Why are fundies voting at all?

[featherman]

Isn't the "Rapture", "Last Judgement", "Jesus' Glorious Return", etc all coming "any day now" ...within our lifetime anyway? This is supposed to set all to right regardless of who has the secular power. Some groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses don't participate in the political process, for example. Are there other such sects?

It would be curious to see if the percentage of self-defined fundamentalists vote at a significantly lower percentage than the general public.

[porphyrian]

1. Yeah, can't they just pray their favorite into office? - n/t

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. No. They have to EARN God's favor by creating his kingdom on earth

That is they vote. To prove to God how hard they are working for Him.

[tblue]

3. They vote because their preachers tell them to vote. If their preachers were mum,

they'd probably stay home. They are first and foremost sheeple. Tell them to baaah and they'll ask 'How loud?' Randi said they go looking for God on the outside instead of within, so they latch onto charlatans like Haggard, Robertson, Swaggart, Koresh, and Jim Jones, who tell them what they want to hear, and what they ought to do.

I know someone whose preacher's wife asked the congregants to donate money, in $50 increments, so she could buy her husband a Mercedes for his 50th birthday. And they did.

[yurbud]

4. speed the rapture--Bush's war-mongering, pastor Jethro having gay sex...

it's all a sign the end is coming, but we cain't have no lily livered Democrats slowing it down with peace and prosperty.

[Igel]

5. There are a fair number of small Xian sects that don't

believe in voting. Some actively tell their flocks not to vote. (Most of them are pacifist, BTW.) I was in such a church; I voted because I figured if the government was asking my opinion, and I was informed, I'd give it.

It used to be the case than many other evangelical and fundamentalist churches discouraged voting, or at the very least were mute on the topic. This changed in the '70s and '80s, as a reaction to the '60s and early '70s. They saw that "you can't legislate morality" was taken to only apply to their morality; other kinds of morality could be legislated. They believed that they had simply ceded the hustings to others and decided to enter the fray. Kulturkampf was the result; it's not ended.

No section of the electorate, whatever their views--as long as they're at least marginally informed--should be excluded in a democracy. And no democrat--small 'd' intentional--would be in favor of a society in which one section wanted another to simply stay home. There are many groups I could imagine myself wishing cut themselves out of the democratic process and thereby deny themselves representation. But I don't. I might be then one sort of Democrat, but I wouldn't be any sort of decent democrat. The system as intended only works and gets reasonable buy-in when everybody plays.