Have you ever encountered someone who criticized you for letting your Christian beliefs determine how you vote?
- “Politics shouldn’t be about religion.”
- “Stop imposing your morality on others.”
- “Why can’t you Christians just keep your private religious beliefs to yourself?”
- “Why do you always have to bring in your God and your holy book when talking about current events and voting?”
Well, I think there are two answers to this question: there’s the answer that has always been true, and then there’s the answer that is true particularly today.
On the one hand, politics is inherently religious, and so anyone’s political beliefs are always going to be formed by his worldview.
On the other hand, in today’s current political landscape, even basic Christian principles are now politically charged, so you can’t be a faithful Christian and avoid getting political anymore.
First things first: The secular narrative of “separation of politics and religion” is incoherent. Religious neutrality is impossible when it comes to law, because law carries moral authority. As soon as you say “It’s wrong to shoplift,” you are immediately invoking whatever moral authority you believe makes that true. And no matter how many people try to ground morality in “evolution” or “societal consensus,” morality must always ultimately be based on a God (or god) of some sort.
There’s no other source for claims about right and wrong.
As pastor Douglas Wilson is fond of remarking, “all laws are imposed morality,” and “if there is no God over the state, then the state has been made god.”
Furthermore, Christ is Lord even in the public square, and we ought to be comfortable proclaiming so while standing there. Of course, we can debate over the specific details—just how “Christian” any particular nation should be—but the general principle is always true: politics is never separate from religion.
Accordingly, politicians who claim to be “privately Christian, but that doesn’t affect how we govern” are misunderstanding either the purpose of politics or Christianity, or both.
And ordinary citizens who claim to be “personally Christian, but I don’t let that affect the political statements I make” have fallen into the same trap.
I believe that the foregoing argument applies to all Christians, at all times, in all open democratic societies like ours. Yet, there’s also a more specific argument applicable to our day. You see, the way the world is right now, the most serious political debates are disagreements on whether God’s most fundamental moral laws and creational order are even true.
Politics is now so isolated from the authority of God’s Word that our most basic political debates hinge on honoring God’s Word in the first place. Which means your Christian beliefs have to get political. For example, it’s a basic Christian belief that all life is valuable. Unfortunately, in today’s day and age, it’s also a political debate.
It’s a basic Christian belief that the family consists of one man and one woman, but in today’s day and age, it’s also a political debate. It’s a basic Christian belief that kids shouldn’t be sexualized in elementary school, and in today’s day and age, it’s also a political debate.
So in today’s world, merely stating your basic Christian beliefs inevitably means you’ll be “making political statements.”
Think about it this way: praying to God wasn’t an overt political statement before king Darius issued the decree against it in Daniel chapter 6 Some might have even viewed prayer as a tame, personal religious statement. But then, Darius issued a self-centered decree—you might say that “the political landscape got more blasphemous”—and praying to God suddenly became a political statement!
However, even though it was now political, Daniel wasn’t dissuaded from faithful service to God. As a matter of fact, his faith prevented him from quitting, which meant that his faith forced him to “get political.”
And God protected him despite the consequences.
So, if you are a committed Christian in today’s day and age, you can’t help but get political. Politics has found you out. If you’re trying to keep a hands-off mindset, you’re living in the wrong decade: We live in a time when the “hot-button” issues are about whether killing babies should be legal, about whether there are only two sexes, and about whether children’s school curriculum ought to keep them innocent.
When you take the stances that Scripture requires you to take on these issues, then—whether you like it or not—you are automatically making political statements. So gird up your loins and get used to fighting the political battle, because—now more than ever—it so happens to be a basic Christian battle.
If you ever meet someone who’s mad at Christians for “imposing their morality on politics,” perhaps you could ask him whether politics is even possible without morality.
And then, the key question: where does that morality come from?
Or perhaps it would be helpful to explain that the way the world is degenerating, basic Christian beliefs are political statements because the political landscape is getting more and more blasphemous.
Which means Christians have to get political.
Hint: Election day is November 5th.
