In a few days, voters in the United States of America—if they haven’t voted already—will choose a new President and Vice-President, together with countless officials at varying levels of government. Once again it becomes us as Seventh-day Adventist Christians to assess our responsibility as citizens of this present world even as we prepare for citizenship in the world to come.

Much could be said about the campaign’s key issues, most of which would divert us from the strictly Biblical agenda which we try to maintain on this website. But for those of our American readers who haven’t yet exercised their citizenly duty in the present election cycle, I believe the following principles should guide their choices:

1. Voting in a free country is both a sacred right and a godly privilege. Ellen White under divine inspiration describes the American Republic as one where “the Constitution guarantees to the people the right of self-government, proving that representatives elected by the popular vote shall enact and administer the laws” [1]]. This right to a free ballot has been purchased by the blood of patriots, and the Christian should allow neither the poison of cynicism nor the malaise of indifference to weaken the imperative of exercising this right.

Readers of our site will recall the repetition of this theme many times during American election seasons, but it’s important enough to keep repeating. Despite a popular urban legend in certain denominational circles, Ellen White never told Seventh-day Adventists never to vote for people in civic elections, only for issues. What she forbade was Seventh-day Adventists adhering to blind partisan affiliation, or (more importantly) casting ballots for those with a track record of opposing liberty of conscience. Here is one statement often misused to support this “never for people, only for issues” practice so far as civic voting is concerned:

We cannot labor to please men who will use their influence to repress religious liberty, and to set in operation oppressive measures to lead or compel their fellow-men to keep Sunday as the Sabbath. . . . The people of God are not to vote to place such men in office; for when they do this, they are partakers with them of the sins which they commit while in office [2].

Some have read the latter part of the above statement without reading the earlier part, and have thus concluded that Seventh-day Adventists should never vote for people, lest they partake of the sins those people commit while holding political office. But the above statement is not a general prohibition against voting for political candidates; rather, it is a prohibition against voting for individuals who will oppose religious liberty, particularly with regard to the Sabbath/Sunday issue.

The best way, of course, to know how candidates are likely to vote on any issue is to consider their record as well as their public commitments. The message of the above statement is not that we shouldn’t vote for any person seeking public office, but rather, that we shouldn’t support individuals with a track record of opposing and suppressing freedom of conscience.

In another statement Ellen White is very clear that when it comes to issues like the temperance question, we should in fact vote for candidates who will support the position we hold as a people:

Attended a meeting in the eve. Had quite a free, interesting meeting. After it was time to close, the subject of voting was considered and dwelt upon. James first talked, then Brother (J.N.) Andrews talked, and it was thought by their best to give their influence in favor of right and against wrong. They think it right to vote in favor of temperance men being in office in our city instead of by their silence running the risk of having intemperance men put in office. Brother [David] Hewitt tells his experience of a few days [since] and is settled that [it] is right to cast his vote. Brother [Josiah] Hart talks well. Brother [Henry] Lyon opposes. No others object to voting, but Brother [J.P.] Kellogg begins to feel that it is right. Pleasant feelings exist among all the brethren. O that they might all act in the fear of God.

Men of intemperance have been in the office today, in a flattering manner expressing their approbation of the course of the Sabbath-keepers not voting and expressed their hope that they will stick to their course and, like the Quakers, not cast their vote. Satan and his evil angels are busy at this time, and he has workers upon the earth. May Satan be disappointed, is my prayer [3].

2. Granting people free choice in a civic context is not the same as endorsing the choices people are thus allowed to make. I frankly grow weary of certain folks in the church claiming that the choice in U.S. elections these days is generally between Sodom and Gomorrah on the one hand and theocratic intolerance on the other. For this reason many church members consider it a waste of time to cast their ballots, as they believe both choices to be equally undesirable. But giving people freedom to choose relative to issues such as those involving consensual intimacy or reproductive options is in no way an endorsement of the choices made in such settings.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the free exercise of religion. That includes Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, New Ageism, all variations of the above, and countless others. But in no way does this freedom imply endorsement by the state of any or all of these options. The same holds true for issues of marriage and sexuality and reproductive choices as well.

