LAST FALL'S MIDTERM elections brought the country’s single biggest expansion of the right to vote since the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18.
Florida voters passed Amendment 4, a change to the Florida Constitution that automatically restores voting rights to 1.4 million Americans who have been living and working in our communities but politically disenfranchised because of criminal convictions in their past.
Before this amendment, Florida’s policy was extra strict—one of permanent disenfranchisement for all felonies, meaning that it did not matter what you did, how long ago it was, or how old you were when you did it. If you had a felony conviction, you could not get your right to vote back unless the government decided to specifically grant you clemency. That meant that even people who had long ago completed probation and parole were still unable to vote.
This outcome in Florida is to be celebrated, for several reasons. Amendment 4 promotes full citizenship and permits more people to participate in the electoral proc-ess. It ends a blatant Jim Crow policy. It encourages successful reintegration into the community. But it also brings core Christian teachings into the public square—and it is important that we discuss these teachings because there is still work to be done.
Disenfranchisement of those convicted of felonies is still widespread, if not the norm. The clearest exceptions are Maine and Vermont, where persons never lose their voting rights, even while they are incarcerated. In two states—Iowa and Kentucky—any felony conviction results in permanent disenfranchisement unless the government specifically restores an individual’s rights, similar to the approach Florida just changed. Some states permanently disenfranchise certain citizens, depending on the felony conviction. A number of states—18, in fact—disenfranchise returning citizens until all terms of their sentences have been completed, which can end up being years after they have returned to the community.
What are we getting out of disenfranchising people the criminal justice system has determined are appropriate to be living and working alongside us? What does scripture advise?
Equal persons
Laws disenfranchising community members for past crimes treat people as second-class citizens, but there are no second-class citizens in God’s kingdom. God has made “of one blood all nations of people,” we are told in Acts. Humans are both God’s children and God’s creation, and the divinity in our creation and in each of us deserves more respect than second-class citizenship affords.
While human nature may make it difficult to avoid judging persons who have criminal convictions in their past, we do well to remember that God gave his only son to the whole world, and he died for the sins of the whole world, not just those who were never imprisoned for their sins.
The message of equal souls is proclaimed in the parable of the vineyard laborers. A landowner with a vineyard hired laborers in the morning. Some laborers worked all day. Others spent most of the day being idle, behavior obviously disfavored, and worked for as little as an hour. At the end of the day, the landowner paid everyone the same. The laborers who worked all day complained that they should be paid more, but the landowner, decrying human conceptions of desert and merit, decided that the most just course of action was treating them all equally. All the laborers had needs, and the landowner provided accordingly, without distinction among them. Likewise, separating community members into classes of citizens who can vote and classes who cannot fails to recognize the equal worth of all persons before God.
Restoring the fallen
All persons, from ministers to political leaders to high-ranking business executives, are capable of committing wrongs. Moses killed a person, Peter forsook Jesus, King David had the husband of Bathsheba killed, and John Mark abandoned Paul and Barnabas on their ministry trip. For some people, punishment occurs in the form of losing some property or a job. For other people, punishment results in losing one’s liberty.
Despite the emotions we may feel, despite our desire for vengeance, as Christians we are obligated to restore the fallen. And with good cause. Moses, David, Peter, John Mark, despite the atrocity of their transgressions—murder, adultery and contract killing, denial of the Savior, and shirking from God’s calling—repented, were restored, and went on to serve the Lord and their communities in productive ways.
When persons are imprisoned, they lose their liberty and are separated from their communities. When released, they are expected to lead productive and successful lives. Depriving the formerly imprisoned of voting rights, however, acts at cross-purposes with that expectation because it serves an entirely punitive purpose—it accomplishes nothing to get a person back on the right path. The act of voting, however, is consistent with that expectation because it is a symbol of investment in communities and the country. When a person casts a vote, it is an expression of concern about this country and what happens to it. This is precisely the attitude we want our formerly imprisoned citizens to embrace.
Restoration is the central theme in many of the teachings of Jesus. For example, even though the prodigal son “sinned against heaven” and his father, he was received lovingly and graciously when he returned to his father’s house. When his older brother, who had never transgressed against his father, expressed his hurt at the greater generosity bestowed onto someone who had made such poor and sinful choices, the father told him that restoring the prodigal into the family was a joyous occasion appropriately marked by celebration.
In another example, Jesus did not condemn the woman taken in adultery even though her guilt was unquestioned. He told her to sin no more and dismissed her to return to the community from which she was taken.
When we encounter those, like the adulterous woman or the prodigal son, who have transgressed against the laws of God and humanity, adhering to Jesus’ teachings means to receive them with the fellowship that will restore them. We should not underestimate the effect that our fellowship, love, and spiritual values will have on restoring those who have fallen.
