Jesus Is Lord of the Ballot Box: How Rochester Christians Should Vote This November

This week, Rochester got a civics lesson whether we wanted one or not.

New York State agreed to pay $24 million to the family of Robert Brooks, the 43-year-old Greece man beaten to death by correction officers at Marcy Correctional Facility in December 2024 — the largest settlement of its kind in state history. The medical examiner ruled it a homicide. One officer was convicted of murder; five others pleaded to manslaughter. Meanwhile, the city's full zoning-code rewrite is heading into its final round of public forums, with council hearings October 21–22 and a final vote possible this year. And Waterview Heights, the 229-bed Charlotte nursing home, is closing its doors after federal regulators terminated its Medicare and Medicaid agreements, scattering vulnerable elderly residents.

Six weeks from now, we vote. The governor's race, local offices, and the direction of this city are on the ballot. So the question every Christian in Rochester should be asking is not just who to vote for, but how — as a Christian — to vote at all.

Start where Kuyper started: Christ claims every square inch.

Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch Reformed theologian and prime minister, famously said there is not a square inch of human existence over which Christ does not cry, "Mine!" Politics is not a neutral zone we enter as citizens and exit as Christians. The ballot box is under Christ's lordship like everything else.

That means voting is stewardship, not idolatry. No candidate is the Messiah, and no party is the church. When Christians treat an election as the final battle between good and evil, we've confused the kingdom of God with the kingdoms of men. Vote with conviction, but never with worship.

A biblical example: Naboth's vineyard.

Long before Marcy Correctional Facility, there was a vineyard in Jezreel. King Ahab wanted Naboth's land. Naboth refused to sell his ancestral inheritance. So Queen Jezebel arranged false charges, had Naboth stoned to death, and handed the vineyard to her husband. State power, deployed to crush one vulnerable man for the benefit of the powerful. A cover-up dressed in legal procedure.

But God sent Elijah with an indictment: "Have you not murdered a man and seized his property?" (1 Kings 21:19). The verdict from heaven was swift and severe.

Here is the pattern Scripture never tires of repeating: God notices when the powerful crush the powerless. The Brooks case is Naboth's vineyard with modern paperwork — men with state authority, a dead man who cannot speak for himself, and a system that initially closed ranks. A $24 million settlement is an admission that something went terribly wrong. But settlements don't resurrect the dead, and they don't reform the prison. Christians should read that story the way Elijah read Jezebel's: as a failure of justice that demands our attention, our grief, and our vote.

The state's God-given job is justice — especially for the vulnerable.

Romans 13 says the governing authority is "God's servant for your good," bearing the sword against wrongdoing. The state's mandate is public justice: punishing evil, protecting the innocent, and ordering common life so neighbors can flourish.

Scripture is blunt about where God's attention falls: "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves... Defend the rights of the poor and needy" (Proverbs 31:8–9). "He has shown you, O mortal, what is good: to act justly and to love mercy" (Micah 6:8).

A Kuyperian voter asks of every candidate and every policy: Will this do justice? Will it protect the vulnerable, or sacrifice them? That question cuts across party lines, which is exactly the point.

Government is limited — and that's good news.

Kuyper's doctrine of sphere sovereignty says God gave distinct authority to distinct spheres: the family, the church, the school, the business, and the state. The state is one servant among many, not the lord of all. It may not absorb the church, the family, or the conscience.

This protects us from two opposite errors. One is expecting government to save us — the messianic error. The other is withdrawing from public life entirely — the pietist error. Christians neither baptize the state nor abandon it. We engage it, critically and hopefully, as one sphere under Christ's rule.

Local elections matter more than cable news tells you.

The zoning vote this fall will shape Rochester's neighborhoods — housing supply, equity for Black and Latino communities — more directly than anything debated on national television. City council races, county offices, and state assembly seats touch your actual neighbor's life. If you only vote in presidential years, you're skipping the elections that decide what kind of city your children inherit.

Voices for the journey: quotes for different groups.

For the activist, tired of being told to wait: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." — Frederick Douglass, who made Rochester his home and published his abolitionist newspaper here. Your vote is one form that demand takes.

