Can the Church Talk about Politics?

For more on this topic, watch the podcast we recorded based on this article.

The answer to the titular question is Yes. In fact, the church can’t not talk about politics. That’s not to say that the church’s mission is politics—it isn’t—but aspects of the church’s mission are political and inescapably so. What’s more, the relationship of the church to the world is such that if the church fails to speak to these matters, if the church fails to be the church in all its fullness, then the societies around her will continue their inexorable slide toward the lowest expressions of human nature. As Catholic political philosopher D. C. Schindler explains,

A proper interpretation of the religious dimensions of the city [i.e., the polis] recognizes the presence of God, not only outside, but even more profoundly inside of human activity, informing it, filling and illuminating its content and inner meaning. If God is the life of the soul, and the soul the life of the body, then God is the life of the life of the body; politically speaking, God is the life of the life of the city. If God is excluded from the political, as the realization of community, the city will be soulless. Or, in fact, because it cannot help but have a soul, as a city, it will have something like a functionalized, bureaucratized, immanentized, technologized, mechanized, and so coercively imposed, substitute for a soul. In a word, it will turn diabolical. ¹

We are witnessing such a diabolical turn in the West, one that can only be halted or reversed by a church fully alive, that is, a church that fully embraces the truth of God’s Word and its implications for all of life, including the arena of shared public life that is the political domain.

Authors’ note: This article is lengthy by necessity. This is partly because many Christians, and too many evangelicals in particular, are woefully undereducated in the fields of politics and political theology.² Of course, not all readers will share the same gaps in their knowledge, so we recommend the following course of action. Skim the article’s headings to gauge your familiarity with the material we discuss. If you are among those readers who already grasp the importance of politics and have no questions about how it relates to the mission of the church, for example, then you might skip ahead to the three grievous errors that plague many Christians today. Others may even be able to skip to the answered objections section.

Why All People—Especially Christians—Should Care about Politics

All human beings, especially Christians,³ have an indelible duty to rule the world as we subdue and fill the earth for the glory of God and the good of others (Gen. 1:28). This is what makes humans distinct from the animals; it is what people are for.⁴

That task of ruling, filling, and subduing the earth is what theologians have called the cultural mandate,⁵ and culture includes politics.⁶ This is not only because of what politics is but also because of what politics involves and affects. As Reformed political theorist Johannes Althusius explains, “Politics is the art of associating men for the purpose of establishing, cultivating, and conserving social life among them.”⁷ In other words, politics is the attempt to structure the shared life of human beings in a given society for the benefit of both the individual and the society as a whole.

To do this, politics draws upon various fields of knowledge and touches potentially every aspect of life. This is why Aristotle called politics the “the architectonic [kuriōtatēs] art,” for “it legislates as to what we are to do and what we are to abstain from, the end of this science must include those of the others, so that this end must be the good for man.”⁸

All this shows why everyone, especially Christians, should take some interest in politics, for politics directly concerns the practical aspects of life in ways that can significantly improve or diminish the lives of millions. This is also why, no matter how well-meaning the speaker might be, it is unhelpful to say things like, “No matter who wins the election, Jesus is still on throne.”

Without a doubt, the lordship of Jesus is not up for debate. But when the lives or livelihoods of people are at stake, invoking the lordship of Jesus as a kind of placating proverb turns this triumphal truth into a watered-down Christian Soup for the Soul.⁹ Far better to say that because Jesus is Lord, his followers ought to live as such—including (but not limited to) how they think about the ordering of the societies where God’s providence has placed them (Acts 17:26).

But some will say, isn’t all this the domain of humans in general? Doesn’t the church have a distinct mission from that which all humanity is called to do? Or again, since the cultural mandate is a general duty incumbent upon all persons, whether Christian or not, is there not a particular mission for the church that sets her apart from the rest of the world in ways that parallel how humanity is set apart from the rest of creation? To say all this another way, if the church has a mission no different from the rest of humanity, then why does the church exist?

Politics and the Mission of the Church

Several years ago, Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert wrote about the mission of the church with a view to some of the things we have been discussing.¹⁰ They argued that while evangelism and discipleship are not the totality of what the church is called to do, they are activities that the church is uniquely called to do. No other organization in the world has been called to “make disciples” by evangelism, baptism, and catechetical instruction (cf. Matt. 28:18–20).

A few years later, Jonathan Leeman argued a similar position. Distinguishing between the church-as-organized-collective (i.e., a local church) and the church-as-its-members (i.e., the persons who belong to such a church), he speaks of a broad and narrow mission for the church:

Broadly, Christ authorizes a church-as-its-members with a kingly authority to represent him as God-imaging sons and citizens, whether gathered together or scattered apart. . . . Narrowly, God authorizes a church-as-organized-collective with a distinctly priestly authority to publicly separate sinners from the world and to reconcile to himself and his people through renaming and teaching.¹¹

According to Leeman, the broad mission of the church’s members is to carry out the various duties incumbent upon all humanity, albeit with the new abilities the Spirit gives to redeemed humanity.¹² But the church’s mission in her organized-as-collective state, that is to say, the church’s corporate life as a church, is narrower. The gathered church as a body exists to focus exclusively on ecclesial activities, such as evangelism, baptism, and discipleship.¹³

To be sure, the church does have a distinct mission that sets her apart from the rest of humanity. As DeYoung and Gilbert rightly point out, only the church has been called to make disciples. Yet part of this commission involves discipling all peoples “to observe all that I have commanded you,” as Jesus said (Matt. 28:20).¹⁴ And quite a lot is contained in that little word “all,” especially when you include the whole sweep of the Scriptures, which were co-authored by the Spirit of Christ himself (1 Pet. 2:21; 2 Tim. 3:16).¹⁵

Thus, it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that the church’s mission entails a call to teach all that God says, including what God says about justice and the just ordering of public life. For how else can humanity be re-formed in the image of our Creator (Col. 3:10) and resume the purpose for which we were created apart from the totality of God’s Word and all that it addresses? “All of Christ for all of life,” as many have said.¹⁶

This, then, is what we mean by saying the church’s mission isn’t politics but is inescapably political in certain respects: we mean that the church’s mission is not the ordering of earthly affairs through concrete public policies (politics), yet it does touch on the very foundation of those affairs and directs them to their proper end. To speak plainly, the church’s mission is to teach what the Bible says, and the Bible has much to say about how we ought to live together in an ordered society. In other words, the Bible speaks to politics.¹⁷

Yet perhaps some would prefer to speak of the political implications of the church’s mission rather than the political dimensions of the church’s mission. We grant that, in a vacuum, perhaps “political implications” is the best way to speak about the church’s mission via-a-vis politics. Nevertheless, we fear that such a way of framing the issue may prove too weak in the minds of many, who would see such implications as remote and/or non-compulsory, as if the message of the church somehow floated above the earthly affairs of men, with nothing to say to rulers or citizens of societies about justice, neighbor love, or the good life.¹⁸

Compare that way of thinking with the historical effects of the apostles’ ministry. In Acts 17, the disciples went to Thessalonica, where they kept announcing the gospel in an effort to make disciples and organize churches (Acts 14:21–23). They “set the city in an uproar” (Acts 17:5), in part because their message had undeniably political implications. As one among the mob lamented, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also . . . and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus” (Acts 17:6–7).

We submit that many in the West have lost sight not only of the church’s ability but also her duty to live and teach in such a way that produces similar socio-political effects. In addition to misunderstanding what politics is and how the church’s mission intrinsically relates to the political, we see three broad areas of grievous misunderstanding that continue to exacerbate the error Van Til once warned about, namely, that “great danger . . . of separating our religious convictions from our cultural expression of religion. This is the fatal and great divorce from which the church has suffered so long and so much.”¹⁹

Error 1: We Have Forgotten the Purpose of Government

Long before Abraham Kuyper uttered his famous line about every square inch of the world belonging to Christ,²⁰ the psalmist said, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” (Ps. 24:1). The apostle Paul adds, “For from him and through him and to him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). These sweeping statements not only assert the Lord’s rightful claim upon the world; they also remind us that the Lord, as the Creator, is the source or origin of every good thing (James 1:17).

