People always ask, “What would Jesus do?,” but in America today, it’s impossible to know. And that’s because there are (at least) two prevailing views of God at work in our public and political conversation. It would not be an exaggeration to say that when you pull the lever this November, you will not just be voting for president. You will be saying what you believe about God.

Do you believe in a God who protects the individual’s freedoms against the encroachments of the state? Who answers personal prayers and who intervenes, as he did for Paul on the Road to Damascus, to make believers out of skeptics and heretics? This God rewards his favorite sons and daughters with prosperity, and he bestows blessings, to paraphrase the aphorism, on those who help themselves.


Or do you believe in a God whose first priority is to care for the weak and the helpless, who teaches people to do unto others as they would have others do unto them? This is the collectivist God of the Hebrew Bible, who sees humanity organized into tribes and families of “brothers and sisters” who must work together to discern and follow his will.

With their rhetoric, Mitt Romney and President Obama are forcing voters to consider this choice. And as Occupy movement activists prepare to protest income inequality, among other issues, at the Group of 8 summit in Camp David, Md., and the NATO gathering in Chicago this weekend, the dilemma is far from academic.