King’s Hosts Book Release on Wisdom for the Ballot Box

One week before Election Day, The King’s College hosted a book release for The Voting Christian: Seeking Wisdom for the Ballot Box, by Dr. David C. Innes. Innes is Associate Professor of Politics and Chair of the Program in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at King’s. At the event, Innes gave a preview of his book, outlining its structure and content, followed by a faculty panel including himself and Drs. Matthew Parks and David Corbin, his colleagues in the Politics department, who discussed the 2016 election.

Dr. Innes started with acknowledgements and thanks. He thanked his editors at WORLD magazine, Marvin Olasky and others, for their consistent critique; his wife, Jessica, for her loving support; and The King’s College, for providing the foundation necessary for his professional success.

The book’s purpose is to name the principles all Christians need to remember when considering how to vote. Innes noted an anecdote that occurs early in his book: One morning, as he drank his coffee and ate his breakfast, he saw his Hungarian neighbors meet members of their family. The guests brought flowers celebrating the birth of his neighbors’ baby, and together they set out on a happy walk around the neighborhood. Innes said, “This happy scene could unfold the way it did only because government was doing its job, providing an umbrella of protection so people could flourish together.” This story illustrates the goods government ensures, ones Innes says people often forget. Without good government, we would not have a secure country, an environment that allows families to flourish, or the conditions necessary for the creation of prosperity.

Government can put itself and its people into dangerous arrangements also, as Innes pointed out in a section on “Big Government.” On the topic of our national debt, he said, when we are not only funding infrastructure projects and war debts but enabling spending far beyond our means, our nation borders on breaking the commandment prohibiting stealing. When the government makes ubiquitous surveillance and data gathering on citizens the new normal, they may be acting with good intentions; but, it is such intentions, Innes says, that allow tyranny to take hold.

Innes concluded his summary saying that where the great thinkers and writers provide the essential bones and ligaments of a political mind, he hopes to provide the meat and muscle: the practical, current principles which can guide Christians. When political systems fail to govern well and Christians wonder what to do, Innes encourages them to “cultivate our families and our churches, and develop a flourishing Christian sub-culture as a testimony to the world and a haven for the hungry.”

The panel discussion that followed Innes’s presentation shed light on the current American regime with wisdom from our past. Corbin and Parks cited the Federalist Papers and Alexis De Tocqueville in an attempt to show what firm foundations American Christians can have confidence in and what institutions they ought to jump up to defend. When asked how the Gospel factored in to the founding of our country, Corbin explained that the twin mindset of political independence and religious dependence in early American was essential in setting out the path on which our country has run. Where such moral consciousness, such religious dependence fails to enlighten our political regime today, all three Professors exhorted their audience to foster its revival, especially in their communities.

All three professors who spoke at the November 1 release event would have the voting Christian know that he is not without hope. If he prizes the good things God has entrusted to government, and remains wary of the ambitions to power nascent in all governors, then, even if he decides not to vote in 2016, he can see this nation a bit more clearly. Innes’s Wisdom for the Ballot Box is timely, and offers great hope.

Peter Murphy is a senior PPE major in the House of Churchill.