I recently teamed up with my friend Jonathan Leeman to write both a book and an article on politics, conscience, and the church:
New Book (Crossway)
Leeman, Jonathan, and Andrew David Naselli. How Can I Love Church Members with Different Politics? 9Marks: Church Questions. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020. (63 pp.)
[Update on 9/2/2020: The book is available for free as an audiobook.]
New Article (Themelios)
Leeman, Jonathan, and Andrew David Naselli. “Politics, Conscience, and the Church: Why Christians Passionately Disagree with One Another over Politics, Why They Must Agree to Disagree over Jagged-Line Political Issues, and How.” Themelios 45 (2020): 13–31. (PDF | Web Version)
Here’s the abstract:
Today many evangelical churches feel political tension. We recommend a way forward by answering three questions:
(1) Why do Christians passionately disagree with one another over politics? We give two reasons: (a) Christians passionately care about justice and believe that their political convictions promote justice, and (b) Christians have different degrees of wisdom for making political judgments and tend to believe that they have more wisdom than those who differ.
(2) Why must Christians agree to disagree over jagged-line political issues? After explaining straight-line vs. jagged-line political issues, we give two reasons: (a) Christians must respect fellow Christians who have differently calibrated consciences on jagged-line issues, and (b) insisting that Christians agree on jagged-line issues misrepresents Christ to non-Christians.
(3) How must Christians who disagree over jagged-line political issues agree to disagree? We explain three ways: (a) acknowledge leeway on jagged-line political issues; (b) unite to accomplish the mission Christ gave the church; and (c) prioritize loving others over convincing them that your convictions about jagged-line political issues are right.
How the Book and Article Compare
The message is basically the same in the book and article, but we target different audiences. In the little book we target laypeople, and in the more academic article, we target church leaders. (The book contains no footnotes.)
3 Recent Presentations
I recently presented the gist of our work in three settings:
1. Bob Jones University Seminary (November 12, 2019)
I addressed this topic for the annual Stewart Custer Lecture Series: Part 1 | Part 2.
Sam Horn interviewed me about it (5.5 minutes):
2. Bethlehem College & Seminary Chapel (February 12, 2020)
3. Thabiti Anyabwile’s Just Gospel Conference in Alexandria, Virginia (March 6, 2020)
In the final video above, Thabiti’s introduction starts about 7 minutes in. About 49 minutes in (at the end of my talk), Thabiti joins me on stage for about 11 minutes to dialogue. He is a gracious man.
I spoke on Day 2 of 3 at the Just Gospel Conference. On Day 1 and at the beginning of Day 2, I got the sense that many of the Christians attending this conference were more left-leaning politically than I am. Rather than mask any differences or throw out red meat, I decided to try to love my brothers and sisters by uncomfortably addressing a controversial topic—political parties in America—in order to encourage some hard conversations. The controversial content I added is not in the book or article. It illustrates how I am wrestling with political issues in my American context this election season. Here’s that section from my manuscript:
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Illustration: Political Parties
I’m going to reflect on this controversial issue because it illustrates the tension Christians may feel with each other when we talk about conscience and justice and politics. Let me start with some context.
In April 2016, I published an article on my website titled “Can You Vote for Donald Trump with a Clear Conscience?” In that article I posed three questions:
- Does Donald Trump have good character and policies? Regarding his character, I concluded, “Trump is not morally qualified to lead a Boy Scout troop.” Regarding his policies, I concluded, “It is virtually impossible to discern what they are because (a) he repeatedly changes his opinions about policies, (b) he has only vaguely presented what his policies would be as president, and (c) we cannot trust what he says because of his character.”
- What does voting entail? I presented two basic strategies: “(1) Vote for the least bad candidate who has the best chance of winning. The way you feel about this candidate can fall anywhere on a spectrum from enthusiasm to indifference to revulsion. For example, you may vote against a front runner by choosing the lesser of two evils. (2) Vote for the best (or least bad) candidate, even if that person has a low chance of winning.”
- What is a clear conscience? I argued, “People may reasonably disagree about how to strategically vote in America’s democratic republic: (1) Will your conscience condemn you for not voting—for failing to act as a responsible citizen for the good of your family, community, and country? (2) Will your conscience condemn you for voting for Hillary Clinton—for supporting someone who is arguably worse than Donald Trump (e.g., enthusiastically pro-abortion)? (3) Will your conscience condemn you for voting for Donald Trump—for supporting the person I describe in the first part of this essay? (4) Will your conscience condemn you for voting for someone else—for essentially ‘wasting’ your vote on someone who has no chance to win? There isn’t a good option. … What should you do? It’s in a theological category called ‘disputable matters.’ … But remember: It is a sin to violate your conscience—even if your conscience is mistaken.”