The list of good things that God created includes not only the concept of government but also the authority to govern. As Paul explains, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those [governing authorities] that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom. 13:1). In view of this, to resist governing authorities is to resist institutions appointed by God to be a terror to bad conduct (Rom. 13:2–3). For a governing authority “is God’s minister [diakonos] for your good . . . he is the minister of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom. 13:4–5).²¹

As such, it isn’t the church’s job to enforce laws and punish criminals; the power of the sword belongs to the state. This distinction is very real and very important, but it is not instituted only as some kind of limitation of the church’s authority. These words also lay out a positive vision for what the government actually is and ought to do: the government is the Lord’s servant, “sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good” (1 Pet. 2:14). As such, the governing authorities will answer to God (Ps. 2:10–12), for they were “appointed” by him (Rom. 13:2) to serve his broader purposes for humanity.²²

Therefore, it is good and right for Christians to want the government(s) of their nation to reflect what is good according to God. After all, there is no other good than what God says is good. And this is not the much-maligned and much-misunderstood “Christian nationalism” that the media have warned you about. This is simply Christians wanting laws that accord with their beliefs, which is, in fact, what all people want (that is why people vote the way that they do). It is far more bizarre to imagine a scenario in which Christians know what is good but don’t want laws to reflect this.

And yet, that is precisely the situation we increasingly see today. There are many reasons why this is so, but one of them surely is as simple as this: we have forgotten that government exists to serve the Lord as his minister, upholding what he says is good.

Error 2: We Have Fallen for the Myth of Neutrality

The second grievous error afflicting many Christians today is the myth of a neutral public square. It is commonplace nowadays to hear a certain brand of Christian praise the religious pluralism of the modern West, with its competing (even contradictory) religious perspectives held together by its commitment to tolerate such things in the name of free speech and the freedom of expression.

No one has made a more thorough defense of such a view than New York Times columnist and confessing Christian, David French.²³ In the attempt to remain consistent with his pluralistic principles, French infamously called Drag Queen Story Hours “one of the blessings of liberty.”²⁴ We are happy to add our names to the myriad of critics who insist that when your conception of “the blessings of liberty” defends exposing children to something like this (or this or this or this), then you’ve lost the plot. Which is to say, you have forgotten that government was created by God to be his minister—not the minister of Coexist bumper stickers. To speak bluntly, godly governments ought to be the ones passing out millstones for Drag Queen Story Hour (Matt. 18:6), not permitting such catastrophically vile acts as a “blessing of liberty.”

Once again,²⁵ the question of how an earthly government can make such judgments comes to the fore. Who’s to say what should be promoted, what should be prohibited, and what should be permitted? We have already shown that God is the answer to that question.

“Nothing of importance can be separated entirely from its social effect, which is politics, or from its ultimate value, which is religion.”

—GK Chesterton

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But it is important to say that there can be no other answer given. This is why the myth of a neutral public square is such a grievous error. For we cannot speak about the common good without some conception of what that good entails. And this is impossible to do without religion. As GK Chesterton once said, “Nothing of importance can be separated entirely from its social effect, which is politics, or from its ultimate value, which is religion.”²⁶ Similarly, Henry Van Til said, “Culture is simply the service of God in our lives; it is religion externalized.”²⁷ He also writes, “Thus man’s morality and economics, his jurisprudence and his aesthetics, are all religiously oriented and determined.”²⁸

This is true even for secular states, their spurious claims to religious neutrality notwithstanding. For all governments are tasked with ordering society, and to do so, they must make decisions about what is right and wrong, good and evil, worthy of promotion or prohibition. For this reason, the old canard that “you can’t legislate morality” must be thoroughly laid to rest. For, in point of fact, all laws can—and do—legislate morality. That’s quite literally what law is. As DC Schindler explains,

[T]here is nothing more fundamental to a political community than its laws. We tend to think of these as essentially secular in origin, form, and purpose, and as making absolutely no claim regarding the truth of things: they are ‘merely juridical’ rules of play. We must admit, though, that deeper questions come into play if the law concerns explicitly some religious (or moral) matter. But the great legal historian Harold Berman spent a lifetime arguing that law in fact ceases to be law, because it ceases to hold any authority, when it is severed in its exercise, its rituals, its self-understanding and self-presentation, from its original, religious dimension. According to Berman, law, as law, by its nature is an expression willy-nilly [i.e., whether one likes it or not] of ultimate meaning.²⁹

To give a seemingly mundane example, consider the stop sign on the corner near your house. By placing it there, some governing authority determined that all drivers must stop when they come to this particular junction, such that if a driver is caught failing to do so, the law says he may be punished with a fitting penalty. The appropriateness of enforcing stop signs depends entirely on what they are designed to do, namely, to prevent drivers from plowing through busy intersections where he is likely to strike another vehicle or a pedestrian. And the justice of all this depends entirely upon the predetermined value of life. For if human life is valuable, then it is worthy of protection, and stop sign laws would be a means to this end.

Ah, but who says that human life is valuable and worthy of protection? Of course, most people (thank God) grant the value of human life . . . except when it comes to the lives of the unborn. This juxtaposition demonstrates why the myth of neutrality is, indeed, a myth. All laws legislate morality. That is their nature and purpose. It is impossible, therefore, to have laws with a “neutral” stance toward competing religious views or philosophies of life. The very decision to promote, prohibit, or permit some act—like abortion—is a decision that is always made in view of some ultimate truth.³⁰

In other words, all governments have a god of the system, an ultimate and transcendent reference point. The only question is whether governments recognize (and are honest about) the particular god they are beholden to. And if Christians are right about the identity of Jesus Christ—and they are—then there are only two options: a government is either beholden to the Lord of the universe, or else it is beholden to some other false god and rival claimant to his throne. Thus, there is no neutral public square. Whoever is not with Christ is against him (Matt. 12:30).

Error 3: We Have Truncated the Gospel

The third and final grievous error afflicting the minds of many Christians at this moment is related to the gospel. This error may be the most serious and far-reaching of the three, for the gospel is at the very heart of Christianity (1 Cor. 15:3; cf. Mark 1:15).³¹

Yet for all the talk of the gospel (and of gospel centrality), there remains a concerning confusion about what, exactly, the gospel is. For his part, the late Timothy Keller rightly pointed out that the gospel is good news—its literal meaning—not good advice. That is to say, the gospel is a message about Jesus and what he has done to reconcile us to God, not a message about what we must do in order to reconcile ourselves to the God from whom we are estranged.³² So far, so good.

But many of the gospel-centered types seem to have in mind some message other than the one that our Lord and his apostles preached. Jesus repeatedly preached about his authority as the king of God’s kingdom, even saying this was the reason why he was sent (Luke 4:43). In doing so, he was not announcing something entirely new so much as instantiating something very old. Specifically, the entire life and ministry of Jesus was a demonstration of the fact that the God who made us also reigns over us in every conceivable way. “God reigns over the nations,” the psalmist says, “he sits on his holy throne” (Ps. 47:8). “The Lord reigns; let the peoples tremble!” the psalmist adds in another place (Ps. 99:10). This same song is the one sung by the redeemed at the end of the age (Rev. 19:6). And, critically, it is this message that Isaiah said made beautiful upon the mountains the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who proclaims salvation to Zion, saying, “Your God reigns!” (Isa. 52:7).

In other words, the gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ—and nobody else, thank God—is Lord. Indeed, this message (“Jesus is Lord”) was the central kerygma of the early church (cf. Acts 17:7; Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor. 12:3). What makes that message good news is, of course, the kind of lord that Jesus is (Ex. 34:6–7; John 1:14), powerfully demonstrated in his willingness to humble himself to the point of death on a cross for our sakes (Rom. 5:8; Phil. 2:6–8) on the way to his rightful exaltation above all things (Phil. 2:9–11; cf. Eph. 1:20–23).

This (biblical) framing avoids truncating the gospel to the good news of forgiveness alone, which, while utterly necessary and even central, is not the totality of our problem nor the fullness of God’s solution. To say the same thing another way, salvation is more than justification, and the good news of what Jesus has done for us is much greater than this, too. He came to set right all that we put wrong (Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:20), including all that rulers and authorities put wrong, too (Eph. 6:12). He comes to “make his blessings flow far as the curse is found,” as Isaac Watts reminds us (cf. Rom. 8:19-23),³³ and Paul insists that it’s in this hope that we are saved (Rom. 8:24a).

