Bringing Christian values into focus
Values — Students learn how to become champions through involvement in the political process. Photo credit: Ruth Bibby
The Value Bus rolled into town Friday, encouraging students to register to vote for their values in the upcoming Presidential elections with their “Your Money, Your Values, Your Vote 2012” tour.
The Values Bus is the brainchild of the Family Research Council Action (FRC Action) and the Heritage Foundation.
Offering young adults the opportunity to have a voice, the Heritage Foundation and FRC Action joined together to better promote their campaigns, according to Senior Vice President of FRC Action Thomas McClusky.
“(FRC Action has) partnered (with the Heritage Foundation) a lot on a number of different things. There are a lot of friends within both organizations,” McClusky said. “They’ve worked with us on the Valley voter summit, our annual big event, which Liberty is involved with.”
The two organizations decided to join together after a successful bus tour through Iowa in 2010, according to McClusky.
According to the Values Bus website, Liberty was one of many stops on the Values Bus’ route.
“We have a lot of good partnerships here (at Liberty). My boss, Tony Perkins, is an alumnus,” McClusky said. “(President) Barack Obama has supposedly really got the youth involved to vote, except when you look at the figures that’s just not true. So what we are trying to do is to target traditionally conservative colleges like Liberty. They are the best people to be ‘champions.’ They want to get involved beyond just ‘liking’ something on Facebook.”
Though both organizations have come together to achieve one purpose, they also both have different focuses, according to their respective websites.
“Heritage is promoting their Saving the American Dream, which is their budget plan for the future, about how to cut spending and balance the budget within 10 years,” McClusky said. “We (FRC Action) are pushing the values that we represent and issues that we represent of marriage and life and religious liberty, but mainly what we are trying to do is get people to register to vote.”
According to McClusky, when a student registers to vote on the computers available outside of the Values Bus, their name automatically get put into a system that will connect them to 15 to 30 like-minded people who are not registered to vote in their area. This list of registered students is what McClusky calls the “champion” list.
This will allow people to encourage each other to register and vote their values, McClusky said.
“Getting people to vote is just the first step in getting them active in government. It is a lot of what we do at FRC,” McClusky said. “We have a church outreach program and we have a state legislators program where we try to work with state legislators.”
“Our goal is to motivate Christians … (to) be involved in the public square. There is this almost mythology of separation of church and state and people think that the church can’t get involved in politics,” McClusky said.
Neither organization is endorsing a candidate, however, they do not shy away from endorsing certain values to look for, McClusky said.
“We need more people active in government,” McClusky said. “We need a lot of voices in government, in both parties, otherwise one party is going to usurp the constitution and the other party is just going to let them. “
Students can register to be a “champion” on ivotevalues.org.