It's fair to say that the significant number of evangelical Christians who supported President Trump in the election of 2016 did so for one primary reason: the judiciary. I feel confident that's the case, because when I pressed my concerns about Trump's character and honesty with these fellow believers, this was the rationale I heard repeatedly.
Their impulse was certainly understandable. For decades, the Left, unable to advance its agenda through the law-making branch, effectively overran the courts with activist judges who imposed progressivism through judicial fiat.
When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly in early 2016, the stakes were crystal clear for any politically-engaged Christian. The prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency meant that Scalia's reliably conservative voice would be replaced by a known progressive jurist, and the tenuous balance of 4 conservatives, 4 liberals, and 1 swing vote would be lost for a generation. Wielding a 5-seat majority, the next decade would be marked by far-left social engineering from an influential, activist judiciary.
Far from any sense of engaging in moral compromise, the vast majority of voting Christians shrewdly offered a worldly candidate Trump a pragmatic offer he wouldn't refuse: appoint originalist judges to the federal judiciary and you can rely on our support. After three Supreme Court appointments in just four years, most politically active evangelicals would argue their support of Trump was well worth it on those grounds alone, particularly seeing the justices' refusal to issue an injunction to stop Texas' groundbreaking pro-life law.
Thinking on that got me wondering: What about the Evangelicals for Biden? Now 9 months into the Democrat's term, do they feel similarly justified?
It's important to start with a recognition that the first loyalty of a believer isn't to this world, its kings, or its kingdoms. We are most decidedly strangers in a strange land, foreigners and exiles as the Apostle Peter put it. Any belief that we will be able to shoehorn our worldview into a manmade political box without engendering frequent tension and contradictions is absurd. If you find that your preferred political party never conflicts with the teachings of your faith, it is a telltale sign you have adopted a man-centered, worldly counterfeit faith.
But Christians are commanded to operate in and influence the world around them. To assume it possible to fulfill such a charge without ever encountering politics is foolish. Because of this, Christians must shrewdly, smartly, and gracefully engage our manmade political institutions with a reverence for God's moral law and an eye towards policy that honors Him, acts justly and righteously towards His image-bearers, and respects His creation.
So with that said, I'm curious to know whether the "Evangelicals for Biden" – both those affiliated with the actual organization and those Christians in general who cast a vote for our current president – feel they made a wise and judicious decision at this point.
Not a day of the Trump presidency went by without a menagerie of social media trolls lambasting the Christians who put the Mean-Tweeter-in-Chief in power. Every bad quality of the former president was held up as evidence that Christians had abandoned the tenets of their faith to support a charlatan. The nuance of a pragmatic political alliance between Christ-followers and Trump's populist political movement was apparently too complex to be considered in 280 characters or less.
The indictment was enough to drive somewhere between 20-30% of Evangelicals (according to reports) not just to abstain from voting Trump, but to pro-actively support a pro-abortion Catholic by voting for Joe Biden. That's an important point – these are not Christians whose spirit was troubled by Trump's character, and chose to write-in or vote third party. These are Christians who gave their vote to Joe Biden. It is therefore appropriate to hold them accountable for such a choice, just as they did for their Trump-supporting brethren.
President Biden has fostered a lawlessness at the southern border that has exacerbated the chaos there for all parties involved. President Biden's poor planning and preparation, coupled with tragic execution, has created a mammoth humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, resulting in thousands of displaced refugees and millions of imperiled civilians. President Biden has directed the most aggressively pro-abortion administration in U.S. history, channeling billions in tax dollars towards abortion activity at home and abroad.
And then there's this:
Plenty of "Evangelicals for Biden" believed it was necessary that Trump-supporting Christians be forced to answer for every mean tweet or uncouth statement the former president made. It would be appropriate for them now to provide some answers themselves.
