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Christianity and politics

Does it make you a bad Christian if you didn’t vote for Trump?

Shefali O'Hara
4 min readDec 23, 2019
Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash

I once taught Sunday School for adults. This was when we first moved to Texas. I had this idea for a class on religion and science. The pastor gave me the green light. People loved the class, and after it was over, some of them requested I stay on as a teacher.

To be fair, I considered myself more a facilitator than a teacher. I hadn’t been to seminary. I wasn’t an expert on all things Biblical. And I hate to tell people what to think — I would rather encourage them to think for themselves.

Unfortunately, sometimes I felt I had no choice but to let people know I disagreed with them.

One episode occurred during an election year. Politics had reared its ugly head in my class. Then one woman threw a bomb into the room.

“You know they’re not Christian,” she said. “I mean, they vote Democrat.”

I quickly corrected her. “People can be Christian and vote for different parties. Politics and faith are separate. Hopefully as Christians we can all love each other as brothers and sisters despite different political viewpoints.”

The woman obviously disagreed with me, but she let it rest. Unfortunately the damage had already been done. After class, two of my…

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Shefali O'Hara
Shefali O'Hara

Written by Shefali O'Hara

Cancer survivor, Christian, writer, engineer. BSEE from MIT, MSEE, and MA in history. Love nature, animals, books, art, and interesting discussions.

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