Rant: I voted for the candidate my church group hated, and my small group leader quit talking to me for 3 months
I live in a pretty small town outside of Waco, Texas, and back in 2022 our county had a race for the school board that got nasty fast. My church small group basically picked a guy for us, handed out his flyers after service, and one Sunday our leader said anyone voting the other way should search their heart. The other candidate was a mom who ran a hardware store downtown and wanted to slow down a book review policy I thought was way too broad. I sat with it for about a week, prayed about it, and voted for her anyway because I have two kids in that district and I read the policy myself. When people found out, three folks in the group just went quiet around me, and the leader skipped me when handing out the prayer list. The thing is, I still think voting your conscience is the whole point of being an adult in a free country, and I don't think my faith should be decided by a flyer on a folding table. The mom lost by 214 votes anyway, so my one vote did basically nothing except cost me a potluck buddy. Has anyone here gone against their own friend group on a local vote and had it go weird like that?
A 214 vote loss and you're framing this as "cost me a potluck buddy"? That math is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The leader skipped you on a prayer list, which is petty, sure, but three months of silence from one guy in a small group is not exactly exile to Elba. Small town church groups run hot and cold on everything from casseroles to candidates. Give it a year and somebody else will vote wrong on the bond measure and you'll be back to passing the green bean dish. This sounds less like a faith crisis and more like small town life being small.