We are speaking, then, of the good news that God made us and made us his (Ps. 100:3), the good news of God’s persistent grace through the fall of man into sin (Eph. 2:1–5), the good news of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection for us (1 Cor. 15:3ff), and the good news of his return to renew all things (Acts 3:21; Rev. 21:5). All this is the gospel, and anything short of this fulsome announcement makes the good news a little less good. To be sure—to be sure!—the cross is the center of this redemptive work, the sine qua non of our redemption.

But when we limit the concerns of God to the forgiveness of individual sinners, we truncate not only the gospel but the character of God himself. We make him out to be someone who does not really care whether nations are ordered in such a way that greater neighbor love results,³⁴ so long as individuals within that nation are going to heaven. For such people, it’s as if what Jesus meant when he taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10) was something like, “Your forgiveness come, and your will be done, in our personal devotion and private religious expression.”

That is how you fill a nation with people who say, “It doesn’t matter whether you vote to support abortion or not. That’s not a gospel issue.” And though many Christians would be (rightly) horrified by such a statement, they inadvertently produce the same effect in others when they say things like, “Don’t worry about politics, just preach the gospel” in response to any Christian calls to action in the political domain.

To many unsuspecting persons, such statements have the ring of truth about them because they mention words like “preach” and “gospel” (with their positive connotations) in opposition to “politics” (with all its negative connotations). But that entire way of thinking is far afield from the apostle Paul. His gospel announced to the Roman Empire that there was another King who commanded our allegiance such that some of Caesar’s decrees should be ignored or resisted (Acts 17:7; cf. Acts 4:19; 5:29). Not only that but after defending the use of the law and alluding to nine of the Ten Commandments in order (1 Tim. 1:8–10),³⁵ Paul declares that the moral law—with its prohibition of murder and sexual immorality and all the rest—is “sound teaching that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God” (1 Tim. 1:11). Therefore, to say anything like “just preach the gospel and don’t worry about politics” is to truncate the message and implications of the gospel to an extent that falls far short of the biblical description of the same, for it pits the gospel against the God-intended effects of the gospel.

A further problem with this way of thinking (in addition to its truncation of the good news and its manifold implications for all of life) is that it’s utterly shortsighted. Suppose that the church in a particular nation were to achieve some great level of success in her evangelistic efforts such that a majority of the population were now professing Christians. That nation will still need laws. It will still have to decide how best to organize the people’s common life. And this is politics. Should not the Scriptures be the guide here as well? Do they not teach unchanging truths as well as principles and norms that can inform something like a Christian approach to the political realm? Or is the gospel the only concern of God within the whole of the Bible?³⁶

Answering Objections to Christian Political Engagement

A number of objections come up in response to what we have been saying. Here are several of the most common we have encountered.

The Pietistic Objection

“The Bible is not political; it’s spiritual,” or “Jesus’s kingdom is not of this world,” or “It’s not our job to influence culture; it’s just our job to evangelize and make disciples.”

There are some who do not see in the pages of the Scriptures anything like a political theology. One reason for this is a failure to account for the fact that the New Testament was written during a period of history when the average Roman citizen, much less the non-Roman subjects of the empire, had virtually no say in how their society was governed. Hence, Paul never says anything about voting because there was no voting to be had. But once the gospel took root in various societies around the world, you consistently find Christians encouraging the people of God to use righteous means at their disposal for the stability and benefit of the place where they lived.

Others within this group are sometimes inclined to think that the Bible expresses an anti-political theology that encourages Christians not to worry about earthly affairs (even if they can vote) and to keep their eyes exclusively fixed on heaven and the salvation of the lost. As justification for this way of thinking, some have said things like, “This world is not my home; I’m just a passin’ through.”

“Once the gospel took root in various societies around the world, you consistently find Christians encouraging the people of God to use righteous means at their disposal for the stability and benefit of the place where they lived.”

—Bryan Laughlin and Doug Ponder

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There is a kernel of truth here. This world in its current state is not our home. But this world in its reconciled (Col. 1:20) and to-be-renewed form is our home indeed (Rev. 21:1–5). To be sure, we confess that the ultimate responsibility (and authority and ability) to fix the world rests in God’s hands. No Christian denies this. But the Lord uses means, and some Christians selectively pretend that this is not so. They will insist on the importance of preaching the gospel as the means to save the lost, for example,³⁷ while ignoring the place of means in the work of ordering society toward justice and the good life.

To make matters worse, pietistic evangelicals are hypocritical on this point. Some have lauded the efforts of Christians like William Wilberforce in outlawing the slave trade in Britain and even hosted whole conferences devoted to Martin Luther King Jr.’s part in ending segregation in America. But when you ask whether Christians today should make it their aim to render certain evils illegal in America, the pietist suddenly retreats to the singular work of saving souls. “Christ’s kingdom is not of this world,” he reminds us.

Never mind that scholars for centuries have pointed out that Christ’s words in John 18:36 concern the origin of his kingdom, not its divinely appointed destination, which is the earth (Matt. 6:13; Rev. 11:15). The real problem is the hypocrisy that celebrates Christian political action by some and demonizes it by others. This is so common that I (Doug) have created what I call the “MLK test,” which is designed to root out the double standards (i.e., weights and measurements) of hypocritical pietism.³⁸ For example, if it was good for Martin Luther King Jr. to help end segregation through preaching and political action—and not through preaching alone—then it would also be good for Christians to employ political means to end things like abortion, gay marriage, “Drag Queen Story Hours,” so-called sex reassignment surgeries, unjust tax laws, illegal immigration, etc.³⁹

The Legalistic Objection

“Laws can’t change hearts. Only the gospel can do that. Therefore, passing laws to regulate a person’s behavior is legalistic and ineffectual.”⁴⁰

People who think that “laws equal legalism” clearly have not read the Bible, whose authors routinely praise the goodness of God’s laws (cf. Ps. 19:7ff; Rom. 7:12). They also seem to forget that Jesus said the fundamental duty of mankind consists in the laws to love God and to love one’s neighbor as oneself (cf. Matt. 22:36–40). Furthermore, he said that obedience to his commands was an indicator of our love for him (John 14:15). So, let us have done with the laws-are-legalistic mindset.

A more sophisticated form of the legalistic objection takes a quasi-Lutheran view of law, which treats law as something wholly negative and thus incapable of changing human behavior. Yet we call this the quasi-Lutheran view of the law because even Luther (who at times seemed reticent about the normative or didactic use of the law) still affirmed what is called the civil or political use of the law (i.e., usus politicus) to restrain evil behavior.⁴¹

This objection is related to the claim that laws can’t legislate morality. We won’t insult the reader’s intelligence by repeating the preceding discussion that all laws already do this whether we like it or not. Instead, we’ll quote Martin Luther King Jr. on this point:

If the problem is to be solved then in the final sense, hearts must be changed. Religion and education must play a great role in changing the heart. But we must go on to say that… behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that is pretty important also.⁴²

King’s statement reflects the biblical truth that law, by virtue of its threats of punishment (Rom. 13:4), can and does restrain evil men from acting even worse than they might otherwise have done. To give a modern example, it’s true that outlawing the Orwellian-named “gender-affirming care” cannot change a person’s darkened heart—only the gospel can do that—but it can keep them from irreparably mutilating a child’s genitals, and we think that is pretty important also.

The “Cultural Christianity Is Bad” Objection

“If you (try to) have a Christian culture without actual Christians, it will inoculate people to the gospel and/or hinder the witness of the church.”

This objection is as bad as it is common. Suppose that you have five children still living under your roof. Suppose that one of them has made it quite clear that he is not a Christian. While you and your spouse may have different expectations of that child’s desire and ability to behave, you will not have different rules for governing his behavior. The child still has to honor his father and mother. He still is not permitted to harm his siblings. He is not allowed to watch porn or bring his girlfriend over to sleep with her. He is not allowed to steal from others. He will be punished for lying or cheating on his homework. And so forth. “You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native, for I am the Lord your God” (Lev. 24:22).⁴³

It would be the height of insanity to think—as so many Christians now do—that “imposing” good laws on someone who does not agree with them (like the child in the example above) is injurious to their soul. In reality, the opposite is the case: the failure to help such a person see that they are in the wrong leaves their soul in jeopardy of damnation.

