Who are you voting for, family? Maybe that’s not a polite question. What are you voting for? Let me tell you my answer.
My great-uncle, George Jordan, a farmer in Ruleville, Miss., was a trustee at St. James Chapel. That’s where Fannie Lou Hamer came to find her vocation to work for voting rights in Sunflower County with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). George Jordan joined her in this work, walking up and down dusty country roads to register folks to vote. He did this at risk to his job, his property, and his reputation. He did this at risk to limb and life. When we were young children, we heard the story: “They shot in Uncle George’s house because he worked for justice …” like we heard, “No matter what, you must vote.” Those two truths are always with me; they are with me today.
I’m voting for Uncle George. I’m voting for Fanny Lou Hamer. For my grandmother, Louella Jordan Edwards, who we called “Ma’ Dear” before Tyler Perry’s warm and wicked character came on the scene. I’m voting for my late parents, Emma and Richard Lewis, who grew up in Jim Crow, raised six children, sent us to college, and taught us we were young, gifted, Black, and amazing because we were their children and God’s children, too.
I’m feeling powerful as I think about going to the polls for my people, my ancestors, and my progeny. I’m voting for my nieces, my nephews, and my grandchildren. I’m taking them to the polls, and I am taking my trans-staff and friends; I am taking the women and femmes in my congregation and in my national neighborhood who deserve reproductive choice. I’m voting for an economy that works for all of us, for science that helps us love our Mama Earth. I’m voting for guns off the street, for truth-telling in our classrooms and in the public square. I’m voting for racial/ethnic equality and for all genders and sexualities to feel safe, seen, known, and loved in our nation.
Love your neighbor
I’m a universalist Christian, and I’m voting for the values of Rabbi Jesus. He taught us to love our neighbor as ourselves. In fact, as a Universalist, I am fascinated by the fact that all the world’s major religions teach this neighbor love. Judaism teaches, “You should love the stranger because you were once strangers in a strange land.” Zoroastrianism and Islam both teach, “Don’t withhold from your neighbor that what you need for yourself.” Buddhism teaches, “Whatever is disagreeable to yourself, do not do unto others.” The Sikh tradition teaches, “Do not do anything to break anyone else’s heart.”
Can you hear that ubiquitous call to love? It is rooted in the ancient South African philosophy of Ubuntu: A person is a person through other persons. I am not human by myself; I am not human without you, beloved. I can’t be who I am, Dr. King said, unless you can be who you are. We must love our neighbor, so we can be who we are. Therefore, I’m voting for love of my neighbor. I’m voting for love of the stranger. I’m voting that we do not withhold what our neighbors’ need. I’m voting for everyone to have enough. I’m voting for peace and the end of war and genocide everywhere. I’m voting for the least of us, for my siblings on the margins.
I admit that no one is perfect, no candidate or party is perfect and I’m rolling the dice to vote for the candidates and the party that seem to me to not be “the lesser evil,” but rather, to be for the “greater good” for the most of us. As I write this ,I am demanding, every day I can, a permanent ceasefire. I’m calling POTUS (212-456-1111) and engaged in the ceasefire movement, and I am not letting up just because there is an election coming.
I’m voting for humanity to survive and thrive. I’m voting for decency and the end of name-calling. I’m voting in the name of Rabbi Jesus — who was at once homeless and an immigrant — for economic justice for poor people and for immigration policies that honor the fact that this is a nation of immigrants (and Jesus was one, too.)
I’m voting for Love. Period. Not hatred, love. Not bigotry, love. Not enmity, love. Not hoarding, but love. Not name-calling, love. Not fascism, love. I’m voting for Love. And Love demands justice. Love corrects everything that stand against love.
I’m voting for Just Love. Period. What about you?
Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis is senior minister and public theologian at Middle Church in New York. She champions racial, economic, and gender/sexuality justice. The author of several books, including “Fierce Love” and the “Just Love Story Bible,” her work has been featured on NBC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, NPR, and in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Ebony and Essence magazines.