A quick, political note for Gov. Perry

Gov. Perry,

I thought the whole “call-to-prayer” thing last weekend was a good idea. It was nice to see a political figure admit his faith and take major public action on it.

But now, not even a week later, it looks like blatant political grandstanding. It appears that you have used evangelical Christians for political purposes. And most of us are really tired of that. True, since we’re mostly pro-life, pro-freedom, and pro-religion, if you’re the other major candidate, we’ll still likely vote for you in November. Except using us makes us lukewarm.

It makes us likely to vote for you but not talk a lot about you. It makes us unlikely to give money (well, I wouldn’t give any to any candidate), less likely to put signs in our yards, and not very likely to do much else.

You see, as a pastor, I’m very cautious how I blend politics with what I do. I do not mention candidate names from the pulpit. I don’t even mention party names from the pulpit. I clearly preach pro-life, pro-freedom as I see it in Scripture. I encourage people to examine the character and faith of candidates and vote based on those things.

And I nearly said something to my congregation about you by name in the past few weeks to praise what you were doing in Texas. I’m now glad I didn’t. I half-suspected you would announce for President, so I stayed back. If I hadn’t, your actions would have caused me to violate my own code of ethics related to political activism in church.

I name politician names on my blog or in personal conversation, but I don’t from the pulpit. Consider carefully what you’ve done this week. You might need to quickly mend fences, because it looks to me like you just called for revival for the purpose of getting yourself elected.

But you’re not the answer, Governor Perry. A commitment to live for Christ and an effort to turn our nation as a whole to love God and obey Him as we see in Scripture is. Don’t forget that.

Or I’ll find a third-party guy to vote for again.

Doug