If giving people a free choice relative to good versus evil were synonymous with an endorsement of either option, God Himself would be the greatest Endorser of evil ever, as it was He who placed both the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the original Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:9). Think of the trouble this earth and the universe would have avoided if God had simply kept one of those trees out! God is the Author of free choice because He desires only the service of love, and love is not possible without liberty. The final summons to salvation in Scripture underscores this transcendent love of liberty on God’s part:

And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely (Rev. 22:17).

Speaking of Sodom and Gomorrah, it helps to keep in mind that Jesus spoke of the Galilean towns that rejected His ministry—persons whose principal offense was self-righteousness—as more deserving of punitive divine judgment than Sodom and its sister cities (Matt. 11:23-24). (Some may remember a book by the late Robert Bork titled Slouching Towards Gomorrah [4], warning of dangers he perceived from the political Left in America. Some years later I wrote an article for Liberty magazine reflecting on Bork’s thoughts, titled, “Slouching Toward Capernaum” [5].)

3. Contempt for the stranger among us is a mindset hostile to Christianity. Illegal immigration is a major issue in the current U.S. presidential campaign. It isn’t our purpose on this site to facilitate a discussion as to which policy the government should follow in addressing this challenge. But Americans, Christians especially, should bear in mind the tragic history of their country relative to the immigration question, and the hateful spirit that has often greeted those coming to this country—legally or otherwise—who were different from the majority in culture, skin color, language, religion, and other ways.

Illegal immigration to the United States is nothing new. Many of our ancestors came to this country without proper papers or a good-conduct certification from the local police in their native lands. Ellen White speaks of how the American promise of liberty and justice has drawn so many to this nation’s shores:

The oppressed and downtrodden throughout Christendom have turned to this land with interest and hope. Millions have sought its shores, and the United States has risen to a place among the most powerful nations of the earth [6].

In Ellen White’s day, anti-immigrant sentiment was as strong in America as it is today, perhaps even stronger. Yet her writings never betray a hint of such bias or any encouragement thereof to the Seventh-day Adventist people.

Echoing Ellen White’s thoughts—unwittingly, we can be sure—former Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York spoke in a speech before he died of what he held to be God’s purpose for the United States:

He made it a haven of repose and a harbor of refuge for the downtrodden and poor and the oppressed of every land [7].

In the American story, just about anyone coming to our shores who wasn’t of Anglo-Saxon heritage faced prejudice and discrimination. Whether of German, Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian, Swedish, Chinese, or similarly alien ancestry, such persons were eschewed as “different” from what was regarded as the country’s “normal” mainstream. The rage now directed at persons illegally crossing America’s southern border—most of whom are poor people of color—is but the latest chapter in a lengthy and shameful story in the saga of the United States.

Many forget the cultural-grievance-driven power of the Ku Klux Klan in American politics during the 1920s, a rise to power eventually halted by the rape-and-murder conviction of its Grand Dragon, David C. Stephenson. A recent history of this period recounts a speech delivered by Stephenson to a crowd of coal miners in 1923:

He claimed that ethnicity was fate: millions of people were doomed in utero to become degenerates or castoffs. “In reference to feeblemindedness, insanity, crime, epilepsy, tuberculosis and deformity, the older immigrant stocks were vastly superior to the recent.” The new Americans were “dregs from putrefied vomit,” parasites, illiterate, dumb, lawless, with overactive sex drives [8].

Only a few days ago, one of the two leading presidential candidates in America said the United States had become the “world’s garbage can” because of the many immigrants illegally crossing our southern border. It is truly amazing, sometimes uncanny, how history repeats itself. But one thing is certain: anyone who calls human beings “garbage” forfeits the right to support from any professing Christian. Jesus didn’t die for trash.

Order at the border is certainly a desirable goal. Exactly how to get there is not the subject of this article. But the Bible is clear that justice to the stranger—those we today call immigrants—is a principle of godliness (Ex. 22:21; Lev. 19:33-34; Deut. 1:16; 10:19; Psalm 94:1-6; Eze. 22:29; Mal. 3:5; Matt. 25:35,43). Fomenting hatred and suspicion of persons racially and culturally different from ourselves doesn’t fit with the Biblical message.

