Oh, America, what am I going to do with you? You claim to be a Christian nation but when the time comes to elect your president you act as if you don’t know me.

Woe to you who think you can push me aside in an election year, thinking God’s standards are fine for religion but this is politics!

I hate it when your candidates use my name to get elected but don’t follow my teachings to conduct their campaigns. I despise the half-truths and lies they put in their television commercials. I abhor their personal attacks on each other.

Woe to you citizens, who allow this kind of politics to go on. I can’t stand it when you respond to negativism; when your votes are attracted by a strong military and influenced by money and big corporations, with little thought of positive, compassionate programs for humanity. Don’t you realize that if compassion is not in the issues, then love cannot be in the hearts of the candidates?

I call you Americans to insist on presidential campaigns that are run on the highest ethical road… the road of honesty, fairness, compassion and justice… the road that does not degrade you and your democracy. If you run your politics on this road, I will travel with you and my strength will come to your nation. This is the hope that is yours, and you can say in all truthfulness, “WE ARE A NATION UNDER GOD.”

(I wrote this in the “prophetic spirit” during the summer of the 1988 presidential election between Michael Dukakis and George H. Bush. I believe these words apply even more today. Our political system is broken and failing miserably. I know God is a patient God, but how long will we not listen – how long will we turn away from our source of righteousness and hope?)