Christian Blogger Endorses Romney; Debunks 'Can't Vote for Mormon' Belief
A popular Christian blogger says he's voting for Mitt Romney and is challenging notions that Christians should sit out this year's election or that they shouldn't vote for the GOP presidential candidate because he's a Mormon.
In a series of blog posts, Frank Turk listed several reasons on Pyromaniacs why he's voting for and endorsing a "Mormon son of a Mormon who was not very conservative in Massachusetts and has not demonstrated very safely-right ideology in governing in the past."
One of those reasons is abortion.
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Turk recognized that there are some Christians who will either try to vote for a third party candidate or not vote at all because both Romney and President Obama support abortions, though Romney only approves of it in cases of rape, incest and life of the mother.
For many Christians, abortion is murder, immoral and sinful and voting for a candidate who supports abortion would be wrong.
So by not voting, these Christians "protect their holiness."
Turk offers: "Doing nothing and calling it a moral victory is cowardly. It may actually be evil. But if it is nothing else, it is certainly this: failing to do as much as possible to make a difference toward the improvement of those things which you can effect and can make better. Failing to show that much compassion and effort is morally lazy.
"In the world we actually live in, where in our country there are about 1,200,000 abortions every year, one candidate/party is saying that we could eliminate 960,000 abortions by saying the only exceptions might be physical health and welfare of the mother. It's moral malpractice to say that seeking to reduce the number of abortions by 80% is the same as saying 100% of all abortions are politically and morally OK."
So Turk is endorsing Romney in order "to avoid the obvious moral failing of doing nothing at all – or participating in the moral equivalent of performance art – to turn back an unacceptable outcome even if the alternative is only less-unacceptable."
Turk also argued against the common argument that electing Romney to the White House would equate to assisting Mormonism in becoming a mainstream religious option.
In Romans 13, the Apostle Paul indicates that a non-Christian person, in his case Caesar, is capable of being a sound ruler.
"Even Caesar and his functionaries were able to approve of good conduct and strike terror into those who have bad conduct. In Paul's mind, being an unbeliever does not disqualify anyone from being a political ruler," Turk wrote.
Additionally, God instituted the governments, he argued. Even if the government may serve God poorly, the institution of government "is actually God's ordinary means of looking out for justice and judgment."
"Paul says that explicitly about the Roman government – which, let's face it, is barbaric by our standards. The kind of morality the average Roman would ascribe to would be absolutely wanton by our post-Christian standards. Yet somehow the Mormon view of morality is not going to work for an American magistrate?" said Turk.
Regarding the notion that Christians would be assisting a cult in becoming more mainstream, he said: "That sounds very high-minded and God-glorifying – until we start to think about all the things we have to give up which, frankly, make things that are non-Christian into socially-acceptable practices. We'd have to give up the internet, for starters; we'd have to give up our iPhones. We'd have to give up books. We'd have to give up Capitalism and Democracy.
"If we can rightly, theologically justify all the other ways we cooperate with non-believers on the secular stage, ignoring the means of doing so now to maintain your alleged holiness is, at best, evidence which ought to be used to convict you of greater transgressions."
Providing one "America" reason that the "don't assist in making a cult mainstream" doesn't work out, the blogger wrote, "Voting for any man does not affirm that you accept his religious expression, or his systematic theology: it affirms that you accept his right as a citizen to run for office."
In his concluding post, Turk stated that his intention is not to make Christians into "mindless voters for red-state dominion."
"What I want is for you to not pretend this election is just another election," he wrote.
"Vote effectively. And Vote prayerfully."
