Is Voting a Form of Prayer?

We live in an age where politics has become a religion in and of itself.

As an African American GenXer who grew up in the shadow of the civil rights movement, it’s always been nailed into my head that voting matters. In 1988 I became eligible to vote. I had planned to vote in the fall, but that summer there was an election for the school board in my hometown in Michigan. My mother asked if I was going to vote. I told her I hadn’t planned to. Mom wasn’t going to take that as an answer and I wasn’t going to challenge her. The result is that we walked down to the voting polls and I voted.

So, voting has always mattered to me because I know I’ve had ancestors that not too long ago, couldn’t vote in my father’s native Louisiana. Voting matters. But is it a prayer?

I saw the following image on social media recently:

Is a vote really prayer in action?

Georgia Senator and pastor Raphael Warnock has said that “A vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and our children.” Luke Powery, the Dean of Duke Chapel echoes Rev. Warnock by saying that voting is a spiritual act.

But is voting really a spiritual act? If you are someone who has the politics of Warnock or Powery, you might think it is. But what about the Christian who is voting for Donald Trump, thinks the Democrats stole the 2020 election and doesn’t like that Kamala Harris is pro-choice? If they said voting was a spiritual act, would you agree?

As I’ve said before, voting is important. It matters. But it is dangerous to sacralize what is a civic act. We vote to choose our leaders or to vote on certain issues. But voting isn’t a religious act and there is something dangerous in mixing our politics with our faith in that way.

We live in an age where politics has become a religion in and of itself. We look to politics to give our lives meaning and purpose. People have wondered why Donald Trump has such a devoted following, despite all his deficits. The answer is that Trump is looked on with salvific hope.

I remember watching the movie Triumph of the Will in college. The film by German director Leni Riefenstahl documents the 1934 Nuremberg Nazi Rallies. One of the scenes I remember is how women were swooning at the sight of German Chancellor Adolph Hitler. There is a danger when we see political leaders as saviors. Maybe not Nuremberg Rally danger, but it’s still not good. (No, I’m not comparing Donald Trump to Hitler.)

The problem with saying that your vote is a prayer is that it elevates our politics to the status of a religion. Shadi Hamid wrote back in 2021 how “wokeism” on the left and Trumpism on the right have religious overtones stripped of their Christian distinctiveness:

On the left, the “woke” take religious notions such as original sin, atonement, ritual, and excommunication and repurpose them for secular ends. Adherents of wokeism see themselves as challenging the long-dominant narrative that emphasized the exceptionalism of the nation’s founding. Whereas religion sees the promised land as being above, in God’s kingdom, the utopian left sees it as being ahead, in the realization of a just society here on Earth. After Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September, droves of mourners gathered outside the Supreme Court—some kneeling, some holding candles—as though they were at the Western Wall.

On the right, adherents of a Trump-centric ethno-nationalism still drape themselves in some of the trappings of organized religion, but the result is a movement that often looks like a tent revival stripped of Christian witness. Donald Trump’s boisterous rallies were more focused on blood and soil than on the son of God. Trump himself played both savior and martyr, and it is easy to marvel at the hold that a man so imperfect can have on his soldiers. Many on the right find solace in conspiracy cults, such as QAnon, that tell a religious story of earthly corruption redeemed by a godlike force.

When politics becomes a religion, religion itself doesn’t go away, but it does become sublimated to politics. In that sense, Jesus becomes a mascot for our political passions instead of our guide.

So when we say that a vote is a prayer, we aren’t as much praying to the God who is God, as we are saying God endorses our agenda. I don’t know about you, but I don’t pretend to know God’s mind when it comes to politics.

In a recent editorial, the Christian Century says that as important as voting is, it is not sacred. It is a preference for a candidate, not necessarily a moral matter:

…voting as a sacred duty suggests the need for a deeply personal, even spiritual alignment with a candidate. Americans often bemoan their electoral choice between “the lesser of two evils” as a soul-crushing compromise, a challenge to their integrity. But why must one’s vote be so deeply felt? In the US system, a general election presents voters with a straightforward task: choose pragmatically between two main candidates. Call your choice “good” or call it “less evil”; it doesn’t really matter. You’re voicing a preference, not a moral conviction.

I plan to vote for Kamala Harris in this election. I can tell you right now that I don’t have deeply felt feelings for Harris. But I do think she is a better choice than Donald Trump. When I mark my ballot, I’m doing my civic duty, but it isn’t a prayer to God.

Does that mean God has no role in the voting booth? No. We carry our faith values to the ballot. Our values should guide us. We can pray that God guides us as we fill out our ballots. That’s what I will do in filling out my ballot in the next few days. My vote won’t be a prayer, but I will pray to God to guide me.

This year will be the first vote without both my mother and father. I am thankful for helping me grow in my faith and also instill my sense of civic duty. And I am thankful for helping me to know the difference.

May God guide me in this political season.