In 2021, Rick Toner went to a revival outside St. Louis with a question: How, he wondered, could he could talk about God without alienating nonbelievers?
He departed the gathering with a new mission — to weave his faith into a civic calling, via church voter guides. The idea was to survey local candidates for elected office about where they stood on several issues of Christian concern and print their answers in a PDF available to the public.
The latest installation of the project emerged Wednesday evening, with high participation rates among Republicans and Democrats competing (or running uncontested) on their parties’ respective upcoming primary ballots.
Sponsored in part by Chattanooga’s Calvary Chapel and Silverdale Baptist Church, the guides advise readers to review answers with care.
“Pray and ask the almighty for discernment,” the guides say. “The kingdom of God is all about truth, while politics is a system fraught with compromise. Make sure you consider the candidates’ answers with a heavenly mindset.”
The public could submit questions through an online portal late last year, Toner said by phone, and a committee then determined which ones appeared with the greatest frequency and curated them accordingly.
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The idea for the voting guides came to Toner at the St. Louis-area revival when he walked by a booth. The booth was associated with a Colorado Messianic Jewish man named Chaim Goldman who was trying to start a movement to produce church voter guides around the nation.
In local elections, Toner said he had only voted for local candidates he had met personally and asked questions of.
But he was intrigued by the idea of a neutral guide — which would have the added benefit of not endangering the nonprofit status of churches that disseminated it — that might rise above partisan anger and division.
“I believe God is not picking a side,” Toner said.
On the drive home from St. Louis with his wife, Toner discussed bringing the guides to Hamilton County.
Toner and other volunteers launched the project with two editions for the 2022 primary and general election — including Spanish versions.
Work began late last year on the third guide, in preparation for the March 5 primary elections. (Voters must be registered to vote by Feb. 5. They can check their status and register to vote online.)
On Wednesday, hours before his guides would be released, Toner was fiddling with the PDFs to ensure their file sizes were not unwieldy as he prepared for them to go live.
He was pleased, he said, with the level of bipartisan participation this year.
Eight of eight Republicans queried answered the guide’s questions, posed to them over Survey Monkey a few weeks ago, he said. So did five of six Democrats and one out of two independents, he said.
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Candidates discussed their personal experience and their views on themes ranging from school infrastructure to LGBTQ+ policies. Asked about the relationship between the Ten Commandments and the law, Ed Garcia, one Republican school board aspirant, answered.
“It is impossible to govern oneself effectively without a strong sense of morality and deeply rooted principles,” he said. “As a Christian, I believe that the Ten Commandments are the cornerstone of these principles.”
The same question was answered by his opponent in the Republican primary, Jodi Schaffer.
“Separation of church and state has been abused to establish secular humanism as our nation’s official religion, thereby replacing moral truth with moral relativism,” Schaffer said. “School board policies must be based on moral truths and must protect the constitutional rights of teachers, students and parents.”
Toner, a volunteer, said he plans to use some of the sponsor funds to distribute cards linking to the guides in willing churches and perhaps even advertise it on billboards. He said he hopes readers print out the guides and sit down with them — not just in the voting booth but beforehand, at home, perhaps with a cup of coffee and a sample ballot.
The guide offers words of advice, for example, to be wary of wishy-washy answers or to reach out to candidates directly, though it asks voters to do so with respect.
“Running for office is hard, stressful, time consuming work,” the guide says, “and these are your fellow citizens who have lives, families, jobs … and feelings (just like you!)”
Learn more
Access the guide at votechattanooga.org.