends have e-mailed me with questions about the election or how to get involved. I’ve also talked to friends who just want to throw their hands in the air and give up on the whole exercise.

So I wanted to point to a couple of posts from Scot McKnight, a professor in Religious Studies at North Park University (Chicago, Illinois) and a remarkable blogger. He identifies himself with anabaptist christian tradition, which has tended to emphasise non-violence and (in a certain sense) withdrawal from the affairs of the world. Scot was recently sent a letter by a reader asking for advice on what to do in the upcoming election: whether to vote; how to vote.

Scot replied in a series of thoughtful posts on the subject and I’d encourage you all to take the time to read them (and the discussion in the comments). He’s promised at least one more post and it’d be worth bookmarking his blog if you’re interested in some of these issues, it’s the only blog I know of where there are civil political discussions. I’ve pasted a couple of my favourite quotes from his posts below, but they’re definitely worth reading in their entirety.

Voting for President 2:

my eschatology, or my hope, is not in who will be the next President. I hope in the power of the gospel that flows from God’s good graces toward us humans. I hope in the God who designs that gospel; I hope in the Christ who embodies that gospel; and I hope in the Spirit who empowers that gospel. And I hope also in the Church whose task it is daily to live out the gospel and draw all into its saving graces. I don’t hope in the next President. I think that is idolatrous. In fact, hoping in the next President is the first step toward idolizing empire.

Voting for President 3

No matter who becomes President, it won’t change my assignment. I’m called to be a Christian, not a Republican or a Democrat. From that angle, I will offer comments about the Presidential candidates. Some of what the successful candidate promises now will be partially achieved when that person becomes President. Not all of it; so reliance upon all the promises goes against history. Candidates promise more than they can achieve.

Is anyone else struggling with how to vote? or whether to vote?

So I’ve got these friends who are video game snobs. Apparently video games are only enjoyed by anti-social, lazy, boys and somewhat immature men who really don’t want to grow up. My rebuttal in part: Dance Dance Revolution

Christina,

One year after being married, this is how I feel:

I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us. I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you.

Last fall, Prof. John Stackhouse had a post on his blog about a Christian audio journal called Mars Hill.

In his post, he suggested that more and more people are spending increasing chunks of time commuting to and from work. For some people, he suggests the impact of this time is not really positive:

Some of us are getting dumber: listening to (bad, which is to say, typical) talk radio or pop music; fuming at other drivers while trying to shave a few minutes off the commute; or simply letting our minds idly flit from one vaguely anxious or annoying or trivial thought to another.

It raises the question of what intelligent and thought-provoking audio content is available to the Christian commuter. Prof. Stackhouse suggests Mars Hill as one example of such valuable content (note: not connected with Mars Hill in Michigan or in Seattle).

It turns out that Mars Hill has one track from each issue of its audio journal available for download from its website. I highly recommend them. Here’s a sample. It’s the best thing I listened to this week.

Since the American election cycle is in its final (and least reasonable phase).  I thought I’d start paying a bit more attention.

So for now, just a reminder.

A recent article in the Washington Post reminds us of the wonders of electronic voting machines:

A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.

The flawed software is on both touch screen and optical scan voting machines made by Premier and the problem with vote counts is most likely to affect larger jurisdictions that feed many memory cards to a central counting database rapidly.

Yeah, it’s not like the last couple of elections were swung by tight electoral colleges and narrow state margins.  It’s not like they required recounts and supreme court rulings or anything.  A few votes lost in a state like Ohio or Florida couldn’t actually make a difference could they?

(h/t Big Contrarian)

From a piece in the Asia Times on Russia’s recent action against Georgia:

The superlatives recall an old observation about why the plots of American comic books need clever super-villains and stupid super-heroes to even the playing field. Evidently the same thing applies to superpowers.

The fact is that all Russian politicians are clever. The stupid ones are all dead. By contrast, America in its complacency promotes dullards. A deadly miscommunication arises from this asymmetry. The Russians cannot believe that the Americans are as stupid as they look, and conclude that Washington wants to destroy them.

It gets even better:

Think of it this way: Russia is playing chess, while the Americans are playing Monopoly. What Americans understand by “war games” is exactly what occurs on the board of the Parker Brothers’ pastime. The board game Monopoly is won by placing as many hotels as possible on squares of the playing board. Substitute military bases, and you have the sum of American strategic thinking.

America’s idea of winning a strategic game is to accumulate the most chips on the board: bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, a pipeline in Georgia, a “moderate Muslim” government with a big North Atlantic Treaty Organization base in Kosovo, missile installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, and so forth. But this is not a strategy; it is only a game score.

Chess players think in terms of interaction of pieces: everything on the periphery combines to control the center of the board and prepare an eventual attack against the opponent’s king. The Russians simply cannot absorb the fact that America has no strategic intentions…

If you want some understanding about what the last few weeks of war in South Ossetia has been about, read the whole article. It’s the best piece I’ve seen (h/t Rod Dreher).