In a recent survey by Dr. George Barna, some surprising findings were announced about Christian participation in the 2024 election. The survey found that over 100 million of 212 million people of faith—nearly half—plan to sit the election out. More specifically, 46 million churchgoing Protestants and 19 million churchgoing Catholics plan not to vote, and put their head in the metaphorical sand. Call this “Christian Ostrichism.”
The prospect that 65 million Christians will not vote this year is shocking and should be a scandal to the entire Body of Christ. Why? In a constitutional republic where the people are in charge of selecting their representatives, Christian citizens have a civic duty to vote.
The civic duty to vote is rooted in love of country. As the USCCB teaches, “Our love for this country, our patriotism, properly impels us to vote.” Patriotism is simply the specification of the virtue of piety aimed at one’s country. As Thomas Aquinas teaches, piety is the debt of gratitude men pay to their parents and country for the incalculable benefits they have bestowed upon them as principles of their being. Patriotism, like all virtues, is a mean. It is a mean between hatred of one’s country and jingoistic fanaticism about one’s country. Patriotism is a reflective love of one’s country that neither overemphasizes its virtues nor ignores its vices, and wills justice to be done and the common good to be fostered.
But why does patriotism require voting? To understand that, we need to reflect on the kind of polity Americans have been bequeathed.
On the final day of the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787, one Mrs. Elizabeth Powell, a well-known Philadelphia socialite, accosted Benjamin Franklin on the street. The city knew that delegates from across the country had been meeting for months, but a shroud of secrecy had cloaked its deliberations in silence. Mrs. Powell asked Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin turned to her and replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Voting is one of the core mechanisms by which a virtuous citizenry maintains a republic.
Notice Franklin emphasized the fragility of the republican form of polity. A republic—a government of, by, and for the people—depends for its continued existence upon the virtue and maintenance of the people.
The ensuing year after the convention was the most important crossroads the young nation had yet faced when Federalists debated Anti-Federalists over ratification. Still, both sides agreed that a republic would not work without frequent elections in which representatives were chosen of, by, and for the people. James Wilson, one of only six people to sign both the Declaration and the Constitution and eventual Supreme Court Justice, explained the importance of elections in a republic to keep representatives accountable:
The people can make a distinction between those who have served them well, and those who have neglected or betrayed their interest: they can bestow, unasked, their suffrages upon the former in the new election; and can mark the latter with disgrace, by a mortifying refusal.
For Wilson, frequent elections “renewed” the Constitution, by drawing it back to its first principles—that is, to the fountain of its authority, the rights-bearing persons whose safety and happiness the Constitution was framed to secure. The Anti-Federalist writers concurred. Mercy Otis Warren, one of the first American women to publish nonfiction in the United States, argued that frequent elections are “the basis of responsibility”:
Man is not immediately corrupted, but power without limitation, or amenability, may endanger the brightest virtue—whereas a frequent return to the bar of their Constituents is the strongest check against the corruptions to which men are liable, either from the intrigues of others of more subtle genius, or the propensities of their own hearts.
Warren thus drew from the Christian theological anthropology of human fallenness a political teaching: Frequent elections check the corrupt tendencies of the heart in elected officials. While the Anti-Federalists wanted yearly rather than biennial elections to Congress, their difference from Federalists like Wilson was not regarding the essential purpose of the franchise in a functioning republic, but the means. Voting is one of the core mechanisms by which a virtuous citizenry maintains a republic.
But it isn’t merely voting that is one’s civic duty, but voting well. A vote well cast seeks to advance an authentic vision of justice and the common good. For the Christian this means voting with a properly formed Christian conscience.
As the USCCB teaches, at a minimum a Christian citizen with a properly formed conscience “cannot vote for a candidate who favors a policy promoting an intrinsically evil act.” Indeed, the Christian voter seeks to prevent such policies from being implemented precisely because of his or her genuine concern for justice and the common good. In this election, there are a number of policy proposals that promote acts that the Church considers intrinsically evil, including several that touch on fundamental human dignity and the family: abortion, coercion of religious institutions against their consciences to participate in abortion, lying to children with gender dysphoria, violating parental rights over education and privacy rights of girls, mutilative medical interventions for gender transition, racist legal preferences, and in vitro fertilization.
I have already discussed the way in which abortion is at stake in this election. Voters have a clear choice between a radical pro-abortion Harris-Walz ticket that apparently thinks the right to terminate a pregnancy includes a right to infanticide and a moderately pro-life (and moderately pro-choice) Trump-Vance ticket that would adopt a federalist solution, allowing pro-life states to be pro-life and pro-choice states to be pro-choice.
