Welcome to the podcast Think Bivocally, Conversations on Faith and Culture.

I'm your host Sean McDow, Professor of Apologetics at Talbot School Theology

Biale University.

I'm your co-host Scott Ray, Dean of Faculty and Professor of Christian

ethics, also here at Talbot School of theology. Today what we want to do is just the two

of us kind of throw around some ideas related to politics and the election. Are we going to tell you who to vote for? Absolutely not. But what we want to do is just toss around maybe some principles, maybe some ideas from scripture that can just help us think

Christianly about the difficult choice that's before us right now, especially in our divided culture. So, Scott, you've done a lot of work on this.

Your book, Moral Choices deals with a lot of different ethical issues, but you weigh into politics.

So let me just start off by asking you do you think Christians have a responsibility to vote?

I do. I think it's I think it's a moral obligation to participate as a good citizen.

I'm not suggesting you to participate as a good citizen.

I'm not suggesting you should vote for any one particular position or not.

But I think that's part of a civic responsibility that actually, if you think by a small minority of people in the history of civilization.

You know, it's only in the last, you know, 200 plus years that people have had the right to vote about much of anything.

And for certain segments of our country at least, for women and for African Americans, that time period has been much shorter.

So it's the right to vote I think was something that was hard fought and it was

a lot of people gave their lives so that the average person could have a say in

the laws that are crafted that affect their lives.

And for the most of the history of civilization, that wasn't the case.

The king or the nobility, they made the laws and you were subject to them whether you liked

them or not. And there was no sense. You couldn't, I you liked them or not.

And there was no sense.

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