Over the past couple days, I’ve been watching the #HamiltonElectors movement grow. If you haven’t heard of it yet, it’s an effort led by a group of actual electors to spread awareness of the Electoral College’s role in elections and to encourage GOP electors to consider voting for another Republican candidate such as John Kaisich or Mitt Romney.
Though it’s a shot in the dark, it’s a perfectly legal effort. The Electoral College was designed to prevent a popular figure unfit to wield power from assuming the presidency. Everyone’s favorite Broadway star A.Ham proposed this system to prevent a “tyranny of the masses.”
As I’ve expressed in the past, the work of the Church to uplift the oppressed and bring justice to the marginalized continues regardless of who controls the State. Only God’s kin-dom/kingdom is truly just, but until it arrives in full, Christians must work to keep that as our vision and not become too cozy with any political regime. At the same time, we must still be active in the broken systems that we must deal with and we should be knowledgeable of how they work.
I support #HamiltonElectors for several reasons.
- It’s a practical way of attempting unity without quietly accepting a man who appoints white supremacists to powerful positions. The fact of the matter is that GOP electors would never in a million years vote for Hillary Clinton instead. Thinking that they would is the result of the liberal/progressive echo chamber, which like all echo chambers shows no signs of understanding the other side’s language.
- The President-Elect has appointed a white supremacist a chief strategist. This should alarm every Christian, especially those who proudly proclaim that they support Israel and the Jewish people. No one who takes the calling of Christianity seriously, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, should passively let this one slide.
- Even though we hold that only God will reign in the end, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t exhaust every possible avenue to prevent such violent ideologies from being further justified here and now.
To be clear, no president or politician is a savior and they shouldn’t be treated as such. Injustice will persist this side of the eschaton no matter who is in power, and so will resistance to injustice. We continuously must look for avenues in unjust systems to prevent further injustice. That is what I see in this attempt to utilize the Electoral College as it was established in this manner (yes, the Electoral College system itself is pretty unjust), and I would encourage Christians who take seriously the command to love thy neighbor as thyself to consider it among other forms of resisting oppression. Some may think this is just a bunch of people with their panties in a bunch who can’t accept the outcome of the election. For me, at least, it’s more than that. I see a President-Elect who is legitimizing and emboldening violent, deep-seeded mindsets and my faith simply cannot let me be utterly silent in the face of this.
To learn more about this effort, visit the Facebook page and Twitter account.