I concluded the article by sharing my own conviction: “If I had to vote today, I could not vote for Donald Trump with a clear conscience. Perhaps others will persuade me to calibrate my conscience on this issue, but I doubt it. Maybe I’ll be able to think of voting as voting ‘against’ and not voting ‘for’ and thus agree with ‘the lesser of two evils’ argument in order to mitigate greater evil. … Maybe Trump will turn from his ways and surround himself with a genuinely conservative team that he humbly listens to. But at this point, I can’t get around the obstacle that I would be enabling a destructive, grossly immoral candidate.”
I wrote that in April 2016. In November, I did not vote for Trump (nor did I vote for Hillary Clinton).
In December 2017, MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) came to my church’s building—Bethlehem Baptist Church’s North Campus in a northern suburb of Minneapolis—to interview folks about the election. The lady reporter who interviewed me clearly did not have a category for me. She knew that I was an evangelical who pastors a conservative church. Here’s part of what made it into her news story for MPR:
“So I’m at the point now where I don’t even identify as a Republican,” Naselli said. “I’m theologically conservative, politically conservative, but I’m not in the pocket of any political party at all. I did not vote for President Trump, and I’m embarrassed to be a Republican because of him, so I don’t call myself a Republican.”
What brings him and his family to church each week, Naselli said, is his deep love of Jesus and the Bible. “We most glorify God when he most satisfies us [that’s Christian hedonism!], and one of the ways he satisfies us is when his people come together, sing together and pray together and hear the word preached,” he said. “And that’s something that happens weekly, according to the practice of the New Testament. That’s why it’s every week for us. And it’s something we love.”
In other words, what unifies Bethlehem Baptist Church is not that we are Republicans. What unifies us is that we follow Jesus. We are Christians. We love and adore the triune God. We don’t agree on every political judgment, but we agree about what’s most important.
All that was a little preamble to give you some context for what I’m about to share next. I’d like to share with you how my conscience is functioning right now about how to think about political parties in America. And I recognize that I could be wrong. So here we go:
The political landscape keeps changing. It may be reasonable for a Christian to support a particular political party one day but not a decade later. Voting for a particular political party could be a jagged-line issue one day but not a decade later. The ground can shift beneath our feet quickly.
Imagine that you lived in Germany in the early 1920s, and a Christian friend told you that he joined the National Socialist Germany Workers Party—the Nazis. You would have misgivings, but your church probably wouldn’t excommunicate him. But by the early 1930s, what the Nazi Party represented would have become clear enough that voices in your church hopefully would argue for excommunication, as evidenced by the 1934 Barmen Declaration in which the Confessing Church publicly denounced all Nazism. How much more would this be the case by the 1940s? Politics are not static, and with every passing day we need a fresh dose of wisdom. And Christians will have different opinions all along the way.
I’ll illustrate this by sharing how my conscience is helping me think about political parties in America right now. I’m guessing that some of you will disagree with me. And again, I could be wrong in my political judgment (which illustrates my earlier point that Christians have different degrees of wisdom for making political judgments and tend to believe that they have more wisdom than those who differ!).
The political landscape in the United States has changed radically in the last few decades, and with every passing year more and more elements in both major parties challenge the biblical standards of justice.
- The Democratic Party has adopted shockingly extreme views on abortion by doubling down on third-trimester abortions and sometimes commending a woman’s “choice” to kill an accidentally delivered child. The Party also champions so-called gay “marriage,” transgender “rights,” and other LGBTQ+ “rights” in the name of tolerance in a way that punitively threatens the religious liberty of evangelical institutions such as churches, schools, and adoption agencies.
- The Republican Party has its issues, too. Character flaws and injustice are not exclusive to just one political party. But my point here is that I don’t think there’s a moral equivalence between the two main parties. Some evils are greater than others.
In the United States today, some Christians seem untroubled by their choice of party. Others don’t feel fully aligned with either party but say they hold their noses and pick “the lesser of two evils.” Still others wonder if one or both of the major parties have become off limits for Christians, like the situation with the Nazi Party. I don’t think that a particular political party is a perfect fit for a Christian. If I did, then party thinking would probably be subverting my Christianity. But I do not believe the two major parties are morally equivalent.
Let’s start with what John Piper wrote in 1997 in his book A Godward Life:
No endorsement of any single issue qualifies a person to hold public office. Being pro-life does not make a person a good governor, mayor, or president. But there are numerous single issues that disqualify a person from public office. For example, any candidate who endorsed bribery as a form of government efficiency would be disqualified, no matter what his party or platform was. Or a person who endorsed corporate fraud (say under $50 million) would be disqualified no matter what else he endorsed. Or a person who said that no black people could hold office—on that single issue alone he would be unfit for office. Or a person who said that rape is only a misdemeanor—that single issue would end his political career. These examples could go on and on. Everybody knows a single issue that for them would disqualify a candidate for office. … I believe that the endorsement of the right to kill unborn children disqualifies a person from any position of public office. It’s simply the same as saying that the endorsement of racism, fraud, or bribery would disqualify him—except that child-killing is more serious than those.