Even so, some Christians are worried that a society that adopts an explicitly Christian framework for its laws and customs runs the double risk of inoculating individuals to the gospel and polluting the witness of the church. We are sympathetic to these concerns, and there are genuine examples of these realities. Think of someone in Britain, for example, who might have been baptized into the Church of England, and who grew up in a culture where to be British is to be Anglican, even if she herself neither believes nor practices what the church teaches. Such a person, who is tragically far from hypothetical, is very much in danger of presuming that, if there is a God at all, she will be on God’s good side because of her nominal Christian status.

These concerns have received fresh relevance following the recent trend of high-profile figures (e.g., Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, Richard Dawkins, and Peter Thiel) who have adopted the label “cultural Christian” to describe their affinity to Christian values despite their unbelief in the Christian God. Many of these figures have done so in response to progressivism’s anti-culture of “deathworks.” Others have done so in response to the troubling advance of Islam, with its anti-Western militarism. What is the church to think about these “cultural Christians”? We think the Lord would look at these people and say, “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:34).

In any case, we are hard-pressed to see how it is bad for society that influential public figures are waking up to the wisdom of God’s laws. While their own souls may be in jeopardy, it is foolish to celebrate the demise of Christian culture (as some have done). For the loss of Christian values, beliefs, and customs—even among those who may have individually been hypocritical toward the same—creates a cultural vacuum that is filled with something infinitely less good than the design of God.⁴⁴

The Separation of Church and State Objection

“What about separation of church and state?!”⁴⁵

The objection overlooks two pieces of data, one theological and one historical. As for the latter, this objection mischaracterizes American history.⁴⁶ In the first place, the phrase “separation of church and state” is not a constitutional phrase.⁴⁷ Instead, it comes from Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Baptist Association of Danbury Connecticut. A deeper-than-Reddit-level reading of this document shows that it was written to address the religious liberty of Baptists in a formally non-Baptist state. The founders were concerned with preserving a diversity of religious expression that made room for various Christian denominations, not one that shrugs at sodomy in the name of religious tolerance.⁴⁸

They certainly did not intend to exclude the influence of religion on public life,⁴⁹ as virtually all public discourse from that time until the early twentieth century shows. To give but one example, Abraham Lincoln’s “Proclamation 97–Appointing a Day of National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer” includes these words:

Whereas the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the supreme authority and just government of Almighty God in all the affairs of men and of nations, has by a resolution requested the President to designate and set apart a day for national prayer and humiliation; and Whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord; And, insomuch as we know that by His divine law nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? . . . It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do by this my proclamation designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer. And I do hereby request all the people to abstain on that day from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite at their several places of public worship and their respective homes in keeping the day holy to the Lord and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.⁵⁰

Say what you will about the prudence of Lincoln’s politics in other arenas, he clearly did not see the much-touted “separation of church and state” in the same terms as most moderns.

“All law is religious at some level.”

—Bryan Laughlin and Doug Ponder

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Besides all this, even if there were a nation whose constitution did aim to prohibit the influence of religion in the political sphere, such an approach fails for two reasons. In the first place, we have already shown that law is essentially and inescapably metaphysical because all laws make or reflect value judgments about what is good. Thus, all law is religious at some level. Second, all governing authorities receive their authority to govern from God (Rom. 13:1ff). As such, it would be prudent for them to acknowledge the Creator to whom they will be accountable!

The Pastoral Vocation Objection

“Although politics is—and ought to be—influenced by religion, politics is not the domain of pastoral ministry. Pastors should stick to the care of souls.”

We are sympathetic to this objection in a couple of respects. In the first place, it is true that the pastoral vocation is the care of souls (Heb. 13:17), and, as such, the primary focus of pastoral ministry is and ought to be the spiritual domain of life. But this is not as neat and tidy as some make it out to be. As the leaders charged with “sp[eaking] the word of God” to their people (Heb. 13:7) by preaching the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27) in order to teach the nations to obey all that Jesus commanded (Matt. 28:18–20), how can pastors not address the political realm whenever the truths of the Scriptures inform these realities at some level?

Nevertheless, we acknowledge that much of what constitutes politics proper concerns the prudential implementation of specific laws and policies aimed at achieving concrete ends. To speak plainly, politics is not merely about ordering society toward some good (e.g., protecting the unborn) but about the best course of action to do so in a particular time and place. Some of these policy considerations go far beyond the timeless principles articulated in the Scriptures. For example, a pastor could not be expected to have a fully formed opinion on, say, the Chevron doctrine.

Yet other political matters are so closely connected to the teaching of the Scriptures that the failure of a pastor to address them would amount to an abandonment of his calling. As such, those who insist that politics—in the most technical sense—is not the domain of pastors would seem to undermine much more than they mean to exclude.

To give an example of what we have in mind when we refer to the responsibility of pastors to preach the truth of God’s Word with a view to its full range of implications, including political implications, consider what the founding father John Adams once wrote:

It is the duty of the clergy to accommodate their discourses to the times, to preach against such sins as are most prevalent, and recommend such virtues as are most wanted. For example, if exorbitant ambition and venality are predominant, ought they not to warn their hearers against these vices? If public spirit is much wanted, should they not inculcate this great virtue? If the rights and duties of Christian magistrates and subjects are disputed, should they not explain them, shew their nature, ends, limitations and restrictions, how much soever it may move the gall of Massachusettensis [Massachusetts]?⁵¹

The Instrumentalization of the Church Objection

“The church does not exist for the sake of politics; politics exists for the sake of the church.”

By far the most serious objection is reflected in the concern that framing the church’s mission in political terms at any level runs the serious risk of turning the church into the means of some lesser, temporal end. In other words, there is a way of “doing church” that makes it seem as if the church exists for the sake of earthly societies, subordinating her eternal mission to some temporal earthly good.

We reject the instrumentalization of the church in this fashion, and we deny that evangelism and discipleship exist solely for the sake of politics or the temporary betterment of society.⁵² However, it seems to us that, while this error is possible, it is actually less common than its opposite. That is to say, far more Christians are in danger, not of collapsing the church’s mission into politics, but of collapsing politics into the mission of the church.

One scholar who has written a great deal on this danger is Redeemer University professor James R. Wood. In a series of well-written (but much misunderstood) articles,⁵³ Wood has shown that many Christians have come to conceive of politics as a form of evangelism. Wood writes,

Keller’s winsome approach led him to great success as an evangelist. But he also, maybe subconsciously, thinks about politics through the lens of evangelism, in the sense of making sure that political judgments do not prevent people in today’s world from coming to Christ. His approach to evangelism informs his political writings and his views on how Christians should engage politics.⁵⁴

Conceived in this way, certain Christians (especially those who have been influenced by Keller’s “third way”) tend to think of political engagement not in terms of what is best for ordering society to the good but in terms of which political policies are least likely to offend those who are not Christians. This strips politics of its proper domain, turning it into something like apologetics, where the actual content and likely outcome of particular political policies are not weighed against what God says is good but against what culture will perceive to be nice or non-threatening.

For example, in his New York Times article, “How Do Christians Fit Into the Two-Party System? They Don’t,”⁵⁵ the late Tim Keller completely fails to mention the infanticide of the unborn, a sin that warranted the death penalty in Israel (Lev. 20:2–5), and which incurred his nation-ending wrath (Jer. 32:35–36), and which formed the biblical imagery for hell itself (Isa. 30:33; Jer. 19:12; Mark 9:35). We do not wish to speculate as to why Keller did not mention abortion in his article, but given the titular subject matter, it certainly seems like the kind of omission one would make if he conceived of political engagement as an evangelistic endeavor (and thus wanted to minimize offense to non-Christians, who overwhelmingly endorse abortion as a “right”). This is what Joe Rigney has called the idol of prophetic credibility.⁵⁶

Yet, as Wood explains in another article, “Politics is not about minimizing offense in order to maximize openness to the evangelistic message. Politics is, rather, focused on the pursuit of justice and the just ordering of society.”⁵⁷ That’s simply what politics is. To make it anything else strips the political of proper domain in God’s economy and jeopardizes the real temporal good that could be accomplished for fear that some (i.e., non-Christians) would find the church’s political activity a hindrance to the gospel. To speak plainly, the evangelical church is in danger of not passing policies that would better love our neighbors because of their desire to be seen as kind, unoffensive, and non-threatening to certain political powers.