Harris’ promise to legislatively reimpose Roe’s abortion-on-demand regime includes a refusal to protect the free exercise rights of Christian and Catholic hospitals, which would be forced to perform abortions against their consciences. Harris also would continue to push transgender ideology through Title IX into institutions of higher education, which would require gender-dysphoric biological males to have access to girls bathrooms and locker rooms against the wishes of parents and girls, and coerce teachers and students into lying by using a person’s made-up pronouns. And the Democratic Party platform pledges to push “gender-affirming” care for “transgender youth,” which perpetuates the lies of constructivist gender ideology and abuse of healthy bodies through requiring states to provide access to puberty-blocking drugs and surgeries that mutilate healthy sexual organs. Moreover, the “equity” agenda of a Harris administration would push racial preferences in federal policy, including special federal forgivable loans for certain favored racial groups (Blacks and Latinos) but not others, a nakedly race-based transfer of wealth that perpetuates reverse racism and the notion that America is divided between creditor and debtor races, an idea that violates the Civil Rights Act’s guarantee of nondiscrimination on the basis of race.
Do the 65 million Christians on the sideline not have a duty to weigh in when such grave matters are at stake?
On the other hand, the Trump-Vance ticket has floated mandated insurance coverage for in vitro fertilization, which the Church considers to be an intrinsically evil act that instrumentalizes the unitive element of the marital act for the procreative with procedures that are extraordinarily expensive, degrading to men, harmful to women, commodifying of children, and which open the floodgates to other intrinsically evil acts like gestational surrogacy, which essentially separates children from their biological parents. Still, unlike the policies outlined in the previous paragraph, there is no difference in kind between the Democratic and Republican tickets on in vitro fertilization, except that the latter would exempt religious institutions.
So this election presents two morally compromised presidential tickets. In these situations, the USCCB teaches:
When all candidates hold a position that promotes an intrinsically evil act, the conscientious voter faces a dilemma. The voter may decide to take the extraordinary step of not voting for any candidate or, after careful deliberation, may decide to vote for the candidate deemed less likely to advance such a morally flawed position and more likely to pursue other authentic human goods.
In extraordinary situations, conscientious voters could go to the ballot box and intentionally leave the presidential ballot blank in accord with their duty, the bishops suggest. The bishops don’t consider another alternative which could potentially fulfill one’s duty—namely, protest voting for a righteous third-party or write-in candidate. But the bishops’ teaching suggests that such uses of one’s vote only make sense if the Christian voter reasons well in judging that both major party candidates are equally likely to advance gravely immoral positions and equally unlikely to pursue other authentic human goods.
Do the 65 million Christians on the sideline not have a duty to weigh in when such grave matters are at stake? Do these Christians have any good reasons for sitting it out?
The survey by Dr. Barna identified the leading reasons why these Christians don’t plan to vote:
The most common reason, offered by two-thirds of the non-voters (68%), was a lack of interest in politics and elections. Other common reasons included disliking all of the major candidates (57%), feeling that none of the candidates reflect their most important views (55%), and believing that their one vote will not make a difference (52%). Half of the non-voters said they will avoid voting because the election has become too controversial for their liking (50%).
The first reason is a non-starter for Christians of well-formed conscience in a constitutional republic for all the reasons the founders laid out. Part of the Christian duty includes practicing the virtue of patriotism, and acts proper to love of country, for all the benefits it has bequeathed to them. One cannot profess love of one’s country and refuse to participate in the process by which its leaders are chosen. Neither lack of “interest” nor controversiality are good reasons to sit out either, for patriotism in a republic requires some degree of interest in and knowledge of public affairs and a bit of courage to make a choice that some may find controversial. Nor is the belief that one’s vote won’t make a difference justified. In swing states, the vote margins can be in the thousands or even hundreds. And even in deep blue or deep red states, God still counts your vote.
The second and third reasons are more understandable—namely, that the major candidates are unlikable and don’t reflect constituents’ most important views. Perhaps this is due to our electoral system, in which a mere 17 million people voted to put Donald Trump on the Republican ballot. That is less than 10% of the voting-eligible population. Meanwhile, 14 million Democratic primary voters voted to put Joe Biden on the ballot, who party elites swapped out for Kamala Harris, despite the fact that she received zero votes in the presidential primary. In short, 0% of the voting-eligible population voted to put Harris on the ballot. It is thus understandable that millions of Christians find both candidates unpalatable. And it is quite possible that there are other people who a majority or more Americans would prefer to be president, but whom the parties and our electoral system prevented from being considered and nominated.
Still, we have to live in the real world, and this November 5 is not unique in American history in its failure to present us with fairytale candidates. Nor can it be said that the candidates have not taken positions that the Christian citizen must consider consequential, since his faith has definite teachings on matters of fundamental importance for justice and the common good, including the dignity of the unborn, the inviolability of conscience, parental rights in education, the innocence of children, and the dignity and essential maleness or femaleness of persons created in God’s image, regardless of skin color.
In conclusion, while some reasons for Christian Ostrichism are understandable, none stand up to scrutiny. So to my fellow Christians planning not to vote, I say with all due charity: Don’t be an ostrich.