Elections

I got to vote today in next week's Georgia primary. Georgia lets you vote at the Courthouse the week before the election and avoid the lines. When I lived in Texas in the '90s, you could vote at the Mall!

As someone who has been a moderate Republican most of my adult life (my first vote for President was for Gerald Ford in 1976), I find the field this year less than enthralling. Every candidate has some aspect that concerns me and none have me (at least, figuratively) jumping up and down saying, "That's who I'll vote for!"

Recently, I ran across Setting the 2008 National Agenda: From a Christian Perspective, which describes itself as a public policy platform by the Peace and Restorative Justice Community of Holy Trinity (Episcopal) Church in NYC. The entire report can be downloaded here. It intentionally doesn't endorse (or even mention) any candidates, but you can probably guess who the members might not support.

It's fairly liberal in tone. I tend to broadly agree with its social justice positions on immigration, poverty, health care and the environment. I have problems with large blocks of its foreign and defense policy positions, from eliminating nuclear weapons through legislation to a Constitutional amendment to abolish presidential signing statements.

Its not an official position of the Episcopal Church, but even if it were, I wouldn't feel less of an Episcopalian for not completely agreeing with it, nor would I feel its authors weren't good Episcopalians because they didn't agree completely with me. That's one of the best aspects of the Episcopal Church, we don't have to completely agree with each other to belong to each other!