Article adapted from episode content.
Are evangelical conservatives on a power grab by supporting political candidates? The accusation is often levied that Christians are trading a viable Christian witness for power, grabbing their own power structures rather than being a faithful witness. But I want to address this idea that engaging in politics is inherently dirty or a compromise of Christian values. I want to make the case that politics is not inherently evil and that, in fact, Christians have a responsibility to engage politically to promote good and limit evil.
Are Christians Acting For Their Own Gain?
When Christians vote to limit evil and promote the good, they are often accused of acting merely for power. But is this really the case? When I vote the way I do, is it for my own gain, or for the unborn’s gain? Is it my gain, or the gain of children who aren’t going to be forced into transgender surgeries? Is it my gain, or is it families who are now better protected from migrant gangs? I vote the way I do to love my neighbor.
It is frustrating to hear fellow believers blanketly condemned as having no principle, no spiritual foundation, and only wanting to grab power politically. This is nothing more than a broadside ad hominem attack.
Thankfully, in the last election, evangelical support for certain political candidates went up, not down. Many have grown weary of those on the left who come at us with a holier-than-thou moral superiority without ever really advancing an argument. They smear us, saying, “Oh, you just want power, and you’re hurting our witness for Christ”.
Notice that their target audience is always only one side of the political spectrum. They claim that those being hurt are the supposed seekers out there who would only come to Jesus if we would vote the right way. They seem to think of the left-leaning college student with rainbow hair and a rainbow flag on their backpack, and assume that this person will not consider Christianity because a believer voted to reduce evil.
But this argument never asks how this works on both sides of the political spectrum. Dennis Prager, a well-known non-Christian conservative Jewish talk show host, is a thoughtful guy who engages his critics honestly and is very compassionate. What bothers Dennis Prager about evangelical Christians is that they lack moral courage and moral nuance. They aren’t able to look at something and say, “How do we weigh the whole situation and promote the good and limit the evil in so far as we can?”. What has been an obstacle to a guy like him coming to faith in Christ has been the cowardice of a lot of evangelical pastors.
Why do voices on the left only look at conservatives and say, “Well, that’s what you people are doing?”. The sword cuts both ways.
What is Politics?
When people say politics is dirty, the first question I ask is, “What do you mean by politics?”. Often, all they do is tell me about all that can go wrong with it. They say, “Oh, people get power-hungry, and they sacrifice their principles for political gain” or, “Christians are too involved in politics, and they’re not loving their neighbors enough or sharing the gospel enough”. All of that may or may not be true, but it doesn’t answer the question.
Here is a helpful definition: Politics is where the citizen interacts with his community to promote the good of his neighbor. It is a conversation about what a flourishing society looks like, and when you participate in that conversation, you are engaging in politics. Why is that a bad thing?.
The fact that people abuse politics is not unknown, and we don’t disagree on that. Of course, politics can be abused. Of course, there are candidates and parties that use it to aggrandize their own political structures, their own personal wealth, or maybe their own agendas. We all agree with that. But why is it wrong to engage in public policy for the benefit of seeing everyone flourish in the human community?. Really, politics at its core is about pursuing the common good. And when you engage for the sake of pursuing the common good, you are acting biblically. You are doing the right thing.
A Partisan Hack?
I have been accused of being a partisan hack, of being more Republican than Christian. Again, I want to ask, “What do you mean by Christian?”. Often, the Christianity that the leftist has in mind is very different than the biblical one we read about in the pages of scripture. What they usually mean is you don’t support this or that leftist agenda; therefore, you don’t line up with Christianity. Often, that takes the form of the assumption that charity and big government programs are synonymous, and they’re not.
There is a debate to be had about how we ought to best care for the poor. Is it best to care for the poor by taxing people and redistributing wealth, or is it best to care for the poor by allowing the economy to thrive so that a rising tide lifts all boats so that we build wealth for the sake of getting more and more people able to flourish economically?. That’s a debate we ought to have. But it ought to be a debate in good faith, not a debate where the left poisons the well and says, “Oh, you don’t support immigrants coming here. You don’t support open borders. You don’t support welfare. You don’t support taxes to support people that are poor; therefore, you don’t love as you should as the way Jesus would love”.
Let’s have a good faith discussion about how we care for the poor and how we best do that in a way that causes the common good to flourish for everyone. It’s one thing to have a heart for the poor, and it’s quite another to have a mind for the poor and to actually care about policies that will make a difference.
We see the same kind of specious thinking come up on abortion when people say things like, “Well, you know, you should be wanting to reduce abortion, not merely making it illegal”. I do want to reduce abortion, but I don’t want to merely reduce abortion while leaving the practice legal. Imagine how crazy it would sound if I were to say, “You know, I’d like to reduce racism, but I’d like to leave it legal to lynch blacks”. That would be a crazy way to think about my fellow human beings. But this is exactly what people do on abortion. “Well, let’s reduce it, but let’s not make it illegal. I don’t want government doing that”. If the unborn are human, what’s wrong with passing laws saying you can’t intentionally kill them without offering just cause?. And by the way, if the unborn aren’t human, why do you care about reducing abortion?. These are the questions the political left never answers in a way that is compelling or persuasive.
