Is It Unchristian to Vote Democratic?
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler recently said,
“We have a responsibility to make certain that Christians understand the stewardship of the vote, which means the discipleship of the vote, which means the urgency of the vote, the treasure of the vote. And they need to understand that insofar as they do not vote, or they vote wrongly, they are unfaithful because the vote is a powerful stewardship.”
Pastor Dwight McKissic responded,
“Here we have a sitting president of an sbc (Southern Baptist Convention) seminary who is emphatically saying to vote ‘wrongly’ matters to God. Voting ‘wrongly’ to Mohler means voting Dem. God is not a Dem or Republican. To imply that voting exclusively Republican is God’s choice defies Jhn. 18:36.”
I don’t know Pastor McKissic, but two people I admire and like have recently posted on Twitter in such a way as to make me think they are highly uncomfortable with the idea that an American Christian must vote Republican. Julie Roys and Marvin Olasky haven’t actually written articles on this, but I think I can see their views, and guess at their reasons. They don’t like the idea of Christianity being partisan, of being dragged into association with a bunch of politicians, most of whom are non-Christian and out for their own selfish ends. They don’t like the idea that to be Christian you have to like low taxes and small government and take a particular position on the capital gains tax.
I quite agree on this last point. A Christian can believe in low taxes or high, small government or big, capital gains taxes at time of gain, at realization, or not at all. But that’s a red herring. You might vote Republican even if you’re opposed to every single one of the Republic Party platform’s economic positions. You’d be voting Republican because the Democrats are even worse on economic issues, or the Republicans are good or the Democrats bad on other issues.
And indeed the Democrats are very very bad on certain issues, and those issues are more important than the economy or foreign policy. They are issues of national sin, which arguably are *all* the Christian should care about:
Should little boys be castrated and little girls be mutilated?
Should we allow people with mental illness to mutilate themselves?
Should it be legal for a 7-month baby, viable in the womb, to be killed by his mother?
Should children be taught in school that sodomy is a wonderful source of pleasure rather than a sin?
Should it be forbidden to mention Jesus in public schools?
Should it be forbidden to say insulting things about Islam and Hinduism?
Should school boards refrain from trying to stop school librarians from buying immoral books for the children to read?
Should men be allowed to “marry” men?
I think it’s fair to say these are all mainstream Democratic positions and someone couldn’t win a Democratic primary if he answered No to any of them. I think, too, that someone *could* win a Republican primary if he answered No to all of them, though it might make his winning more difficult.
So the question is whether a Christian can vote in good conscience for a candidate who believes all these things. I think not.
You can’t say, “But the Democrats are so good on capital gains tax reform!” or “The Democrats favor open immigration, and we should be kind to poor people from other countries,” or “Some Republicans aren’t as hostile to President Putin as they should be.” Those aren’t important enough objections. You can come up with religious arguments for all of them, I’m sure, but that’s stretching it just as much using religion to support Republican position on optimal tax rates. If you do make biblical argements, I think you’re just using the Bible to rationalize beliefs you have for secular reasons. So you have no choice. You have to vote Republican.
To be sure, that makes me uncomfortable too. But I’m uncomfortable for a different reason. My reason for discomfort is that it’s awful, horrible, unprecedented, in America for one of the major political parties to be entirely unchristian— or perhaps we should say, anti-christian. It used to be that Democrats were just as Christian as Republicans. Indeed, in, say, 1930, the Democrats were probably the party that had more Christians, if we count (as I would) Roman Catholics and Southern Protestants. In the past, there was not much difference between the parties in their attitudes towards sin. The Democrats were more favorable to the prohibition of alcohol, but that position has dubious Christian justification and the party was sharply split between the southern drys and the northern wets. The Democrats were more in favor of segregation and slavery, but, again, the party was split between northerners and southerners. Today, the Democratic Party is the party of sin.
Perhaps some of you are thinking of the Bible’s warnings against dividing into parties. I Corinthians 3 (ESV) says,
I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
The right answer here is “I follow Christ”. If you follow either Paul or Apollos, you are following Christ too, but you need to remember that Christ is the greater, and the preacher is the lesser. Nonetheless, we do split into Lutherans and Methodists, and that is okay. Note, however, that it is NOT OK to say, “I follow Caiphas” or “I follow Herod”. If you do that, you are not a Christian. There is a line to be drawn. But how does this apply to Republicans and Democrats?
