In 1629, the first American balloting for an election occurred in Salem, Massachusetts. The issue? Choosing a minister and choosing a Christian teacher for the colony. “Such is the origin of the use of the ballot on this continent; [Samuel] Skelton was chosen pastor and [Francis] Higginson teacher.”  So writes George Bancroft, an early American historian, on this first election on American soil in Volume I of his 6-volume, History of the United States of America (1882).

Historian Paul Johnson writes in his 1997 classic, A History of the American People: “In a sense, the clergy were the first elected officials of the new American society, a society which to that extent had a democratic element from the start.”

And Christians in America have been voting ever since.

Founding father Samuel Adams once said, “Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote…that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.”

However, there has arisen a feeling among some professing believers that somehow it is spiritual to not participate in something as earthly as politics.

As the late Dr. D. James Kennedy, noted pastor and author, once said: “A Christian said to me, ‘You don’t really believe that Christians should get active in politics do you?’ And I said, with tongue in cheek, ‘Why, of course not, we ought to leave it to the atheists. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have anything to complain about. And we’d really rather complain than do something, wouldn’t we?’”

But today we find ourselves in such a mess in America that the very least Christians could do is vote, and vote our Biblical values.

Some people have written off elections because they think it’s all rigged. They look at some of the anomalies that have occurred in recent balloting, and they think, “Why should I even bother? My vote won’t count.” Well, if you don’t cast a vote, your potential vote certainly won’t count.

With great understatement, Gary Bauer notes in his End of Day Report (10/28/22), “We know unhinged leftists are not constrained by the basic teachings of Judeo-Christian civilization. They feel justified in doing anything and everything necessary to win.”

But if Christians show up in great numbers, we can overcome the potential for cheating because the Christian conservative voting bloc is huge.

About a decade ago, Alveda King, the niece of MLK, made some interesting observations about Christians and voting in an interview for television.

Alveda told me, “I hear remarks from both sides of the aisle. You know, ‘God’s not a Republican’ and ‘God’s not a Democrat.’ And so, we as God-fearing people don’t need to try to lock in a position to a political party, but certainly our votes must always follow our values.”

One of those values is against abortion and for life. Meanwhile, the left is embracing abortion to the hilt. When we vote Biblical values, we obey what the Lord would have us do.

Writing for the Washington Times (10/30/22), Everett Piper, a former president of a Christian college, opines on how far to the left the left has gone these days because of things like the castration of children and pornography in the schools: “The Democrat party is now so extreme that no serious follower of Christ can align with it. There is no longer any such thing as a ‘Christian Democrat.’”

The aforementioned Dr. Kennedy once declared that it is indeed a sin not to vote. His proof-text was from the passage in the Gospel, where Jesus said that we should render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s (Mark 12:17).

On the issue of voting, he said: “For non-Christian Americans, voting is a privilege and responsibility; for Christians, it is a duty demanded by God that we should fulfill.” [Emphasis his]

It has been said that in America, we get the kind of government we deserve.

Historically, Christians in America applied their faith to virtually every sphere of life, including their politics. While the founding fathers were not all Christians, the vast majority of them were, and more importantly they had a Biblical worldview.

So, for example, they divided power, since they knew man is sinful. James Madison, one of the key architects of the Constitution, noted: “All men having power ought to be distrusted.” This is a Biblical perspective. Sometimes people complain that the Constitution limits the amount of power any one single branch may have. That was by design.

The only poll that counts is the one you cast at election time. Don’t sit this one out. As the late Bishop Harry Jackson once declared, “Too many people died for the right of all people in the nation to vote.”

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

Once there was a prominent landowner who had a son. Even though the boy was quite well cared for and had everything he needed, he became restless. One day he approached his dad and said: “Father, I don’t want to wait for my inheritance. Frankly, I am suffocating living under your rules and your expectations. I want my freedom. I want my money. It is time for me to move out of the house, get my own place, and live as I want.”

Well, even though the father was understandably brokenhearted, he relented. He gave his son the freedom and the money he demanded. He let the boy decide how to use (or abuse) his inheritance. He permitted the prodigal to leave home. He gave his son his own way.

So, the son packed his bags and moved to the big city and rented an apartment. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he squandered everything he had. He had his freedom. He had his money, and he wasted it all by living his own way.

About the time he was spending his last few dollars of inheritance, a severe recession occurred. Having nothing left, the young man began living on the streets and scavenging in back alley dumpsters for food. He was so hungry he resorted to eating garbage to survive.

As the story goes, one day, this wayward son woke up. He came to his senses and said to all his vagabond friends: “All the ranch hands back home working for my father are much better off than we are. They, at least, sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I am going back home.”

Reflecting on this parable of the arrogant and wayward son causes me to think of today’s colleges and universities.

I think of higher education’s “birthright and inheritance” as seen in the original mission statements of many of our nation’s seminal institutions: Of Harvard’s Christo et Ecclesia, “For Christ and the Church,” of Princeton’s Vitam Mortuis Reddo, “I restore life to the dead,” of Yale’s expressed goal for its students “to know God in Jesus Christ and … to lead a Godly, sober life.”

I think of the academy’s prodigal path, where colleges and universities, contrary to their founding creeds, now refuse even to allow traditional Judeo-Christian ideas to be openly discussed and freely debated on their respective campuses.

I think of faculty who have been denied tenure because they dared to assume they could engage in an open exchange of ideas on matters such as human origins, climate change, identity politics, intersectionality and critical race theory.

I think of the consequences of “living our own way” and eating from the “back alley dumpsters” of safe spaces, gender-neutral pronouns, trigger warnings and micro-aggressions.

I think of the routine reports of binge drinking, date rape, sexual abuse, escalating suicide rates and the pandemic reality of STDs.

But, I also think of our father and his provisions and his teachings: of Veritas; of “Truth”; of Harvard’s early affirmation on its school shield – “If you hold to my teachings you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

Finally, I think of the historical “home “of the academy and the intellectual freedom we used to have under our father’s roof as opposed to the ideological fascism we now experience at the hand of our arrogance and rebellion.

In the story of the prodigal son, Jesus tells us: “Not long after squandering his birthright, there was a bad famine in the land, and the son began to hurt. Having nothing left but his “way,” this young man began working in the fields, feeding the pigs, thinking he must do so to survive. He was so hungry he was now eating the corncobs in the pig slop.”

As a lifelong educator, I look at my academic peers in today’s colleges and universities and I can’t help but ask myself, “has our own way resulted in what we expected when we told our father we wanted to move out of his house?” Did we get what we wanted when we spent our inheritance? Is our chosen path as liberating as we hoped?

Have “our wildest dreams” led us to where we expected or have we stumbled into a nightmare, wading in fields of pig slop and eating the “corncobs” of abuse, dysfunction, selfishness and addiction? Did we get the freedom we hoped for when we left home or have we become slaves to the consequences of frivolous spending and childish irresponsibility?

One last question: Is it possible that “Dad” was smarter than we thought he was all along?

Perhaps it is time for American education to leave the corncobs behind and go home.

Dr. Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is a columnist for The Washington Times and author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017).