Forgiving the wrongdoer
The Bible leaves no doubt that we are supposed to forgive others, as emphasized in the book of Philemon, the Lord’s Prayer, and many other places. We are to forgive others because we ourselves need our Lord’s forgiveness. One of the challenges of forgiveness is that wrongdoing often affects more than just the immediate victim and perpetrator. Because we live in communities, we are interconnected. It is precisely this extended effect and interconnectedness, however, that requires us to consider the ancillary effects of a punishment such as disenfranchisement.
At a larger level, disenfranchisement laws impact entire communities. At its most obvious, communities with high rates of disenfranchised persons have fewer votes to cast, and less political influence. More subtly, however, disenfranchisement laws are thought to affect the voter participation rates even among those eligible to vote. It makes sense: Voting is a social activity that is reinforced when more of us participate. Fewer people engaging in this behavior means fewer people to model it for others.
At the family level, disenfranchisement also takes a great toll because a parent’s political participation can influence a child’s decision to vote. Not only do parents provide basic information such as where to register and vote, they also can provide campaign-related information that children are unlikely to get from formal schooling. Disenfranchising a parent may discourage the entire family from civic participation.
Bearing grudges outside the prison walls, against our very neighbors, doesn’t just damage our democracy. It also tarnishes the joy we are supposed to feel when one of us starts their new life outside of prison. When the woman with 10 silver coins loses one, as told in Luke’s gospel, she diligently looks until she finds it. She lights lamps. She sweeps. When she finally finds it, she rejoices with her neighbors. Or when a man with 100 sheep loses one, he leaves the 99 and goes into the mountains to seek the one that went astray. When he finds it, he is more joyous over the formerly lost sheep than over the ones that did not go astray.
Obviously, these parables are not concerned with coins or sheep—they are concerned with lost souls. And they teach us two things: First, we need to put work into helping the lost be found. Second, rather than being angry at the person for being lost, we can be joyous that we found them. Restoring voting rights to former prisoners upon release is a clear statement that we forgive them and that the community is going to work with them to get their life back on track.
Loving our enemies
Since Cain killed Abel, humans have mistreated each other. We all have wronged others, and we are all capable of being wronged. While we may struggle with how to make sense of the injustice and harm we experience at the hands of others, God’s instruction for our response is clear: We are called to love.
The dictionary defines an enemy as someone antagonistic toward another. The Bible, however, encourages us to regard an enemy as a brother or sister, as in 2 Thessalonians, or as a neighbor, as in the parable of the good Samaritan. Individuals put in prison for their transgressions are our brothers and sisters. When they’re released from prison, they’re our neighbors. Despite our foibles and how they manifest, God loves us. God loves us even though we are at times enemies to God and at times enemies to others. It is precisely because God loves our enemies that we must love our enemies.
There is no naiveté in this position. Loving enemies is a tough task. There are three important biblical lessons, however, that can make the task easier. One, we are misplacing our efforts when we focus on the sinner. “[W]e wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12). Two, even the most heinous actors can become right with God. We should remember that St. Paul, before his conversion, murdered and abused Christians. Three, as noted by Martin Luther King Jr., “love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.” Hating our enemies only brings more hate into the mix.
We cannot love our enemies—our sisters and brothers and our neighbors—when we focus on additional ways to punish them after our criminal justice system has said they can be safely released. Denying the franchise to persons who have returned to the community focuses on what a person did to get their voting rights abridged, not on repairing the damage done or healing the community.
Welcoming the outsider
Formerly incarcerated persons are the ultimate outsiders. They have been banished by the state from their communities and forced to live away from home and their loved ones. When they return, they frequently are told that there are certain areas where they cannot live and certain jobs they cannot have. In the Bible, outsiders are given different names—aliens, strangers, foreigners, travelers, and sojourners—but Christians are called to welcome them all and treat them hospitably.
These obligations remain even when the outsider has committed a wrong. Before God banished people from the Garden of Eden for their disobedience, God clothed them in garments made to protect them from the harsh life they would lead outside the garden. When God punished Cain for killing his brother Abel by forcing him to wander the world, God put a mark on Cain to protect him from being killed by those who found him. Despite their sins, God looked out for the well-being of these people and provided them with necessities for starting over in a new place.
These lessons provide powerful guidance for how we treat outsiders rejoining our community from prison. We are called to welcome them and to give them the basics to start over. Welcoming them means honoring their right to participate in our civic institutions. The basic necessities must include the tools to obtain what is needed for themselves and their loved ones. Restoring their right to vote helps with both.
Florida’s vote in favor of restoring voting rights for people with past convictions is a powerful call for improving our democracy. But it’s not just about restoring people’s voting rights: It is a crucial step toward restoring a person’s full humanity and self-determination. It is one of the most important ways to help people reintegrate into society. It is a vote of values.
Myrna Pérez is director of the Voting Rights and Elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice and a Sojourners contributing editor.
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