Few know that you’ll often find me, during my down time, watching or listening to political coverage. You might call me a shade-tree political analyst. News shows get intensely interesting for me when events become focused on an upcoming political presidential election.
Perhaps many would assume that I’m a liberal – in that I’ve spent most of my life around the poor who generally vote Democratic. I’m a social troubadour, singer-song writer and folk artist. I’m one of the later baby-boomers and early gen X’rs, born in the 60′s and idolize Bob Dylan. I admire Dr. Martin Luther King. I see myself as partly contributing to his legacy and in part an extension of his vision. For many, that is enough to make me a liberal.
However, it might surprise you to know that places of poverty are mostly responsible for peeking my interest in supply-side economics and social conservatism. Many would assume that as a southerner, evangelical and Calvinist that I am hopelessly conservative. But while I’m conservative, I’m not your dyed in the wool Republican. I’m something quite different and more radical than that. Nevertheless, I’m convinced that government policy toward the poor has proven itself at best ineffective and at worst dangerously counterproductive and corrosive.
“So you are a moderate then…?”, one might suspect. Let me say, of any option in the array of choices, I am moderate – least of all. As I see it, the gravest sin on the left is careless social engineering, compassion from a distance and with other people’s money. The insidious sin on the right is that mostly they could care less. Some have said that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. This is true. The rich tend to get richer because they continue to do the things that made them rich. The poor tend to remain poor because they continue to do the things that make them poor. However, through the intervention of the caring class, this does not have to remain this way. There is a way for those who are poor to become rich through moral transformation, through industry and financial literacy. I’ve seen it happen with my own two eyes.
You might say that I’m a conservative who gives a damn (please pardon my French). But I passionately believe that what is most needed in pockets of poverty is an infusion of good conservative family values, the Judeo-Christian work ethic and empowerment through education. More importantly I believe that the intervention of the word and work of the gospel and of the church is God’s prescription for what ails American pockets of poverty.
So who should be president?’
If we become what God has designed us to be as the church, an institution that is truly salt and light, pouring ourselves out in radically transforming ways, it matters little who is governing. The church frankly has depended too heavily on government either to legislate our moral framework (conservatives) or to commission our enterprise of compassion (liberals). The government’s internalization of our values and social vision are more the outgrowth of our effective evangelistic strategies and our incarnational community activism.
However, after 18 1/2 years of front-line urban ministry, I see the multi-generational impact of the war on poverty and its resulting degradation of culture, family and individual dignity – in the very place where those components are the most necessary for overcoming the challenges of poverty. And so I will be voting conservative. But I will also be applying and leveraging our rich theological and educational heritage among the poor to such an extent that through our common sacrifice we will see the poor become rich – in every way. I hope you will join me in this.