America is special in being a Christian country with neither of the two major parties being anti-Christian for most of its history. (Or, perhaps this is special to the Anglo-Saxon countries.) In Third Republic France, the Left was anti-Catholic, and the Right was pro-Catholic. The Left had no qualms about making laws to ban Catholic schools, for example. In 1st Republic France, the Left was anti-Catholic enough to guillotine priests and to have parades for the Goddess of Reason. To be a good Christian, you had to be partisan.
In many countries, the Communist Party was a major political force in the 20th Century. This was not just in Russia and China, but in many other countries, including, France, Italy, and India, where Communist candidates participated in elections. The Communist Party is explicitly anti-Christian. Could a Christian vote for it?
More emotionally, we can ask whether a German Christian in 1932 could vote for Adolf Hitler and the Nationa Socialist Party. Many people who called themselves Christian did, despite the Party’s anti-semitic rhetoric. The example is not as clear as one could wish, though, because at that time the Nazi Party was not anti-Christian and, not having come to power yet, had not shown what viciousness it was capable of. A Christian could easily explain the street violence of the Brownshirts as being the excesses of young members and the anti-semitism as being mere rhetoric, not something that Hitler would be serious about when it came to legislation. Of course, once Hitler was elected, he very quickly fired all Jews in the civil service and in university jobs, but Christians found it easy to say that his other policies outweighed that regrettable lack of fairness. Indeed, we see something similar today in America. How many Christians are outraged when a school district fires a teacher for refusing to call a girl a boy? It happened to someone I know from church, John Kluge, in Brownsburg, Indiana. He couldn’t get hired anywhere else as a teacher, either. In America, it’s not only true that Christians wouldn’t care about firing Jews from government jobs; they don’t even care when it’s Christians that are fired.
One final point. Marvin Olasky’s Tweet is, more precisely, about whether voting for a Democrat is like voting for Satan:
Mr. Olasky asks a good question. I think the answer has to be “Yes”. Now, of course, if you’re neither Jewish, Christian, nor Satanist, you don’t believe in Satan. But suppose you do. Then you believe that Satan is a tempter spirit who seeks to do evil. Goethe puts it well in Faust.
Faust:
We usually gather from your names
The nature of you gentlemen: it’s plain
What you are, we all too clearly recognise
One who’s called Liar, Ruin, Lord of the Flies.
Well, what are you then?
Mephistopheles:
Part of the Power that would
Always wish Evil, and always works the Good.
Faust:
What meaning to these riddling words applies?
Mephistopheles:
I am the spirit, ever, that denies!
And rightly so: since everything created,
In turn deserves to be annihilated:
Better if nothing came to be.
So all that you call Sin, you see,
Destruction, in short, what you’ve meant
By Evil is my true element.
Satan tries to make mischief, leading men on to sin and destruction, though it is all God’s plan, so he is the power that always wishes Evil, but always works Good. I think Mr. Olasky would grant the existence of Satan, and also grant that Satan tempts us, himself and myself included— not to mention tempting Dr. Faust into seduction and murder. One example, from the early church, is Ananias, who lied to everyone about how much he was putting into the communal fund:
But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession. And he kept back part of the proceeds, his wife also being aware of it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. But Peter said,
“Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep part of the price of the land for yourself? While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.”
Jesus himself was quite willing to call people children of Satan. For example,
Jesus said to them,
“If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me.”
So Satan tempts individuals and he tempts groups of individuals. But that is to give the game away. For if Satan works retails, he also works wholesale. If he goes after Olasky, Rasmusen, and Faust “as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour,” then he will go after political parties in the same way. One Democrat times fifty million equals the Democratic Party. In fact, there’s a handy contagion effect. Once you get forty million Democrats to agree to something diabolical, how hard is it to get ten million more?
We can imagine how things will proceed. In 20 years, the Democrats will have purged all Christians from the public schools and from colleges, on the grounds that they will not repudiate hateful and offensive beliefs.1 The Democrats will require schools to teach the joys of pedophilia. Churches, but not mosques or synagogues, will have lost their tax exemption. And some Christians will still be saying, “It’s fine for a Christian to vote Democratic— we must not politicize Christianity.