Stop and think about it. Would Americans who today harshly condemn those illegally crossing our southern border be equally enraged if those coming to this country without authorization were largely white, conservative, home-schooling evangelicals coming across our northern border, trying to escape the allegedly unfriendly regime of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau?

4. When all is said and done, character and the preservation of freedom should transcend other issues. America has faced economic challenges before. Inflation has been a problem before. So has immigration. Recalling the words of Kate Smith’s “God Bless America,” written from the bosom of American isolationism, storm clouds have gathered across the sea before. But no problem in America today is so egregious, so severe, that we need to compromise the basis institutions of this Republic to solve it. No issue is so pressing that trust should be reposed in one of whom innumerable lies have been documented, who praises tyrants and yearns for their power, and who has fomented racial antagonism from the moment he entered the American political process.

The liberal/conservative split in the United States extends from Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton to John Kenneth Galbraith and William F. Buckley. Such disagreement is as American as apple pie. But more essential to leadership than ideology or policy is character. When choosing those to guide and govern our land, the latter principle should be paramount.

Conclusion: Stewards of Liberty

Ellen White tells us that the “shield of omnipotence” will rest over the United States until the image to the beast is set up as foretold in Revelation 13 [9]. But it remains the task of godly, informed Christian citizens to be stewards of liberty, and to forestall any and all efforts to restrict it. The infamous Project 2025—which ought to be called Project Revelation 13—openly endorses Sunday laws in the following statement, quoted not too long ago in a Liberty magazine editorial:

God ordained the Sabbath (Sunday) as a day of rest, and until very recently the Judeo-Christian tradition sought to honor that mandate by moral and legal regulation of work on that day. . . . Congress should encourage communal rest by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to require that workers be paid time and a half for hours worked on the Sabbath [10].

The editor then observed:

Here we glimpse a key assumption behind Project 2025: that America is first and foremost for those who embrace, not just Christianity, but the particular type of Christianity that prioritizes Sunday rest. We probably shouldn’t be surprised by this assertion. Some on the religious right have signaled this—or said it outright—for decades [11].

As Seventh-day Adventists in America head to the polls, they would do well to keep the above in mind, and to remember the Ellen White statement cited earlier in this article:

As stewards of liberty, we are counseled by the prophet as follows:

There are many who are at ease, who are, as it were, asleep. They say, “If prophecy has foretold the enforcement of Sunday observance the law will surely be enacted,” and having come to this conclusion they sit down in a calm expectation of the event, comforting themselves with the thought that God will protect His people in the day of trouble. But God will not save us if we make no effort to do the work He has committed to our charge.

As faithful watchmen you should see the sword coming and give the warning, that men and women may not pursue a course through ignorance that they would avoid if they knew the truth [13].

REFERENCES

1. Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 441.

2. ----Gospel Workers, p. 391.

3. ----Selected Messages, vol. 2, p. 337.

4. Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and America’s Decline (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003).

5. Kevin D. Paulson, “Slouching Toward Capernaum,” Liberty, July/August 2014 https://www.libertymagazine.org/article/slouching-toward-capernaum

6. White, The Great Controversy, p. 441.

7. Christopher M. Finan, Alfred E. Smith: The Happy Warrior (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002), p. 344.

8. Timothy Egan, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them (New York: Penguin Random House, 2023), p. 104.

9. White, SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 7, p. 975.

10. Bettina Krause, “The Real Problem With ‘Project 2025,’” Liberty, January/February 2024 https://www.libertymagazine.org/article/the-real-problem-with-project-2025

11. Ibid.

12. White, Gospel Workers, p. 391.

13. ----Last Day Events, p. 127.

Pastor Kevin Paulson holds a Bachelor’s degree in theology from Pacific Union College, a Master of Arts in systematic theology from Loma Linda University, and a Master of Divinity from the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University. He served the Greater New York Conference of Seventh-day Adventists for ten years as a Bible instructor, evangelist, and local pastor. He writes regularly for Liberty magazine and does script writing for various evangelistic ministries within the denomination. He continues to hold evangelistic and revival meetings throughout the North American Division and beyond, and is a sought-after seminar speaker relative to current issues in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He presently resides in Berrien Springs, Michigan