If I were God, I'd be a little miffed.

On November 6, 2003, Newsday reported that, according to Republican political strategist Karl Rove, George W. Bush lost the popular vote in the 2000 election because of a "relatively weak" turnout of Evangelical Christian voters.

How does this happen? How is it that believers can be persuaded to attend church on Sunday, attend myriad church functions and practice daily devotions, but cannot be persuaded to execute a basic civic duty like voting in a presidential election? How can a significant contingent be such good and well-meaning church members, but such poor citizens?

Perhaps, when it comes to citizenship, too few church leaders are persuading.

When I heard the Rove quote, I asked myself, what if pastors were to ask congregants to practice political devotions each morning along with their daily religious devotions? What if, after taking 15 minutes each morning to study their faith, believers then took ten minutes to actually put their faith into practice by writing their elected representatives and/or media outlets regarding a single important issue?

Imagine the effect of tens of millions of Evangelicals, along with their conservative Jewish and Catholic allies, "voting" daily through letters, e-mails and faxes to the powerful who shape our world and who, in most cases, are eager to know their constituents' opinions.

It is often repeated that evil triumphs when good men do nothing. This aphorism evokes the image of the many courageous souls whose bodies were sacrificed struggling against great evils such as Nazism, Fascism and Communism. Because many good men did nothing, the bravest of good men had to do a great deal indeed.

Ideally, such sacrifices should not be necessary in a free and democratic nation. In such a nation, both domestic and foreign evils can be killed before they propagate if the many millions of good men and women practice not activism (admirable though that may be) but basic citizenship: becoming informed about contemporary issues, voting, and taking a mere ten minutes a day to express their opinions to their elected representatives and media outlets.

To facilitate this crucial operation of democracy and faith, TenMinuteLobbyist.com provides essential links for contacting relevant elected representatives, media outlets and opinion leaders. It also features links to timely analysis of today's most pressing issues.

If you would like the satisfaction of acting upon your beliefs daily, visit and bookmark TenMinuteLobbyist.com so you can access it each morning for your ten-minute political devotions. If you find the site helpful, advise others of it by e-mail or create a link to it from your own website or blog. If you are a pastor, rabbi, priest or a leader of any stripe, encourage those you lead to practice political devotions.

Ten minutes may not seem like much, but multiply it by millions and that small contribution becomes a mass movement which, in fact, can preserve Western civilization.