By Rev. Dr. Randy B. Kelley
The late great Q.D. Adams, a civil rights leader from Gadsden, Alabama, once said, “If you don’t register and vote, you will never be a first-class citizen.” This is true today, as it was yesterday.
Our basic duties consist of praying, registering to vote, becoming informed, electing Godly people, voting, and keeping elected officials accountable. When citizens give their votes to a person of known immorality, they abuse their civic responsibility. They sacrifice their own best interest as well as their neighbors’. God wants us to do his will in government as well as in the church and home. When we disobey God, we cease to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Salt is no good in the shaker. If Christians voted their duty to God, we would bring about a moral revolution. He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. (2 Samuel 23:3). If America is to be saved, Christians must save it.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery, Rev. Dr. C.T. Vivian, Congressman John Lewis, and many others, have paid the greatest price for citizenship. We must not forget we have been burned, lynched, and castrated for the sacred right to vote. The greatest gain of the civil rights movement was the passage of the voting rights act. Dr. King reminded us that one of the greatest weapons we have is that short walk to the voting booth. Let us not be so heavenly good that we are not earthly good.
After all, the bottom line of politics is to do good. To paraphrase one of my aunts, I do not believe that the devil ought to run anything.
Rev. Dr. Randy B. Kelley serves as the pastor of Lakeside United Methodist Church in Huntsville, Alabama, Vice Chairman of the Alabama Democratic Conference, and Vice Chairmen of the Democratic National Committee Black Caucus. He can be reached at 1-356- 390-1834 or at randy. kelley@umcna.org.