Concerning “A pastoral letter on politics and the church” (June), I strongly object to the statement that “political parties have a primary goal of winning elections and imposing their policies on society.” This is simply not true. An important example is the Democratic Party and President Lyndon Johnson when Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson knew what that meant for the Democratic Party: a complete shift of votes of the White Christian South from Democratic to Republican, where they still are today, many still growling about LBJ and his betrayal. That was followed up, in 1981, by the Republican “Southern strategy,” which focused on winning elections in the South without the votes of Black people and has morphed into massive gerrymandering and almost everything imaginable to prevent or reduce the weight of the Black vote everywhere. This shows that one U.S. political party, at least, can and does make decisions based upon what its members believe, even when they know it will reduce their votes.

Donald E. Voth, Albuquerque, N.M.