To give a contemporary example, when an American Christian goes into the voting booth every November, he is not there to pass whatever policies he thinks would paint the church in a favorable light to the “watching world.” Rather, he is there to vote for prudent policies that direct the earthly affairs of his nation in accordance with what he knows to be true and good on the basis of the Word of God. So, he votes against politicians who celebrate the destruction of babies in the womb or who eagerly endorse “transitioning” young children barely old enough to know what sex is. One need not be a Christian to see the wrongness of those (and other) courses of action, but it is difficult to see how a Christian could not see the rightness of these matters—unless they have been duped into thinking that politics is about showing the world that Christianity is not offensive.

The Third Way Objection

“The gospel is neither right nor left,” or “The church is prophetic, not partisan,” or “We follow not the elephant or the donkey, but a slain Lamb,” or “Truth over tribe.”

Mantras like these are repeated ad nauseam nowadays, even by those who ought to know better. Megachurch pastors seem especially prone to speaking in these ways (e.g., see here, here, and here),⁵⁸ but they’re not the only ones to blame. These statements contain just enough truth to seem plausible, but what really makes them attractive is that they enable Christians (whether they realize it or not) to avoid the sort of prophetic denunciations that will lose respect in the eyes of the world/worldly people.

For example, it’s true that “the gospel is neither right nor left.” The gospel simply is what it is. But it’s also true that the scriptural teachings on sex, marriage, abortion, the body, and a litany of other issues will place Western Christians to the right of most politicians. And it’s true that “the church is prophetic, not partisan,” that she follows neither the Republican elephant nor the Democratic donkey (in the American context); she follows the slain Lamb. But that Lamb who was slain is Lord of the cosmos, and he made his concerns known to us in the Scriptures. To whatever degree those concerns are shared by “the donkey” or “the elephant,” we should rejoice. But when they are not, such slogans dull the edge of the truth in an hour of real need, discouraging Christian political action that could literally save lives, preserve godly liberty, and improve the ability of honest people to maintain their livelihood.

At their best, the aforementioned statements reflect a sincere attempt to safeguard the church’s prophetic, truth-telling ministry from being corrupted and instrumentalized for exclusively political ends. This is good and right. In actual effect, however, these slogans gloss over significant political differences, establishing a false moral equivalence and obscuring the God-given duties of every person—including every Christian—to promote the good and restrain evil in their society, including through political means.

To make matters worse, many American Christians repeat these mantras at precisely a time when one of the two major political parties has departed from basic biology, sexual sanity, transcendent morality, and many other truths and values of Christianity. We’re talking about a political party that wants to restore the “right” for parents to kill their unborn children, including up to the moment of birth, while repeatedly deceiving others about their actual position. They also lie about basic biological facts in order to defend their killing of the unborn.⁵⁹

The same political party celebrates and normalizes sexual deviancy at great risk to society,⁶⁰ includes support for gay “marriage” in their official platform, pushes “Transgender Day of Visibility” as a national day of observance, permits the Vice President to appear publicly on televised drag shows, backed congressional bills what would allow men to compete in women’s sports and enter women’s lockers rooms, secretly pushed to remove age limits for trans surgery, who publicly argue that men can get pregnant and prefer to speak of “persons with a capacity for pregnancy” instead of mothers.

And not content to stop there, the Democratic party appoints sexual deviants to prominent national positions: a man-who-thinks-he’s-a-woman as the assistant health(!) secretary, appointing a “non-binary drag queen” (who was later caught after multiple felony theft attempts) as head of the energy department, a lesbian woman as the White House press secretary, a “queer” supporter of Palestinian terrorism to the associate communications director of the White House, and several congressional aides who have been caught making amateur gay porn in official government buildings.

It should go without saying, but as Orwell said: “We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”⁶¹ The obvious point being that people who normalize sexual deviancy and believe that men can become women (and vice versa) have departed from both morality and reality to such a degree that their conclusions on all other matters should be treated with nothing short of the highest level of skepticism.

This Democratic party has also thrown its support behind the openly Marxist Black Lives Matter organization,⁶² which from the start has been “unapologetically feminist, womanist, and queer.” Democratic politicians also fomented rioting in the wake of George Floyd’s death, calling violence and the destruction of property “mostly peaceful protests” that are “not going to let up, and they should not [let up],” as Vice President Kamala Harris said—all this despite the fact that minority-owned businesses were destroyed at disproportionate levels by the rioting in the name of racial justice.

Various leaders of the Democratic party also lied, acted hypocritically, and promoted harsh and ineffective measures during the COVID-19 years. And it wasn’t just elected representatives and appointed officials: alarming numbers of Democratic voters supported draconian measures against the unvaccinated, wanting the government to track their movements with digital devices (47%), to fine them (55%), to lock them in their homes (59%) or quarantine internment camps (45%), or even to take their children away from them (29%).

And what more shall we say? For time would fail us to speak of the defense of attempts to force Christians to violate tenets of their faith, the promotion of DEI policies that judge people by the color of their skin instead of the content of their character, the passing of laws that prevent parents from being informed about their child’s decision to “transition” genders and make it possible for children to be taken from parents, the push to re-label pedophiles as “Minor-Attracted Persons”, the opposing of strict penalties for child sex offenders, and other deeply concerning moves.⁶³

Against this backdrop, you can see why saying “the gospel is neither right nor left” in 2024 is simply misleading to the point of being harmful.

“Saying ‘the gospel is neither right nor left’ in 2024 is simply misleading to the point of being harmful.”

—Bryan Laughlin and Doug Ponder

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And yes, we know that the Republican party is far from perfect and that Donald Trump is no saint (to put it mildly). To give a recent example, the GOP has softened its stance on abortion and same-sex marriage. But these stooges still affirm basic biology, still know that 2+2=4, not 5, and still have more Christians and more favorable views of Christianity than the other major political party.

Simply put: as flawed as both parties are, there is not a moral equivalence between them. This isn’t the ‘90s anymore, where Bill Clinton—with his balanced budget, his Defense of Marriage Act, his prohibition of openly gay members in the military, and his tough stances on crime, welfare, and illegal immigration—was arguably more conservative than Donald Trump in 2024. In that time the debates mainly focused on the best means to achieve mostly-agreed-upon ends. But those days are long gone, and the time has come for the people of God to wake up and see the cultural revolution in their midst and to do something about it.

How Should We Then Vote?

We do not think that politics is the only, nor even the most significant, activity for Christians to engage in. However, political engagement does afford Christians a low-cost, high-impact means for influencing their societies toward what God says is good for everyone. So, in light of the general duty that God has given all people, especially Christians, to regard their neighbor’s wellbeing (Mark 12:31) and to exercise benevolent dominion over the world (Gen. 1:28), pietistic political apathy is not an option for Christians so long as our voice and our votes stand a real chance of doing significant good.

We know it is tempting for pastors to fly above the fray, preaching a cruising-altitude-Jesus that never touches down with specificity anywhere near what we see in the Scriptures (e.g., Luke 3:10–14). But that course of action is partly (though far from wholly) why the West now finds itself in the mess that it’s in. As theologian Peter Leithart explains,

For about a millennium, Christianity permeated the political life of Western Europe. Western Europe was Christendom, Christ’s realm. Kings took oaths to the Triune God at coronations and thought about the implications of the Ten Commandments for developing laws. If religion were going to be excluded from political life, it had to be turned into something that was not inherently political. It had to be spiritualized. Surprisingly, the Christians who have been most eager to follow this program are not liberals and virtual unbelievers, but conservative Bible-believing Christians. While many liberals have substituted politics for faith, many Bible-believing Christians have often dispensed with the political dimensions of their faith altogether.⁶⁴

Consider this: Even the Amish are rallying to vote against the transgressive madness all around us. Historically, this group has been loath to involve themselves in the temporal affairs of the state, so it’s worth asking why they are doing so now. In fact, we would suggest that if a pastor finds himself further removed from the political realm than the famously separatist anabaptists, he is overdue for some serious self-examination.⁶⁵

We know that other Christians with tender hearts may feel overwhelmed by the insanity of the West. It is tempting for them to bury their heads and retreat to the Shires of their homes. But without taking action while they can, their little Shires won’t remain untouched for long. For the developments we have highlighted in this article are not radical outliers held by a fringe group of people. On the contrary, most organizations today are overwhelmingly progressive. Federal employees overwhelmingly donate to progressives. Most (70%) of America’s GDP belongs to counties that break for progressives. The people who educate the next generation (i.e., public school teachers and university instructors) strongly lean progressive. The vast majority of tech companies, who make our most-used products, produce our entertainment, and design all social media algorithms, are run by progressives. The journalists who report and interpret the news, including many professing Christian journalists, donate extensively to progressives.

