SpiritFarmer

Mark Van Steenwyk has a very thought provoking post over at Jesus Manifesto about voting, or NOT voting, as the case may be.  A few years ago, I intentionally embraced a phase of active non-voting.  Many of the things Mark writes are exactly where I was at, but he’s very thorough and smarter than me.

One of his reasons for not voting resonated with my experience when I wasn’t voting:

Even if I felt like I could vote with a clear conscience, I would still consider not-voting as a prophetic act. Before you dismiss that stance as a stupid one, let me say this: because of my odd stance on voting, I’ve had dozens (perhaps hundreds) of conversations about this. And it always leads to the same place: people may disagree with my position on voting, but they almost always agree that the Church needs to be more involved in direct action and take a stronger role in bringing systematic change.

During that phase, and since then, I’ve had a ton of conversations with people about my reasons for not voting, and I’ve had the same experience.   I do vote again, though ambivalently and selectively.  I really appreciate the thoughtfulness Mark applied to this issue, and I’m looking forward to hearing him speak at The New Conspirators conference at the end of next month, here in Seattle.