Today is election day in the United States of America. Every four years Americans vote for the president of United States and many other offices within the States.

Election cycles since the 1980's, with the rise of the "Moral Majority" (a now defunct evangelical political action organization founded by Jerry Falwell, Sr.), have highlighted statements about the importance of voting for "righteous" or "God fearing" candidates. This was a strategy to coalesce Christians around a political agenda. To my understanding, we've not had a president who was righteous and God-fearing to the Biblical standard. 

In the opinion of this writer, in my voting lifetime, President Jimmy Carter (a Democrat) and President George W. Bush (a Republican) came the closest to demonstrating that standard. However, in my view, the most important requirement for civil service is COMPETENCE, not Christian witness. One of the most competent civil servants I know is my Indiana Congressman, Andre Carson (a Democrat), who is a Muslim. 

From a 2008 article:

This article was published the year Barack Obama was a candidate for his first term as president. As we remember, he was considered by many Evangelicals to be both godless and unrighteous (at best), despite his personal example of life, marriage, and family. President Obama was extraordinarily COMPETENT for eight years as president, without a single scandal in his entire administration. 

For this election cycle, I have not seen proclamations about the importance of voting for a "righteous" or "God-fearing" candidate for president of United States. No one has made that case on behalf of President Donald Trump. In the absence of a righteous and godly person, we have seen a shifting standard that proclaims we should now vote for candidates who do the bidding of Evangelicals, regardless of personal character. That approach does not ensure equal justice for all Americans. I don’t have high confidence in the 81% of evangelicals who supported Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.

Attempting to assign righteousness to a politician who lacks personal character, is a mockery of Biblical standards. What we have witnessed throughout history and in the present day, is the vain attempt to combine the sacred with the secular and profane. What has resulted from this "false balance" of the past four years is a tragedy of lost moral authority and credibility on the part of those evangelical Christians who put loyalty to an ungodly man above biblical standards of righteousness.

“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” (Proverbs 14:34)

This Scripture has been wrongly applied to voting for political candidates. There are at least three problems with this interpretation:

1. A "tree" is not known by its words (what a candidate says), it is known by its fruit (how a candidate lives). 

2. God's justice and righteousness are not established solely by voting for, or aligning with, a political party. It is already established in Him and lived through those who follow Christ.

3. The righteousness that exalts a nation is the BEHAVIOR of the people of that nation who claim to belong to the God of Israel (in the OT) or follow Christ (in the NT).

There's also the pathetic exploitation of abortion by candidates and voters who claim to be "pro life," when inaction and ungodly actions contradict those words. Abortion is a "bullet-point" for an campaign, not a matter of concern for women with unwanted pregnancies.

The true pro-life, righteous action of saving the unborn, and the born, is OUR responsibility. Believers should not look to ungodly people to do godly work. WE should counsel people to live right. WE should counsel women to choose life. WE should help them and their children when they choose life. WE should hold men accountable. WE should support crisis pregnancy centers. These actions will save unborn lives everyday. Voting is important for public policy formation, but it cannot be a substitute for direct action by citizens.

Justice and Righteousness are not established by voting for politicians who claim to represent God. Again, it has already been established by the Lord. As citizens, we should always vote for competent people to do a civil service job and support/defend the Constitution.