For the cynic who thinks one vote changes nothing: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." — Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail. The Brooks settlement happened because people refused to look away. Indifference is also a verdict.

For the Black Christian carrying a long history: "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." — Desmond Tutu. Neutrality is not holiness. The God of Exodus takes sides — with the oppressed.

For the young believer told that faith is private: "An unjust law is no law at all." — Augustine. Your faith was never meant to stay inside the church walls. Kuyper ran a newspaper, founded a university, and became prime minister because Christ's lordship doesn't stop at the sanctuary door.

For the one who says politics doesn't belong in church: The prophets would like a word. Nathan confronted David. Elijah confronted Ahab. John the Baptist confronted Herod — and lost his head for it. Speaking truth to power is not a departure from the faith; it is one of its oldest traditions.

So how do you decide?

Three questions, in order: Does this candidate's record — not their rhetoric — show a pattern of doing justice and loving mercy? Does their vision respect the limits of government, neither making it a savior nor letting it abandon the vulnerable? And am I voting as a steward of Christ's lordship, or as a partisan of some earthly tribe?

No party platform is the gospel. Vote for people, not brands.

A necessary condemnation: MAGA politics.

We have to name something plainly. The MAGA movement — not every Republican voter, but the movement and its theology — has fused Christian language with grievance, cruelty toward immigrants, contempt for the vulnerable, and the lie that America belongs to one tribe. That is not Christianity. It is Christian nationalism wearing a cross it does not understand. When politicians mock the poor, cheer family separations, and call it strength, that is the opposite of Micah 6:8. When churches bless it, they trade the gospel for access to power — the oldest temptation in the book. A Kuyperian cannot be neutral here: Christ's lordship exposes every idol, including this one.

Sidenote: the silence in Rochester's pulpits.

And here is the harder word, for our own city. Plenty of Rochester churches will preach against personal sin all year and never once name the political idolatry sitting in their own pews. They will pray for the nation in vague terms but stay silent while MAGA politics dehumanize the immigrant, the poor, and the Black neighbor down the street. That silence is not neutrality — as Tutu said, it is a choice. A pulpit that cannot condemn cruelty when it comes wrapped in a flag and a Bible verse has lost its prophetic voice. Rochester doesn't need more silent churches. It needs churches with the courage of Nathan, Elijah, and John the Baptist.

The verdict we deserved — and the one Christ took.

But before we close, we have to be honest about something. Every one of us has stood where the guilty stand.

The evidence against humanity is overwhelming and the record is complete: "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). The charge sheet is long. The prosecution rests. And the sentence for sin is death (Romans 6:23) — not a fine we could pay, not a settlement we could negotiate, but a penalty we could never satisfy.

In the Brooks case, the legal machinery eventually produced convictions: one for murder, five for manslaughter. The guilty were named, the penalty assigned. That's how justice is supposed to work — the wrongdoer bears the weight of the wrong.

But at the cross, the machinery of justice produced something scandalous: an acquittal for the guilty and a sentence for the innocent. Barabbas — an insurrectionist, a murderer, a man with a real charge sheet — walked free. Jesus of Nazareth, against whom Pilate could find no fault, took the sentence. No plea bargain. No reduced charge. The full penalty, executed publicly, on our behalf.

This is the great exchange, stated in the language of the courtroom: we were indicted, and Christ was convicted in our place. The verdict we deserved fell on Him. The acquittal we could never earn was handed to us. "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Justice was not waived — it was satisfied. The debt was not dismissed — it was paid, in full, by another.

And this is why Christians care about justice in Rochester. Not because we are the righteous judging the wicked, but because we are the acquitted who know exactly what mercy cost. We pursue justice for the Robert Brookses of this world because we know what it is to be Barabbas — guilty, and set free anyway. Grace received becomes justice extended. We vote, we advocate, we show up, because the mercy shown to us at the cross now flows through us into the city.

Our hope was never on the ballot. It was on a cross outside Jerusalem. But because of that cross, we can walk into the voting booth without fear and without idolatry — free to seek justice, because justice has already been done for us.

We're planting a church in Rochester for people who want to take all of this seriously — faith that shows up in the city, not just on Sundays. Join us Sundays at 1:30 PM. Details at smsnovel.com.