In other words, virtually all of the most powerful culture-shapers in the West are alike in their efforts to contravene objective truths and Christian values that have long benefitted society. Recognizing this does not mean we think that voting for anti-progressive policies is enough to win the day in the end. It isn’t. You can’t make America Christian again by politics. But this does not mean politics don’t matter at all. As we have already shown throughout this article, your vote has a real impact on the lives of people around you. It can slow—or hasten—the legal and social contagion of secular, pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ, anti-Christian progressivism.

And that matters. For “when the wicked increase, transgression increases,” as Proverbs 29:16 warns. And “when the wicked rule, the people groan” (Prov. 29:2).⁶⁶ In light of this, your duty as a Christian is to preach the gospel and do good works (Titus 2:14), but your duty as a citizen is to vote in such a way that civil wickedness does not increase transgression or bring even more suffering—whether through open immorality or the targeted destruction of basic societal norms (like male and female, the two-parent family, proper love for one’s country, and private industry/job creation).

In conclusion, you aren’t (and never will be) voting for Jesus.⁶⁷ And, yes, he’ll still be on the throne no matter what happens in November. But because he’s on the throne, you should both preach the gospel and “do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can”⁶⁸—including by voting for the candidate(s) whose policies most reflect, however imperfectly, all that Christ has commanded us (Matt. 28:20).

For more on this topic, watch the podcast we recorded based on this article.

