Just about every election season sees the emergence of a new religious-right effort designed to mobilize conservative Christians to vote. The latest such effort comes from My God Votes, which exists to "empower religious leaders and their congregations to take a stand on godly governance, current events and religious freedoms."
Founded by Texas pastor John Greiner of Glorious Way Church in Houston, My God Votes is run by James Buntrock, who serves as associate pastor at Griener's church. Earlier this month, Buntrock hosted an inaugural banquet for My God Votes featuring religious-right pseudo-historian Tim Barton as the keynote speaker. In opening the event, Buntrock laid out the organization's explicitly Christian nationalist agenda, declaring that having right-wing Christians in control of government is necessary to fulfill God's command that they "have dominion over the Earth and to subdue it."
"I want to start off by saying this is not a political event," Buntrock declared, prompting laughter from the audience and forcing him to insist that he was being serious. "I say that with all sincerity, because what we're doing here tonight is kingdom business. This is God's business."
"Let me talk just for a minute about what it means to serve in government," Buntrock continued. "Jesus has delegated his authority to us, the believers, and we're supposed to operate with his authority on this Earth. And then we take a piece of our God-given authority and we delegate it to somebody to serve in office who's here to serve us. And so when we read Romans 13 with that understanding, you recognize the lines of authority."
"Those who serve in office are called God's ministers for good," Buntrock added. "He is a minister to execute wrath on those who practice evil, and so we have a line of defense that we elect and put in office to execute wrath. They call him God's Avenger. All of you who are elected people, I want you to know you are God's Avenger to execute wrath against evil. So thank you for serving in God's kingdom tonight."
"I want you to know that God is in the business of government, he's in the business of governing. It started out in Genesis when he created man and woman, and he gave them dominion and he charged them to have dominion over the Earth and to subdue it," Buntrock declared. "So, you gotta subdue it, take it by force and then have dominion rule over it. So he's charged man from the very beginning to rule over creation. God established the branches of government that we have in this country; he's our king, he's our lawgiver, and he's our judge: the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches of government."
