I love a lot the stuff coming from Shane Claiborne and his other neo-monastic/neo-anabaptist cohorts, however one of things I've differed with them on is their aversion to voting as a legitimate tool for social justice. They rightly recognize that we can't bring utopia merely through politics, however I think they sometimes fail to see it as a useful tool for reaching pragmatic and proximate goals. I worry that sometimes we may fail to do all that we can to help those in need because we're too concerned about maintaining our purity from the structures of empire.

That's why I was glad to see that Shane recently wrote a post for the God's Politics blog admitting that there may be some good reasons for voting and that it might actually be permissible for some Christians to do. His main argument is that voting may be useful not for bringing about the kingdom but merely for preventing the worse of two evils. This is what a lot of us have been saying about voting for a while already, but it's good to hear someone as influential as Shane finally acknowledge it as a legitimate perspective.

Labels: politics, Shane Claiborne