Chocolate-Covered Pretzels

It can be argued that one of the most important and treasured cultural aspects in the Black community is our faith. We are overwhelmingly  Christian.

The church has played a key role in our cultural and spiritual development almost from the time our ancestors were first dragged here in chains. At times, God and His church were all Black Americans had to cling to in the darkest oppressions. Even as we have moved from segregation to freedom we have always held fast to the tenants of God’s Word, and as a result we are largely socially conservative as a group. However, when it comes to our votes we don’t seem to carry that same adherence to our faith to the polls.

The official platform of the Democrat party embraces gay marriage, while the Black community sees this as antithetical to God’s Word.

Despite being only 12% of the population and representing over 35% of abortions, the majority of Black Americans still believe life is God-given; and yet the Democrat platform endorses abortion.

Record unemployment in Black communities and America in general, 47 million Americans receiving food stamps, skyrocketing energy prices and a debt that threatens to topple the country seem to have very little effect on Black Christians – by all indications they are still solidly in Obama’s camp.

Some say it is because they are uncomfortable with Romney’s Mormon faith, some genuinely believe that he (and his party) is racist and would roll back civil rights.

Some say that things really will get better if we just hang on a little longer and don’t change horses mid-race. My father-in-law, Victor Davis (a conservative Black pastor who served his community of Gary, IN for over 40 years) told me this: “I had coined the phrase “Chocolate Covered Pretzels”  to describe many of the “African-American church folk” after Obama made his endorsement of Homosexual Marriage. That represented to me the theological twisting and bending that they would go through to find a way to support their “black president-brother-man” and sadly that is what I hear and see more and more of.

Some are not able to differentiate between what a man “says he believes” and what a man legislates or enforces in the way of policies and laws. Even the unbeliever (Cyrus Ezra 6:4) can lead a nation in righteous decrees and provide an atmosphere in which the Gospel has freedom to be proclaimed and practiced (1 Tim 2:1-4) without restraint. However to contrast that, is when the “so-called believer” legislates Antichrist/laws, along with upholding the killing of God conceived babies and then work to restrict the “faith practices” of clear scriptural teaching, then that ” believer” is in direct conflict with the Kingdom purpose of God (that His will would be done on earth as it is in Heaven)”

I want to ask this question specifically to my Black Christian brothers and sisters: Do your political loyalties represent your faith? When you go vote on Tuesday, will you be voting as a “Chocolate-covered pretzel” or a participant in the Kingdom of God?

I know what’ I’ll be doing.

crossposted at kiradavis.net