ON VOTING: FOUNDING FATHERS / FAMOUS AMERICANS / PASTORS
Franklin Graham
PRAY - VOTE - ENGAGE
Bill Bright
1) PRAY
2) REGISTER TO VOTE
3) BECOME INFORMED
4) HELP ELECT GODLY PEOPLE
5) VOTE!
Bill Bright
"If you chose not to vote, you forfeit your moral right to decry the ungodly actions of our elected leaders."
Charles Finney [Charles G. Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1868), Lecture XV, pp. 281-282.]
"The time has come that Christians must vote for honest men and take consistent ground in politics, Or the Lord will curse them..."
Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797)
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Mark Twain [Colliers magazine, September 2, 1904] It will be conceded that a Christian’s first duty is to God. It then follows, as a matter of course, that it is his duty to carry his Christian code of morals to the polls and vote them … If Christians would vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease … If the Christians of America could be persuaded to vote God and a clean ticket, it would bring about a moral revolution that would be incalculably beneficent. It would save the country.
Noah Webster [Noah Webster, History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1832), pp. 336-337] When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, “just men who will rule in the fear of God.” The preservation of government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty.
Samuel Adams [The Writings of Samuel Adams, Harry Alonzo Cushing, editor (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1907), Vol. IV, p. 256, in the Boston Gazette on April 16, 1781.] Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote … he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.
James Garfield [The Works of James Abram Garfield, Burke Hinsdale, editor (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1883), Vol. II, pp. 486, 489, "A Century of Congress," July, 1877.] Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature.
Franklin D. Roosevelt [The Wit and Wisdom of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Government and Democracy, p. 38, eds. Peter and Helen Beilenson, Peter Pauper Press (1982).] Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves—and the only way they could do this is by not voting.
AND FINALLY....
Barack Obama ["Call to Renewal Keynote Address," Call to Renewal Conference on Building a Covenant for a New America, June 28, 2006] Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King—indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history—were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in Judeo-Christian tradition.