Evangelicalism and Politics. What Happened?
Please help me understand what has happened to the GOP and traditional Evangelicalism. I don’t feel at home there anymore. How did it happen? For most of my adult life as a soldier or federal agent, my interest in politics was limited to the size of the next pay raise.
My teen years, however, were different. Ending the Vietnam War and advocating for civil rights and gender equality became my core political objectives. I was living out a quote attributed to Winston Churchill, “Any man under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart, and any man over thirty who is not a conservative has no brains.”
Fiscally Conservative but Socially Liberal
True to form, in my 30s, I was a Reagan Republican—fiscally conservative but socially liberal. Then life happened. The years passed quickly, and one day, the world I had known was suddenly unrecognizable.
Evangelicalism and politics, even the federal government, had morphed into something different. The president said the news was fake and that the Justice Department and the intelligence community could not be trusted. Perhaps they knew something we didn’t.
This week, I read that the president-elect’s national security advisor, U.S. Representative Michael Waltz, is signaling a shift to replace seasoned intelligence professionals with loyalists who pledge allegiance to the former president above the Constitution. https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-nsc-loyalty-waltz-21913da0464f472cb9fef314fed488e5
That’s understandable. At least a dozen individuals who served in his last administration have refused to endorse him. Now, it appears that the so-called “Deep State” is being replaced by a “Sheep State” or a “Creep State,” with the Fourth Estate and many of our wealthiest citizens complicit in this troubling transformation.
Will There Be Accountability?
My hope is that a day will come when those who profited from an alliance with a crooked businessman and admitted sexual predator and those who lacked the courage to stand against him—whether in Congress, business, the media, on social platforms, or in government—will deeply regret their alliances or cowardice.
I also hope, perhaps in vain, that the Supreme Court will eventually intervene to curtail his overreach if he spirals out of control, ideally while we still speak English. Again, I don’t understand how granting a president the king’s power is constitutional. Isn’t that what the War of Independence was all about?
Opposing Camps
However, as pastors, we find it even harder to understand that our congregants no longer belong to traditional political parties; they occupy opposing camps. And we have stopped teasing our neighbor about his political views because he no longer speaks to us.
Some people have even left churches due to politics rather than theological disagreements. What concerns me most, however, is that those outside the church can’t recognize us by our love for one another. Our friends and neighbors need to know we love them, but they will not believe us if we don’t love each other.
John is speaking to American believers today when he says, “ . . . let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:7-8 | NIV).
Reclaiming Biblical Christianity
Call me a naive old man wearing his pastor hat. Still, in this space, I hope to get like-minded people thinking and discussing how we can lower the political temperature and join together to reclaim biblical Christianity. We can begin by doing our best to live peacefully with everyone and love those who consider us their “enemies.”
When people prefer ignorance to truth because they get their opinions and information from algorithm-driven social media or cable news, we can only strive to find common ground. If you’d like some help doing that when interacting with professed Christians, I recommend the After Party website. Here is a link to it. https://redeemingbabel.org/the-after-party/
Martin Niemöller
Finally, I’ll close with a call to action, inspired by the timeless words of Martin Niemöller, the German Lutheran pastor who survived the Nazi regime and witnessed his country rise again:
“First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Today, I’m choosing to stand up, speak out, and reach out to those who want to restore sanity to politics and Jesus to Christianity. How about you?