How I became a Democrat without losing my Deep Faith
If you didn't already know, I am a Democrat. But I haven't always been one. My journey has been very clear for me. I don't remember the exact moment I made this change, but the details around it are crystal clear. I didn't vote for Obama in 2008, but I did in 2012.
I was raised in a Republican family. The ONLY issue that was worth caring about was Abortion. I saw Democrats as heartless, evil people who wanted babies to die. I was taught to believe that to be a Christian meant you were a Republican. I didn't follow politics very closely when I was young and knew VERY little about how government actually worked. Around 2000 I was attending Mesa State College and I was taking an English class. The professor was open about her support of the Green party. She had us write about one candidate that we thought was worth our vote. For the first time in my life I actually read up on the candidates and the issues. I don't even remember the man's name, but I chose to write about one specific Republican candidate strictly based on his Pro-Life stance. This was the only issue I cared about because I was taught it was the issue your vote must be based on if you call yourself a Christian. I ended up voting for Bush.
Around 2004-2005 Dave and I were married without kids living in Dubuque, IA where Dave was attending a very conservative college. I recall sitting at the dinner table of some good friends having a discussion about Gay marriage. Dave and I shared our concern regarding Christians trying to make what they thought was sin into a law. We told our friends that trying to legislate morality wasn't going to help the cause of Christ. Not to mention the fact that Christians were picking and choosing which "sin issues" to care about. I also couldn't understand how gay marriage was ruining marriage for everyone else. My marriage didn't change in the least due to gay marriage.
Fast forward to 2008. Dave and I have started the adoption process and although we didn't know Judah yet, we knew we would be adopting a child from Ethiopia. Dave and both vote for McCain. Obama gets elected and on inauguration day, I remember feelings of pride that our country had made so much progress that we finally had our first Black president. I wasn't sad or disappointed that Obama won. I recall thinking how wonderful it was that our Ethiopian child would come into a country with a president that looked like him. As a side note, I respected Barack and Michelle a lot even when I was a Republican.
In that last bit of our time living in Grand Junction, CO we did a lot of ministry with the homeless community. We housed them in our church when the shelters had overflow. We put together "Bags of Love" with food. Dave took the youth group to Seattle to minister to the homeless. This opened our eyes to so many of the misconceptions that Christian Republicans had regarding this community of hurting people. We started to realize that there was a need to help lift them up rather than put laws on them to make their lives more difficult. As we moved away from Grand Junction we heard about a Christian group of woman who went to the media to fight to get homeless people out of the park they claimed rights to. These women were not shy to admit they were Christians, and they were hurting homeless people and not loving in the name of Jesus. I blogged about it and called it out as wrong. In turn, I lost a friend. If you're interested, I wrote the following blog as a Christian Republican: https://davenkami.blogspot.com/2011/08/cost.html
Also, in our last year at River of Life Alliance Church in GJ we were studying Francis Chan's Book Crazy Love with our Life Group. This is an excerpt from Chan's website about the book:
"Does something deep inside your heart long to break free from the status quo? Are you hungry for an authentic faith that addresses the problems of our world with tangible, even radical, solutions? God is calling you to a passionate love relationship with Himself. Because the answer to religious complacency isn’t working harder at a list of do’s and don’ts — it’s falling in love with God. And once you encounter His love, as Francis describes it, you will never be the same."
We saw how living out God's love looked through open eyes that were longing for something bigger.
In 2011 we moved to Washington. After just finishing Crazy Love, I picked up David Platt's book, Radical. From his website:
"It’s easy for American Christians to forget how Jesus said his followers would actually live, what their new lifestyle would actually look like. They would, he said, leave behind security, money, convenience, even family for him. They would abandon everything for the gospel. They would take up their crosses daily . . ."
Again, my life was turned upside-down. I looked at my life and most of the Christians around me and thought, "This isn't how Jesus lived so why am I?"
Here is my blog from this moment: https://davenkami.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-heart-condition.html
I was convicted on a deep, deep level. As I continued to study the life of Jesus, I started to analyze my political party. I thought about feeding the poor, tax policies that help the rich, immigration. Things weren't lining up. But over and over again, in my head I kept hearing "Abortion is the ONLY issue." So how could I turn my back on the party that was "saving the babies?" I was still very much Pro-Life!