1. DC Schindler, God and the City: An Essay in Political Metaphysics, Chapter Three: The Glory of God Is the City Fully Alive: On the Soul and Body of Politics (St. Augustine’s Press, 2023), Kindle Edition. ↩
2. This is not an insult but a statement of fact. You are undereducated in politics and political theology if the following works and authors are largely unknown to you: Plato’s Republic (ca. 380 BC); Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (ca. 350 BC), Politics (ca. 350 BC), and Metaphysics (ca. 350 BC), Cicero’s De Re Publica (ca. 54–51 BC), De Legibus (ca. 52 BC), and De Officiis (44 BC), Epictetus’s Enchiridion (ca. AD 125); chs. 5–7 of The Epistle [of Mathetes] to Diognetus (ca. AD 130–200); Augustine’s City of God (ca. 426) and Letters (386–430); Thomas Aquinas’s “Treatise on Law” in the Summa Theologica, I–II, Q. 90–108 (ca. 1265–1274); Martin Luther’s Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523); Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince (written in 1513, published 1532); Article 16 (“On Civil Affairs”) of the Augsburg Confession (1530); Chapter 24 of The Scots Confession (1560); Article 36 of The Belgic Confession (1562); Richard Hooker’s Of Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594–97); Johannes Althusius’s Poitica Methodice Digesta, or Politics Methodically Set Forth and Illustrated with Sacred and Profane Examples (1603); Hugo Grotius’s Mare liberum, or The Free Seas (1609) and De jure belli ac pacis, or On the Law of War and Peace (1625); Girolamo Zanchi’s Operum theologicorum (1619), part of which has recently been translated into English as On the Law in General; Samuel Rutherford’s Lex, Rex (1644); Chapter 23 of The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647); Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651); John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1690); Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (1755), Discourse on Political Economy (1755), and The Social Contract (1762); Edmund Burke’s A Vindication of Natural Society (1756), On the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), On American Taxation (1774), and An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791); John Witherspoon’s Lectures on Moral Philosophy (1774); Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776), Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776), The Crisis (1776–1783), and Rights of Man (1791); the US Constitution (1787) and James Madison’s The Federalist Papers (1787–88); Alexis de Toqueville’s Democracy in America (1835, 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856); John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy (1848) and On Liberty (1869); Karl Marx’s Das Kapital (1867); Abraham Kuyper’s Ons Program, or Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto (1879), Soevereiniteit in eigen kring or Sovereignty in Its Own Circle (1880), and Het sociale vraagstuk en de Christelijke Religie, or The Social Question and the Christian Religion (1891); Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, or Capital and Labor (1891); T. S. Eliot’s The Idea of Christian Society (1939); H. Richard Niebuhr’s The Kingdom of God in America (1937) and Christ and Culture (1951); Reinhold Niebuhr’s Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932) and The Nature and Destiny of Man (1943); Henri de Lubac’s “Christian Explanation of Our Times” (1941), “Internal Causes of the Weakening and Disappearance of the Sense of the Sacred” (1942), Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) and The Constitution of Liberty (1960); Leo Strauss’s Natural Right and History (1953) and What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (1959); Russel Kirk’s The Conservative Mind (1953) and The Roots of American Order (1974); Hans Urs von Balthasar’s “Integralismus” (1963) and “Integralimsus Heute” (1988); John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971) and Political Liberalism (1993); Roger Scruton’s The Meaning of Conservatism (1980), Thinkers of the New Left (1985), and How to Be a Conservative (2014); D. C. Schindler’s Heart of the World, Center of the Church (1996), Freedom from Reality (2017), The Politics of the Real: The Church Between Liberalism and Integralism (2021), and God and the City: An Essay in Political Metaphysics (2023)—to name a few. ↩
3. We say “especially Christians” because believers are those who, thanks to the revelation of Christ, know what it means to love God and neighbor and, therefore, are those who are positioned to fulfill the cultural mandate most consistently. Thus, one might say the relationship between the Great Commission and the Great Commandments is that the former enables God’s people to better fulfill the latter (yet without losing focus of the perennial need for the former, which remains the church’s exclusive domain, her raison d’être). ↩
4. Some will object, saying that man was made to worship the Lord. Yet that calling (to worship the Lord) is not unique to man. Everything that has breath is summoned to praise the Lord (Ps. 150:6), including all the animals—whether wild or domesticated, whether they creep or fly or crawl (Ps. 148:7, 10). All things exist to bring glory to God. What makes humanity unique, therefore, is the particular way we have been called to worship, along with the necessary capacities for carrying out this vocation. Simply put, we alone were tasked with subduing and ruling the earth. ↩
5. John Frame, “What Is Culture?” in Christianity and Culture Lectures. Pensacola Theological Institute, July 23–27, 2001. https://thirdmill.org/magazine/article.asp/link/joh_frame%5EFrame.Apologetics2004.ChristandCulture.html/ ↩
6. To be sure, culture includes much more than politics (though not less than that). As Ken Myers has described it, culture is “a dynamic pattern, an ever-changing matrix of objects, artifacts, sounds, institutions, philosophies, fashions, enthusiasms, myths, prejudices, relationships, attitudes, tastes, rituals, habits, colors and loves, all embodied in individual people, in groups and collectives and associations of people (many of whom do not know they are associated), in books, in buildings, in the use of time and space, in wars, in jokes, and in food.” See Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes (Wheaton: Crossway, 1989), 34. ↩
7. Johannes Althusius, Politica: An Abridged Translation of Politics Methodically Set Forth and Illustrated with Sacred and Profane Examples, ed. and trans. Frederick S. Carney, I.1. ↩
8. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I.2.1094a–1094b. See also Aristotle, Metaphysics, I.2.982a14–982b12, where he argues that politics is concerned with the pursuit of the highest good to the greatest degree. ↩
9. And this particular soup is also sentimentally saccharine. ↩
10. Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert, What Is the Mission of the Church? Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission (Crossway, 2011). ↩
11. Jonathan Leeman, “Soteriological Mission: Focusing in on the Mission of Redemption,” in Four Views on the Church’s Mission, ed. Jason S. Sexton (Zondervan Academic, 2017), 40. ↩
12. See footnote 3. ↩
13. This distinction may seem like hairsplitting to some, but Leeman (and DeYoung and Gilbert) may be concerned with the potential for what is commonly called “mission drift.” This occurs whenever an organization (church or otherwise) begins to divert its activities and resources from its founding identity and goal(s). For what it’s worth, we agree that the church is unique and has a unique calling, and we forget this only to the peril of many. ↩
14. We are well aware of the current debates about what it means to “make disciples of all nations/peoples (τὰ ἔθνη).” We agree that the church cannot disciple a person until he is a Christian—you have to catch a fish before you can clean it—but this does not diminish the scope of Christ’s command, which remains universal. ↩
15. That is to say, it won’t do to limit Christ’s instructions to the so-called “red letters.” In fact, red letter Bibles should really be printed entirely in red, for every word therein proceedeth from the mouth of God. But we digress. ↩
16. There are other ways to skin this cat. John Stott famously grounded his argument for the social duties of the church’s mission not on the great commission but on the greatest commandments (i.e., the duty to love God and to love neighbor). For our part, we believe that all persons will be judged for their failure to uphold God’s moral law, which is summarized in the great commandments (Matt. 22:36–40). Therefore, we need not say that the Great Commandments are part of the church’s mission in the same way that the Great Commission is the church’s mission to see that all Christians are supposed to do both: make disciples who love God and neighbor. ↩
17. That is not to say that the Bible has a single, inflexible vision for the ordering of all societies in all times and places. But it does speak to the basic principles of life concerning what is most valuable and what ought to be protected and preserved in any society, regardless of whether it’s a monarchy or a republic. And it certainly rules out other forms of government, like Marxism, which rely on axiomatic principles about private property that directly contradict what the Bible teaches on these matters. ↩
18. Though no Christian would explicitly say so, there are some who act as if the church fulfills her mission best when she impacts society least. ↩
19. Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture, 200. ↩
20. Kuyper remarked, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” This statement is from Kuyper’s inaugural address at Free University in Amsterdam, as cited in James D. Bratt, ed., Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader (Eerdmans, 1998), 488. ↩
21. Paul wrote these words at a time when Caesar ruled, and we have already pointed out that he felt at liberty to act against Caesar’s decrees (Acts 17:7; cf. Acts 4:19; 5:29). Paul is not contradicting himself. His conduct in Acts 17 is easily harmonized with Romans 13 by the explicitly named purpose of government. That is, Paul says that government exists to be the civil minister of God. And only a fool would follow the servant when he goes against his Master’s will. ↩
22. This raises the question of how governing authorities come to know what is good. That is to say, how can these authorities “punish those who do evil and praise those who do good” unless they have an accurate concept of these realities? Many Reformers answered that God’s natural law—summarized in the Ten Commandments and potentially discoverable by general revelation (Rom. 1:19–20, 32)—is the proper ground of government. As the American Puritan and vice-president of Harvard College (1701–07) explains, “The equity of it [i.e., the civil government], to be sure, is founded in the Law natural, and is to be discovered by the light of Nature, being accordingly acknowledged by such as are strangers to Scripture Revelation; and by Christians it is reducible to the first Command in the Second Table of the Decalogue; which is supposed to be a transcript of the Law given to Adam at the first, and written upon the Tables of his Heart. For though, had man kept his first state, the Moral Image Concreated in him, consisting in, Knowledge, Righteousness, and True Holiness, would have maintained him in a perfect understanding of, and Spontaneous Obedience to the whole duty incumbent on him, without the need of civil Laws to direct him, or a civil Sword to lay compulsion on him; and it would have been the true Golden Age, which the Heathen Mythologists are so Fabulous about yet even then did the All-Wise God Ordain Orders of Superiority and Inferiority among men, and required an Honor to be paid accordingly.” See Samuel Willard, “The Character of a Good Ruler,” a sermon preached on election day before the Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay on May 30, 1694. https://www.belcherfoundation.org/character_of_good_ruler.htm. ↩
23. French writes, “America was built from the ground up to function as a pluralistic republic. It can flourish only as a pluralistic republic.” See French, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation (St. Martin’s Press, 2020), 23. ↩
24. Quoted in Benjamin Wallace-Wells, “David French, Sohrab Ahmari, and the Battle for the Future of Conservatism,” The New Yorker, September 12, 2019. https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/david-french-sohrab-ahmari-and-the-battle-for-the-future-of-conservatism. ↩
25. See footnote 21. ↩
26. See GK Chesterton, The Illustrated London News, August 14, 1926 as republished in Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Illustrated London News, 1926-1928, Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, vol. XXXIV (Ignatius Press, 1991), 143. Alternatively, a digital copy of the original can be accessed here: https://archive.org/details/sim_illustrated-london-news_1926-08-14_169_4556/page/n1/mode/2up. ↩
27. Henry Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture (1959; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 200, emphasis added. ↩
28. Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture, 42. ↩
