It’s the day after historic elections. We elected Barack Obama as our 44th President of the United States, and it’s historic in many ways to have elected our first African-American President. A fairly young man. A man who is incredibly intelligent, works hard, and achieved the American dream. As a conservative columnist, I spent a lot of time and energy in the run-up to the election, stating all the reasons why I thought that he was not ready to be President and why we should elect somebody else, but now that he has been elected I feel a strong need to call each of us to unity in support of our government, even if we disagree with the policies that our new President may put forward.
This morning I heard on the local Christian radio station, many people calling in, absolutely distraught, very upset, and clearly worried, but the host also pointed out that many people also called in jubilant. There is a real racial divide in this that I think many White Evangelical Christians aren't necessarily recognizing or thinking through, in that our Black brothers and sisters, our African-American Christian friends, mostly voted for Obama, and felt as Christians that, that was the right thing to do; not just as Black men and women but as Christians. We need to be willing, I think, to at this point put our differences aside and be willing to truly try to come to areas of agreement where we can.
There are going to be some things on which we cannot compromise, many of which I have tackled in my columns; things like abortion. I am very disappointed that Barack Obama has said one of his first priorities is going to be more expansion of abortion, and creating partial birth abortion, abortion rights I should say. I am disappointed in that, and I know that my African-American brothers and sisters largely do not support that, but at this point I think we need to look to the Biblical command to submit to our governmental authority and to pray for them and to pray for the best.
It's interesting, when George Bush was elected eight years ago, there were many, many upset people on the Democrat side, on the Liberal side, who immediately started hoping for him to fail. They wanted to prove that we were wrong to elect George Bush by having problems in our country.
I hope and I pray that all of those who take the name of Christ as part of our identity, that we would never have that attitude. It is so easy to have a little of that attitude when we disagree with the person in office, but instead, we are commanded to pray for them. We are commanded to submit to them as authority. We must remember that when that command was written, the governmental authority was much harsher, much more dictatorial, much more corrupt. It was a much worse system of government, and yet God still said that, “Brothers and sisters,” said the Lord, “Submit to it and pray for it.”
So I hope the Christian community will be willing over the next four or eight years to lift up our elected leaders in prayer, just like we did the last eight years.