I needed to reconcile this dilemma that I was facing. As time passed, I sought to learn more about the truths of what actually decreases the number of abortions. I learned that presidents have been irrelevant to abortion rates dropping. This was eye opening to me since I was raised to believe that we MUST have a Pro-life president to save the babies. Abortions have been fairly steadily declining since the 80s. I was surprised to learn that the number of abortions wasn't lower just because there was a Republican president. It's been on the decline for a long time. More recently, the numbers took a nice dive from 2008 to 2017. But if Obama was a Democrat and was president for most of those years, why did abortions go down? Abortion laws are much more at the state level so the president isn't the one to change anything. I also learned more about what it would actually mean to reverse Roe and that it would barely affect abortion rates if at all. Some states may choose to make abortion illegal, but a woman who is so desperate that she has come to a place where she is willing to abort her baby, I would assume she would drive a few hours to cross a border. I started to learn more about the things that actually impacted women's choice to either have an abortion or chose adoption or to raise the baby. There are many other things that are in play when lowering abortion rates. Health care, a just minimum wage, better maternity leave, free child care, access to birth control, food assistance. It also hit me pretty hard when I realized how good the church was at shaming girls who had sex before marriage and, God forbid, got pregnant. There was zero grace and much shame shown by the church. The church has not done anything to actually affect the decision these girls are faced with. Once again, it comes down to making laws to force people to live the way we think they should. Maybe laws aren't the way to change hearts? hmm. . .
So, this got me to thinking that abortion isn't the only issue that should actually matter. I was and still am very much Pro-Life, but learning these things helped me to admit that the unborn life isn't the only life that we should care about as Christians and I was quickly discovering that my political party didn't seem Pro-Life when it came to human life outside the womb.
Dave and I moved to Yakima and joined a conservative church where he got slammed many times for preaching scripture that directly contradicted Republican views. We were dumb founded to learn that people could get angry over a COMPLETELY scripturally based sermon when it didn't match their political allegiance. I started to better understand that for a large number of Christians, there was a greater loyalty to their country than to Christ. They were Christian Americans rather than Christians who happened lived in America. This was devastating to me. I mean, heart wrenching! How could we chose to be Americans first and Christ followers second?! At this same church we encountered a member who protested The Backpack Program that Dave and I started to feed hungry kids on the weekends. He claimed we shouldn't help when it's the parents fault. What?! He was so caught up in his political beliefs that he missed Jesus calling us to take care of the poor.
In the past few years, Dave and I have read and researched a lot. My whole world was rocked when I learned about the history of the political party in which I grew up. We read about the "White Christian Strategy" and once again my political foundation was rocked! This is from the book The End of White Christian America by Robert P. Jones:
"What I am calling the White Christian Strategy in an outgrowth of the Southern Strategy, a tactic developed by political conservatives and the Republican Party in the mid-1960s to appeal to the white southern voters who were angry with the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights. The Southern Strategy picked up momentum through two critical transition moments, one in the 1960s and one in the 1980s, which political scientists Merle and Earl Black identified as the two iterations of the "Great White Switch.""
What? They wanted to appeal to the people who were against civil rights?!
Keep reading:
"Prior to the civil rights movement, most white Southerners were loyal members of the Democratic Party. But with the passage of landmark civil rights legislation like the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voting Right Act of 1965, Republican Party strategists saw an opportunity to coax disgruntled white southern voters into their camp."
Wait, my party rejected the Democratic party because the Democrats WANTED civil rights?! Again, in shock!
Jones goes on to talk about how the '64 presidential race was the first "Great White Switch" when Goldwater ran a clear anti-civil rights campaign as a Republican. This is the party I was raised to believe was the Christian party. But, now I discover that they didn't actually want my own Black son to have the same rights as me. Goldwater's run allowed the ties to loosen between the South and the Democrats. "In that year, for the first time since the Civil War, more southern whites voted for the Republican candidate than for the Democrat." Then in '68 Nixon makes a deal to oppose court-ordered busing to integrate schools.
Again, is this my party? Is this the Christian party? Is this the party of Jesus?
The beginning of the Religious Right voted for Reagan over Carter (a Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher who didn't want to continue segregation). Carter should have been the poster-child for Christians. But, Reagan during his campaign told private schools who wanted to continue to segregate that he would protect their tax exempt status. It was law that schools had to desegregate and these schools were facing losing their tax exempt status. So, this new candidate was supporting schools segregation.
What really surprised me was that when Reagan was a governor he signed the California Therapeutic Act which was one of the most liberal abortion laws in the country. So, this means that the president who the Religious Right chose was not anti-abortion. I think it's safe to say that he was voted in not based on saving the babies, but based on racism. Eek!