I’m wondering if a single issue that is a central, non-negotiable platform of a political party can disqualify a political party at a point in time—at least when voting for officers at the highest levels such as president, congress, and governor. Human societies are filled with sinners and thus are filled with injustice, but some injustices are worse than others. And I think that the most significant injustice by far in our society is killing unborn children—over 60 million children since 1973. In the Holocaust, the Nazis slaughtered over 6 million European Jews. After America legalized abortion in 1973, Americans have slaughtered over 60 million unborn children. 60 million! There are many injustices in our society, and I don’t mean to minimize them; but none is bigger than the injustice of abortion. Over 60 million babies in the image of God are dead. I think that in 50–100 years, societies are going to look back at America’s abortion era that began in 1973 and view it similarly to the way we now view American slavery and Jim Crow. So I can’t vote with a clear conscience for a politician who supports the high-handed sin of abortion—at least if there’s another candidate who is pro-life.
The “right” to kill unborn children has become an increasingly strong plank in the Democratic Party platform. Last month the Democrats running for president debated each other and had their most detailed discussion about abortion in a debate thus far. The New York Times published this report on the debate:
Historically, many presidential candidates have shied away from an outright litmus test on abortion or any other issue, arguing that Supreme Court justices should not be selected based on their political positions but on their experience and jurisprudence. But that has changed this campaign cycle. The Democratic candidates have also gone a step further and urged that the right to abortion be legislated ….
The frontrunning Democratic candidates for president agree that their view on abortion is a litmus test. During that debate last month one candidate [Senator Bernie Sanders] said this:
You asked a simple question: “Is there a litmus test for those of us up here?” For me, there is. I will never nominate any person to the Supreme Court or the federal courts in general who is not 100 percent pro-Roe v. Wade. Number two: We have got to codify Roe v. Wade into legislation. Number three: We have to significantly expand funding for Planned Parenthood.
Another candidate [Senator Elizabeth Warren] said this during the debate:
If we are going to protect the people of the United States of America and we are going to protect our rights to have dominion over our own bodies, then it’s going to mean we can’t simply rely on the courts. … It is time to have a national law to protect the right of a woman’s choice.
I showed those two clips to my wife and four daughters, and they were dumbfounded. One of my daughters looked at me like these two people were crazy and asked something like, “So, Daddy, they’re saying that killing babies is how we protect people? What about protecting the babies?!” She saw right through it.
Democratic politicians used to say things like, “I am personally pro-life but politically pro-choice” or “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.” Now Democratic politicians are celebrating abortion and promising to defend it without any restrictions.
The day after that debate last month, some pro-abortion groups held a forum on abortion. A reporter from NBC News asked one of the Democratic candidates [Bernie Sanders], “Is there such a thing as a pro-life Democrat in your vision of the party?” The frontrunning candidate replied, “I think being pro-choice is an absolutely essential part of being a Democrat.”
What do we do with that? I think these recent quotations illustrate that the political landscape is changing. And I think it should affect how we make political judgments. It leads me to ask, “Is it a jagged-line issue to vote for a pro-choice candidate for president or congress or governor?” At this point, I’m not ready to preach that this is a straight-line issue. Here’s how my conscience is leading me to think about it: At this point I think it is at best extremely unwise (and that it is possibly sinful) to vote for a pro-choice candidate for president or congress or governor. At the same time, I am not convinced that our church should excommunicate a member for voting for a pro-choice candidate since there are different viable strategies and philosophies of voting. But we should think about whether we are approaching a Barmen-Declaration moment.
Again, I could be wrong in my political judgment here because I don’t have infinite wisdom. If you disagree with my political judgment here, I’d welcome the opportunity to respectfully hear your perspective. This issue illustrates that we need to ask God for wisdom and then remember that none of us is Solomon, much less God, who alone is perfectly wise. Remembering this should create some room for charity and forbearance.
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Concluding Prayer
Father, when we disagree with one another on complex political issues, would you please help us disagree in a way that pleases you? Give us courage to be faithfully countercultural and to represent you truthfully to non-Christians. Please give us wisdom to love and forbear when we disagree about political judgments. Please unite us to accomplish the mission Christ gave the church. We ask this for the fame of your Name. Amen.
Update on 6/2/2020: On April 17, 2020, I recorded a podcast with Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman for the 9Marks podcast. It released today: Episode 130: On How Can I Love Church Members with Different Politics (with Andy Naselli).
Update on 9/9/2024: I updated the article I coauthored with Jonathan Leeman four years ago by tweaking it throughout and by adding a new section at the end: “Test Case: May Christians in America Vote for a Pro-choice Candidate?”
Naselli, Andrew David. “Politics, Conscience, and the Church: The Why, What, and How of Political Disagreement.” Christ Over All, 9 September 2024.
