OPINION:
Nearly 45% of the roughly 90 million self-proclaimed evangelical Christians in the United States who are eligible to vote “fail to vote in Presidential election cycles,” and 15 million are not registered, according to a report published by My Faith Votes.
Why are roughly 40 million evangelical Christians disengaged from political activity, including the basic civic duty of voting?
Look no further than pulpits on Sunday mornings — in many cases, either an outright apolitical message is preached to congregants, or there is complete silence on the subject of civic engagement.
A growing number of perhaps well-intentioned but ill-equipped or doctrinally unsound Christians hold the view that politics should not be addressed in the church, which is a community of believers. If not within the church, where will Christians be equipped to know and apply biblical truth to the issues and ideologies of the day so they aren’t taken captive by deceptive philosophy (Colossians 2:8)?
Church pastors, elders and staff often assert that the church doesn’t discuss politics or political parties because that would be divisive. Consequently, church members are silenced and censored by their church leaders for bringing up biblical topics that are viewed as political.
I experienced this when sharing an article I wrote titled “Let’s Stop Calling It Gender-Affirming Care” — widely accessible online and already reached by millions — with 20 or so women I knew from church. A staff member and the pastor deemed the article divisive and inappropriate to share with my fellow believers.
At issue was the article factually referenced the voting records of politicians of various political parties. This was considered crossing the line they held separating faith and politics, a line evidently more important to maintain than encouraging fellow believers to stand up for the biblical truth that God created humankind male and female (Genesis 1:27) and God’s warning against harming children (Matthew 18:6-7).
The assertion that anything deemed political is off-limits in the church is frequently accompanied by an assertion that the church should instead promote Jesus and the Gospel. This false dichotomy advances a view that political issues of the day (or the political parties associated with them) that offer worldviews directly at odds with biblical doctrine are irrelevant to believers. How does the church effectively promote Jesus and the Gospel if it avoids applying biblical truth to all aspects of life?
Contrary to a “religious” avoidance of any issue deemed to have political implications, the church must address and evaluate issues and instruct its members on those that are front and center in life rather than keeping them off-limits under the guise of preventing division. The Word of God does divide truth from untruth (Hebrews 4:12-13). And Christians are implored to use Scripture to teach, rebuke, correct and train believers (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
The Bible has much to say about many political issues — the sanctity of human life, parental responsibility for their children’s training, religious liberty, morality, etc.
As evidenced by the political party platforms, one party’s established positions on the major issues are diametrically opposed to a biblical worldview. How can a follower of Christ claim to hold the Bible as the supreme authority vote to promote policy positions in direct conflict with a biblical worldview?
In a sermon, a pastor recently told his congregation: “I don’t know most of your politics, and I don’t need to know. I have no doubt that we have people in this church on both sides of the political aisle for different reasons. And that’s OK. That’s not only OK, that’s healthy for us as a gospel-centered church because it testifies to our belief that Jesus is bigger than our politics, because he is.”
Does it? Or does it rather imply that some areas of a Christian’s life are off-limits to the authority of the Bible? Would the church hold that view with other areas of a professing believer’s life contradicting biblical truth?
The pastor-elder, charged with watching over the flock under his care (1 Peter 5:2), was essentially communicating from the pulpit that he was not interested in knowing their worldview. He also communicated the notion that it’s healthy for a body of believers to embrace worldviews that attack biblical truth and call evil good (Isaiah 5:20).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
In a 1983 address to the National Association of Evangelicals, President Ronald Reagan warned against “declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”
The strength of the church and its fidelity to a biblical worldview are crumbling because followers of Christ are drawing a line separating faith and politics.
What if the church instead called its congregants to be light in the darkness (Isaiah 42:6-7), a city on a hill (Matthew 5:14) and agents of change in communities and the country?
The church would be better for it, and America would be better for it. The transforming power of Jesus and the Gospel would advance further, giving freedom to captives.
• Keri D. Ingraham is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and the director of the American Center for Transforming Education.
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