By Tony Hilton

Our mailbox, like those of every other registered voter in North Carolina, has been filled with mailers from candidates for local, state and federal offices. 

It seems that the overriding qualification in the mailers is the religion of the candidate. Honesty, competence, experience, ability and education are relegated to a lesser status.  Overwhelmingly, the mailers have touted the candidates as “Christian.” If you read the Constitution, and I have, you will find no religious requirement to run for or hold public office on the local, state or federal level. In fact, our founders purposely steered clear of religion as a litmus test for office. We were not founded as a “Christian” nation. Nor were we founded as a Jewish, Moslem, Buddhist, Hindu, Wiccan or Shinto or whatever religion you practice nation.   

Our household decides on whom we will vote for based on honesty, experience and competence. Political party is secondary or even tertiary to those criteria. One of the candidates we received mail from was guilty of vote buying in a previous election and has the gall to run for office again. He is or was a pastor. Which brings me to another point — if a pastor is taking proper care of his congregation; he or she has no time to be a politician. Ministering, done properly, is a full-time job. 

Finally, it has been my observation over the past 70-odd years that one’s religion and devotion to the same is shown by the life you lead and how you treat all people. It is not based on stating in 48-point bold type on a mailer that you are a “Christian.” Nor do these same people have the right to turn America into a theocracy or condemn others whose beliefs and lives do not fit their rigid view of the Kingdom of God or American society. I recommend to all candidates who claim to know God’s will the following from Matthew 23: 13-15:

“Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the Kingdom of Heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of Hell as you are.”  

— Tony Hilton
Landis