29. DC Schindler, God and the City: An Essay in Political Metaphysics, Chapter Three: The Glory of God Is the City Fully Alive: On the Soul and Body of Politics (St. Augustine’s Press, 2023), Kindle Edition. Emphasis original. ↩
30. This is so even if the ultimate truth were as misguided as the pragmatic notion that “whatever works is right.” ↩
31. We were tempted to say, “the gospel is at the very center of Christianity,” but there is already too much gospel-centered gospel-ing going on. ↩
32. Of course, this does not mean that the gospel is take-it-or-leave-it news. It is, in fact, the kind of news that demands a response. In this sense, the gospel is akin to shouting “Shark!” at the beach or “Fire!” in a theater. One cannot hear the message of the gospel (provided that it is understood) and not ask, “Brothers, what shall we do?“ (Acts 2:37). Indeed, every responsible presentation of the gospel should invite the listeners to respond rightly to it. ↩
33. Isaac Watts, “Joy to the World” (1719). ↩
34. For an excellent essay on this, see James R. Wood, “Ordering Our Social Loves,” Commonwealth, October 26, 2023. https://adfontesjournal.com/commonwealth/ordering-our-social-loves/. ↩
35. For an excellent discussion of this passage, see Richard C. Barcellos, “First Timothy 1:8–11 and the Utility of the Decalogue,” Reformed Baptist Theology Review 1:1 (Jan 2004). ↩
36. Note the precision of Paul’s language when he calls the gospel a matter of first importance (1 Cor. 15:3) but not a matter of mono importance as if the gospel were the only thing that matters. ↩
37. For example, when it comes to the evangelism of the lost, we do not wait for the Lord to strike someone with lightning from heaven. Rather, we say with the apostle Paul, “How can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? And how can they hear without a preacher?” (Rom. 10:14) ↩
38. As the Scriptures say, “False weights and unequal measures—the Lord detests double standards of every kind.” (Prov. 20:10 NLT). See also Lev. 19:35–36; Deut. 25:25; Prov. 11:1; 16:11; 20:23, as well as any of our Lord’s teachings on hypocrisy. ↩
39. Note also that Martin Luther King Jr. justified his political action by invoking the Scriptures and the Christian tradition. See, for example, his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, where he cites Augustine, Aquinas, and Martin Luther, along with Jesus and the apostle Paul. ↩
40. To be clear, we have never heard those who raise this objection use the word “ineffectual.” But we are trying to help a brother out (before showing him why he is dangerously misguided). ↩
41. See Doug Ponder, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Law,” Sola Ecclesia, August 1, 2022. https://solaecclesia.org/articles/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-law/ ↩
42. Martin Luther King Jr.’s address at Western Michigan University, “Social Justice,” December 18, 1963, cited in Scott Kulsen, The Case for Life (Crossway, 2009), 266, emphasis added. ↩
43. Discerning readers will notice that this is the second table of the law. Space does not permit us to defend the appropriateness of the application of the first table of the law to non-believers, but we will simply note that the Lord himself required non-Israelites—as well as unregenerate/non-believing Israelites!—to observe Israel’s laws so long as they sojourned in the land. This included sabbath laws (Ex. 20:10), ceremonial purity laws (Lev. 17:15), and even blasphemy laws (Lev. 24:16), which were punishable by death. And while modern nations are not theocratic states in the same way that old covenant Israel was, these examples are sufficient to demonstrate that it is not wrong in principle for states to hold individuals accountable even to explicitly religious laws that govern their behavior toward a God they do not believe in. Whether it is always prudent to do so is another debate for another day. ↩
44. For a defense of the goodness of cultural Christians and cultural Christianity, along with the need for individuals to connect these realities to their true source in Christ, see Andrew T. Walker, “Yet Another Champion for ‘Cultural Christianity’,” World, July 24, 2024, https://wng.org/opinions/yet-another-champion-for-cultural-christianity-1721817015. ↩
45. The exclamation point captures the hysterics that almost invariably accompany this objection. ↩
46. We mention American history because this is mainly an American objection, as much of Europe has a history of integralism (of church and stare) that precludes such objections from being raised in the first place. ↩
47. The closest the US Constitution comes to anything like a separation between the church and the state is the First Amendment, but even this does not say what many seem to think it says. Indeed, the very first word of the First Amendment makes it plain that Congress is not permitted to make a law that respects the establishment of a particular religion or prohibits the free exercise thereof. It does not say that states and other jurisdictions may not do so. And, in fact, virtually all of them did do so. Indeed, nine of the thirteen states at America’s founding had religious tests for public office, which generally required things like affirming the truth of the Trinity, the Scriptures, and even Protestantism. See Timon Cline, “Our Distinctly Protestant States,” The American Reformer, April 28, 2022. https://americanreformer.org/2022/04/our-distinctly-protestant-states/. ↩
48. In point of fact, the very first state to repeal anti-sodomy laws was Illinois in 1962. Even as late as 2003, fourteen US states still outlawed homosexual sex. ↩
49. For a robust defense of this historical fact, see Miles Smith, Religion and Republic: Christian America from the Founding to the Civil War (Davenant Press, 2024). ↩
50. Abraham Lincoln, “Proclamation 97—Appointing a Day of National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer,” March 30, 1863. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-97-appointing-day-national-humiliation-fasting-and-prayer ↩
51. John Adams, “Novanglus No. 4,” February 13, 1775, in Novanglus and Masschusettensis, or Political Essays on the Principal Points of Controversy, Between Great Britain and Her Colonies (1774; repr. Hews & Goss, 1819). Available online: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45205/45205-h/45205-h.htm. ↩
52. Though, of course, it is natural to expect that a society filled with regenerate and well-discipled Christians would, in fact, tend to be a better society than it otherwise could be. ↩
53. In addition to those cited below, see also: James R. Wood, “The COVID Regime as Stoicheic Order,” Theopolis, September 21, 2021, https://theopolisinstitute.com/the-covid-regime-as-stoicheic-order/ and James R. Wood, “A Modest Defense of (a Form of) Christian Nationalism,” Providence, February 10, 2021, https://providencemag.com/2021/02/modest-defense-form-christian-nationalism/. ↩
54. James R. Wood, “How I Evolved on Tim Keller,” First Things, May 6, 2022, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/05/how-i-evolved-on-tim-keller. ↩
55. Timothy Keller, “How Do Christians Fit Into the Late Two-Party System? They Don’t,” New York Times, September 19, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/christians-politics-belief.html. ↩
56. See Joe Rigney, “Losing the Prophetic Edge,” World, February 28, 2024, https://wng.org/opinions/losing-the-prophetic-edge-1709082602. ↩
57. James R. Wood, “This Article Is Not About Tim Keller,” American Reformer, May 12, 2022, https://americanreformer.org/2022/05/this-article-is-not-about-tim-keller/, emphasis added. ↩
58. Megachurch pastors seem particularly prone to speak in these ways because they often find themselves trying to hold together massive coalitions of insufficiently discipled Christians. Notwithstanding their good intentions, we think that speaking in such ways is inaccurate to the point of being misleading and unfruitful. ↩
59. As a reminder, sins like infanticide were singled out by God as the reason for Israel’s destruction and exile, cf. Jer. 32:35–36. ↩
60. In the 1930s, an Oxford social anthropologist named J.D. Unwin studied eighty-six of the world’s greatest civilizations and the shared causes of their demise. He found two factors that were increasingly common right before the collapse of a civilization became imminent: the loss of pre-nuptial chastity and absolute monogamy. That is to say, the more a society discouraged sex before marriage and faithfulness to one spouse within marriage, the more a society thrived. But once a culture was “liberated” from these mores, they all—within one century or less—abandoned rational thinking, regressed to nature worship, and either imploded from within or were conquered from without by some other civilization who had not yet descended into sexual licentiousness. See J.D. Unwin, Sex and Culture (London: Oxford University Press), 1934. For a summary of Unwin’s insights, see Kirk Durston, “J.D. Unwin and Why Sexual Morality May be Far More Important than You Ever Thought.” Quest. https://www.kirkdurston.com/blog/unwin.  ↩
61. George Orwell, review of Russell’s Power: A New Social Analysis, Adelphi, January 1939, para. 1, accessed January 31, 2024, https://www.lehman.edu/faculty/rcarey/BRSQ/06may.orwell.htm. ↩
62. Christians can and should affirm the truth of the statement “black lives matter.” For we know all that humans are made in God’s image and, as such, possess inherent dignity and are worthy of fair treatment. For more on the importance of distinguishing between Black Lives Matter the organization and “black lives matter” as a statement of truth, see Carl Ellis Jr., “Reflections on Black Lives,” Prophets of Culture, July 16, 2016, https://drcarlellisjr.blogspot.com/2016/07/reflections-on-black-lives.html. ↩
63. To give some more examples, it is alarming that leading Democratic politicians were caught lying about Trump’s collusion with Russia, including fabricating evidence to mislead the FBI on a multiyear witch-hunt. It is concerning that Democrats are enthusiastic supporters of foreign policies which spend billions on complex international conflicts while millions of Americans watch their grocery budgets skyrocket in just four years. They also push for tax laws that far exceed the principles and norms established in God’s Word and immigration policies considerably out of step with the general equity of the requirements God set forth for sojourners among his people. The Democratic party is also marked by global warming zealotry that traffics in false claims and which frequently endorses dangerous “population control measures” that openly discourage people from having children. They also pushed for supporting “vaccine passports” for basic goods and services while opposing basic proof of citizenship to vote in US elections. Democrats have also attempted to silence political opponents with sham trials (a.k.a. “lawfare”) reminiscent of the Soviet Union and have implemented a two-tiered justice system that harshly punished the January 6 protestors while remaining silent or even defending the 2020 protestors. And they show a growing sympathy and even support for Palestinian terror groups and Anti-Israel protestors. ↩
64. Peter J. Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew Through New Eyes: Jesus as Israel, Vol. 1 (Athanasius Press, 2018), emphasis added. ↩
65. That pastor can start by asking why his preaching doesn’t produce an effect like that of Paul’s (Acts 17:6–7). ↩
66. Yet some will say, “Aren’t both major candidates wicked, though?” Yes, but they are not wicked in the same ways and to the same degree. Don’t forget, political policies are a reflection of character, too. So while both Harris’s and Trump’s sexual lives would seem to be egregious departures from the biblical standards for righteousness, their public policies do not negatively impact society in equal measure. ↩
67. There is a form of idealism that insists Christians can only ever vote for Christians or for politicians who consistently support Christian positions to the highest possible degree. But in the real world, voting is rarely so simple. Instead, as one author has put it, “[V]oting decisions ought to be based on the likely consequences of the candidate’s term in office” (Stephen Wolfe, “A Consequentialist Theory of Voting,” Mere Orthodoxy, December 14, 2017, https://mereorthodoxy.com/consequentialist-theory-voting). Since this is the case, we would argue that it is not sinful for Christians to cast a vote for the so-called “lesser of two evils.” Indeed, it is good to have as one’s goal the minimization of public evil and widespread suffering. That is why some prefer to speak not of choosing “the lesser evil” but of doing “the greater good.” For voting always entails making relative judgments about flawed candidates with imperfect platforms. It would seem, then, that Christians should aim to vote for those candidates whose appointment would yield the greatest total good. For more on the ethical principles guiding such thinking, see R. Luke Stamps, “No One Said It Would Be Easy,” World, August 1, 2024, https://wng.org/opinions/no-one-said-it-would-be-easy-1722508330. ↩
68. This justly popular saying is often attributed to John Wesley, but there is no record that he ever said or wrote it. No matter. The truth doesn’t need a byline since it all comes from God. ↩

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