More recently, many Christians responses to the Black Lives Matter movement has only confirmed for me that the Religious Right was not founded on Jesus. Although the movement (BLM) and phrase started before the organization, so many Christians fight against those 3 words because they disagree with the faith statement of the organization. I believe it's a copout. I have wanted to say this for a long time, but worried about the backlash. Since I am an open book now, I am no longer going to sugar coat it. If someones claims they cannot support people using the words "Black Lives Matter" based on an organizations statement of faith I call BS. Do they still affiliate themselves with the Christian movement even though the Westboro Baptist Church does too? Do they still support their president, but not sexual assault? It is clear that the Religious Right started on a racist platform and not a lot has changed. I cannot believe how naive I have been. I see things so much more clearly now that I have a black son. I couldn't stand with the party of my youth and look my son in the eye.
I am not saying every person who identifies as Republican is racist. Hey, I wouldn't have called myself racist and I was a Republican. I do believe there are many who have been led to believe certain things about their party that aren't accurate. Much like it was for me, there is a lot of history that needs to be sought out by those who call themselves Christian Republicans.
So, all of this is just the details of the journey I have been on. The more I learn and read, the more I understand that the party I was raised in isn't really the Jesus party. I am not saying that Democratic policies are 100% perfect. Not at all. There are still issues I wrestle with. But I got here by first and foremost being a Jesus follower. As I look at what it means to be an American, 2nd to following Jesus, I cannot support policies that hurt people. I had to make choices based on what it meant to LOVE others. I cannot support cutting social programs that help hurting people and help woman chose to raise their babies. I cannot support separating families and putting children in cages because we don't think they came here the correct way. I cannot support hurting and hating on LGBTQ people because we disagree with their choices. I cannot support self centered policies that help me and hurt others.
I am deeply in love with the God who gave his life to save those who we think don't deserve it. He wouldn't ask us to be Americans first. He would ask us to love others with an unselfish and sacrificial love. The party I grew up in did not teach me this.
This choice has cost me and my family a lot. We've been rejected and very wounded by church people. We have been hurt by many who claim to love us and our black son. We've had people tell us that we are raising Judah to hate white people. But if anything all of this confirms for me that making the right choice is often hard. It wasn't easy to step outside the Christian Right because it meant losing a lot.
I needed to reconcile this dilemma that I was facing. As time passed, I sought to learn more about the truths of what actually decreases the number of abortions. I learned that presidents have been irrelevant to abortion rates dropping. This was eye opening to me since I was raised to believe that we MUST have a Pro-life president to save the babies. Abortions have been fairly steadily declining since the 80s. I was surprised to learn that the number of abortions wasn't lower just because there was a Republican president. It's been on the decline for a long time. More recently, the numbers took a nice dive from 2008 to 2017. But if Obama was a Democrat and was president for most of those years, why did abortions go down? Abortion laws are much more at the state level so the president isn't the one to change anything. I also learned more about what it would actually mean to reverse Roe and that it would barely affect abortion rates if at all. Some states may choose to make abortion illegal, but a woman who is so desperate that she has come to a place where she is willing to abort her baby, I would assume she would drive a few hours to cross a border. I started to learn more about the things that actually impacted women's choice to either have an abortion or chose adoption or to raise the baby. There are many other things that are in play when lowering abortion rates. Health care, a just minimum wage, better maternity leave, free child care, access to birth control, food assistance. It also hit me pretty hard when I realized how good the church was at shaming girls who had sex before marriage and, God forbid, got pregnant. There was zero grace and much shame shown by the church. The church has not done anything to actually affect the decision these girls are faced with. Once again, it comes down to making laws to force people to live the way we think they should. Maybe laws aren't the way to change hearts? hmm. . .
So, this got me to thinking that abortion isn't the only issue that should actually matter. I was and still am very much Pro-Life, but learning these things helped me to admit that the unborn life isn't the only life that we should care about as Christians and I was quickly discovering that my political party didn't seem Pro-Life when it came to human life outside the womb.
Dave and I moved to Yakima and joined a conservative church where he got slammed many times for preaching scripture that directly contradicted Republican views. We were dumb founded to learn that people could get angry over a COMPLETELY scripturally based sermon when it didn't match their political allegiance. I started to better understand that for a large number of Christians, there was a greater loyalty to their country than to Christ. They were Christian Americans rather than Christians who happened lived in America. This was devastating to me. I mean, heart wrenching! How could we chose to be Americans first and Christ followers second?! At this same church we encountered a member who protested The Backpack Program that Dave and I started to feed hungry kids on the weekends. He claimed we shouldn't help when it's the parents fault. What?! He was so caught up in his political beliefs that he missed Jesus calling us to take care of the poor.