As far as political support goes, my support for any political party will be contingent, meaning it will depend on the circumstances and the principles that party embraces. I would ditch the GOP tomorrow if they ditched my foundational principles like loving my unborn neighbor, like upholding the rights of children not to be forcibly undergoing sex surgeries that their parents want them to have, or if the GOP totally abandons a philosophy of natural rights and liberties. The Democrat party has abandoned all principle on all of those issues. I can still work with a party that needs to improve. I can’t work with one hellbent on butchering unborn human beings and pursuing redefinitions of marriage and forcing a moral agenda on the public that will harm human flourishing, not aid it.
My support is contingent and not absolute. I don’t need to fall for this idea that I’m just a partisan hack and, therefore, my political involvement is about my political gain. It’s the way I love my neighbor. Because I love my neighbor, I want my neighbor to flourish. And I am convinced he will flourish better under conservative governance than he will under leftist rule. That’s not a compromise. That’s an argument we need to have. If you as a leftist think you have a better argument for human flourishing and you can demonstrate that a leftist worldview aids human flourishing better than a conservative worldview, bring your ideas and arguments to the table. But a smear job against conservative Christians just won’t do.
What Does it Look Like for a Christian to Engage Politically?
When Christians engage politically, they’re not doing it for their own personal political gain. They’re doing it to promote the flourishing of the common good, and their motivation is not raw political power. It’s love for their neighbor, perhaps their unborn neighbor or a child who has been deemed a trans child that is being forced into destructive surgeries that will harm them for the rest of their lives or perhaps a redefinition of marriage which harms the flourishing of the home. Christians are engaging out of love for their fellow man, their neighbor as the Bible would put it, not merely for their own political good.
If you look at scripture, you will see unmistakably that God holds sovereigns responsible for promoting justice and human flourishing. If we are Bible-believing Christians and we want to practice a biblically grounded faith, we do not have the option of sitting out elections.
It is a silly response to say that Jesus never engaged in politics or that the Apostle Paul wasn’t political. Did Jesus or the Apostle Paul live in a constitutional republic like ours where the people are sovereign?. No. They lived in the Roman Empire where the emperor was sovereign. You didn’t have the ability to act politically. So, no wonder we don’t see scripture really talking about this. On the other hand, Jesus did act politically when he overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple. He was sending a very clear message: “You are not sovereign here”.
But even if scripture nowhere says that we’re to act politically, it wouldn’t prove that acting politically is wrong. The biblical characters we read about in scripture did not have the luxury like we do of being part of a constitutional republic where we, the people, are sovereign. If God holds sovereigns responsible, and in a constitutional republic like ours, we are the sovereign, who is God going to hold responsible for upholding justice and loving our neighbor?. That’s right, us. When we sit out elections, we’re not piously affirming biblical truth. We are actually negating our God-given duty to love our unborn neighbor, love our our physical neighbors next door, love our communities by promoting human flourishing. This is not a biblical way for us to look at things.
What’s the point of voting when all the candidates are flawed?. You don’t get to choose perfection. Your choice will always be for a candidate who will promote good and limit evil as best as possible in the current political environment and one who’s going to run the other direction and actually promote evil wholesale. You’re always going to be faced with that troubling tension. But that doesn’t mean there’s not a right answer. The right answer for the Christian is this: engage politically for the sake of limiting evil and promoting the good in so far as you can. That does not mean you’re compromising by voting the lesser of two evils. It’s more accurate to say that you are voting to lessen evil. You are using the voice God has given you in a constitutional republic to lessen evil and promote good for your neighbors. That’s part of what it means to engage politically.
The Gospel Transforms Hearts
Some Christians will attack those of us involved politically and say, “Well, when are you going to learn that only the gospel transforms hearts?”. Only the gospel can make dead people alive spiritually. Only the gospel, the saving work of Jesus on the cross, is going to take someone who is spiritually dead and transfer them from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God.
But the purpose of government is not to save souls eternally. The purpose of government is to uphold justice and restrain evil. Preaching the gospel and having people be converted to Christ is one way to restrain evil in the culture. If you become a believer and your heart is changed, you will become sanctified. However, not all people are going to be saved. God has given us another way to restrain evil in the culture, not only through conversion but through the practice of civil law, where government restrains evil. The purpose of conversion is to change the heart and make it open to the working of God where it wasn’t before. The purpose of civil law is not to change hearts necessarily, though that can happen in terms of certain legislative principles. Rather, the purpose of law is to control the heartless, those whose hearts won’t be changed through the gospel.
Martin Luther King Jr. said in a 1962 speech that the law cannot make the white man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and that matters. When it comes to individuals who won’t have their hearts changed from the inside, the law is needed to control their external behavior. When Christians engage politically, we are doing so to not only see cultures flourish but to control heartless individuals who refuse to have their hearts changed. That’s why we engage as Christians and why we don’t need to fall for this phony accusation that we just love our political power. I’m engaging politically for the sake of my neighbor to see him flourish or her flourish whether in the womb or out. And I’m doing it out of love, not my own profit motive.
It is good that rank and file evangelicals did not fall for this poisoning of the well that we see from evangelical leaders that lean left. I’m hoping that the people who are promoting this nonsense that we are trading our Christian witness for political power will see their influence diminish because they are not advocating a biblical worldview. It’s time to quit preaching at us. We’re smart enough to know we ought to promote the good and limit the evil in so far as we can. And when you try to talk us out of it by shaming us, something’s wrong with your moral compass.