Christian Citizenship

"Whenever a Christian votes, he votes against God or for Him,... God is an issue in every election; He is a candidate in the person of every clean nominee on every ticket; His purity and His approval are there, to be voted for or voted against...He takes precedence of party, duty to Him is above every claim of party.

If Christians would vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease. They would elect every clean candidate in the United States, and defeat every soiled one. Their prodigious power would be quickly realized and recognized, and afterward there would be no unclean candidates upon any ticket and graft would cease. No church organization would be found in the country that would elect men of foul character to be its Shepard, its treasurer and superintendent of its Sunday school.... Yet every Christian congregation in the country elects foul men to public office while quite aware that this is also an open and deliberate insult to God.

It is the Christian congregations that are responsible for the filling of our public offices with criminals, for the reason they could prevent it, if they chose to do it. They could prevent it without organizing a league, without framing a platform, without making any speeches or passing any resolutions... They could accomplish it by each individual resolving to vote for God at the polls... That is to say, vote for the candidate whom God would approve. Can a man imagine such a thing as God being a republican or a democrat and voting for a criminal... merely because party loyalty required it? Then can we imagine that a man can improve upon God's attitude in this matter and by the help of professional politicians invent a better policy? God has no politics but cleanliness and honesty and it is good enough for man.

If the Christians of America could be persuaded to vote for God and a clean ticket, it would bring about a moral revolution that would be incalculably beneficent. It would save the country -- a country whose Christians have betrayed it and are destroying it. The Christian vote -- it alone, is the master of the situation, and lord of the result."

(Christian Citizenship by Mark Twain, Collier's Magazine (Sept. 2, 1905: 17 - Originally published anonymously)