In the past few years, Dave and I have read and researched a lot. My whole world was rocked when I learned about the history of the political party in which I grew up. We read about the "White Christian Strategy" and once again my political foundation was rocked! This is from the book The End of White Christian America by Robert P. Jones:
"What I am calling the White Christian Strategy in an outgrowth of the Southern Strategy, a tactic developed by political conservatives and the Republican Party in the mid-1960s to appeal to the white southern voters who were angry with the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights. The Southern Strategy picked up momentum through two critical transition moments, one in the 1960s and one in the 1980s, which political scientists Merle and Earl Black identified as the two iterations of the "Great White Switch.""
What? They wanted to appeal to the people who were against civil rights?!
Keep reading:
"Prior to the civil rights movement, most white Southerners were loyal members of the Democratic Party. But with the passage of landmark civil rights legislation like the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voting Right Act of 1965, Republican Party strategists saw an opportunity to coax disgruntled white southern voters into their camp."
Wait, my party rejected the Democratic party because the Democrats WANTED civil rights?! Again, in shock!
Jones goes on to talk about how the '64 presidential race was the first "Great White Switch" when Goldwater ran a clear anti-civil rights campaign as a Republican. This is the party I was raised to believe was the Christian party. But, now I discover that they didn't actually want my own Black son to have the same rights as me. Goldwater's run allowed the ties to loosen between the South and the Democrats. "In that year, for the first time since the Civil War, more southern whites voted for the Republican candidate than for the Democrat." Then in '68 Nixon makes a deal to oppose court-ordered busing to integrate schools.
Again, is this my party? Is this the Christian party? Is this the party of Jesus?
The beginning of the Religious Right voted for Reagan over Carter (a Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher who didn't want to continue segregation). Carter should have been the poster-child for Christians. But, Reagan during his campaign told private schools who wanted to continue to segregate that he would protect their tax exempt status. It was law that schools had to desegregate and these schools were facing losing their tax exempt status. So, this new candidate was supporting schools segregation.
What really surprised me was that when Reagan was a governor he signed the California Therapeutic Act which was one of the most liberal abortion laws in the country. So, this means that the president who the Religious Right chose was not anti-abortion. I think it's safe to say that he was voted in not based on saving the babies, but based on racism. Eek!
More recently, many Christians responses to the Black Lives Matter movement has only confirmed for me that the Religious Right was not founded on Jesus. Although the movement (BLM) and phrase started before the organization, so many Christians fight against those 3 words because they disagree with the faith statement of the organization. I believe it's a copout. I have wanted to say this for a long time, but worried about the backlash. Since I am an open book now, I am no longer going to sugar coat it. If someones claims they cannot support people using the words "Black Lives Matter" based on an organizations statement of faith I call BS. Do they still affiliate themselves with the Christian movement even though the Westboro Baptist Church does too? Do they still support their president, but not sexual assault? It is clear that the Religious Right started on a racist platform and not a lot has changed. I cannot believe how naive I have been. I see things so much more clearly now that I have a black son. I couldn't stand with the party of my youth and look my son in the eye.
I am not saying every person who identifies as Republican is racist. Hey, I wouldn't have called myself racist and I was a Republican. I do believe there are many who have been led to believe certain things about their party that aren't accurate. Much like it was for me, there is a lot of history that needs to be sought out by those who call themselves Christian Republicans.
So, all of this is just the details of the journey I have been on. The more I learn and read, the more I understand that the party I was raised in isn't really the Jesus party. I am not saying that Democratic policies are 100% perfect. Not at all. There are still issues I wrestle with. But I got here by first and foremost being a Jesus follower. As I look at what it means to be an American, 2nd to following Jesus, I cannot support policies that hurt people. I had to make choices based on what it meant to LOVE others. I cannot support cutting social programs that help hurting people and help woman chose to raise their babies. I cannot support separating families and putting children in cages because we don't think they came here the correct way. I cannot support hurting and hating on LGBTQ people because we disagree with their choices. I cannot support self centered policies that help me and hurt others.
I am deeply in love with the God who gave his life to save those who we think don't deserve it. He wouldn't ask us to be Americans first. He would ask us to love others with an unselfish and sacrificial love. The party I grew up in did not teach me this.
This choice has cost me and my family a lot. We've been rejected and very wounded by church people. We have been hurt by many who claim to love us and our black son. We've had people tell us that we are raising Judah to hate white people. But if anything all of this confirms for me that making the right choice is often hard. It wasn't easy to step outside the Christian Right because it meant losing a lot.
I did it so I could more effectively LOVE others!
Here are a few sources and things that have helped me to come to the clarity I have found:
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