I don’t presume to know how other Christians ought to vote. It’s complicated and messy. As believers, protecting the vulnerable should be our highest political objective, and there are none more vulnerable than the unborn.
For decades, a pronounced majority of white evangelicals have reliably supported politicians who regard virtually all vulnerable classes except the unborn with utter contempt (and whose policies, at that, have actually done very little to protect the unborn).
Now we are forced to choose between the rights of the most vulnerable and the rights of all but the most vulnerable.
This dilemma is both of our own making and totally unsurprising. It is of our own making because it is a product of the religious right’s fragmented conception of justice.
And it is unsurprising because God doesn’t generally allow his people to select which sacred obligations to honor and which to casually ignore—particularly when we attempt to honor those that cost nothing and ignore those that threaten our material security and social standing.
So, my fellow pro-lifer, I respect and share your pro-life position; but if you’re not the least bit conflicted about which political party best represents your values, it’s possible that you’re not pro-life enough.
Whichever way you decide to vote, I hope you won’t be swayed by the celebrity culture warriors who led white American evangelicals to the gilded political prison in which we now find ourselves:
in which we are forced to choose between the party that promises to protect all but the most vulnerable and the party that promises to protect only the most vulnerable.
I don’t know what to say about this November. But I know that we should be wary of anyone with the audacity to tell us that it’s obvious how Christians should vote.
The path out of our current political wasteland is paved with integrity—which is to say, a pro-life position that is integrated around justice for all, born and unborn alike.

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More from @scott_m_coley

6 Oct
What if America is just like all the other empires? What if America’s power and wealth aren’t a mark of divine favor, but merely a byproduct of empire-building?
And what if, by mistaking the fruits of empire for God’s blessing, Christian nationalists have gotten confused about what sorts of things God favors—confused about the features of our civilization that we should make an effort to cultivate and amplify into the future?
For example, what if it’s just a very, very bad thing that our government systematically slaughtered and dispossessed indigenous populations and desecrated their sacred places? Maybe that’s just all there is to it: no manifest destiny, nothing redeeming about it—just very bad.
Read 11 tweets
19 Sep
I am dismayed by the number of evangelicals who publicly endorse a consequentialist approach to political participation—especially among pastors and those charged with supervising the theological training of pastors.
Consequentialism is vexed by the human inability to foreknow the consequences of our actions.

For example, suppose that Christians were to adopt a consequentialist approach to voting.
Over a period of about 40 years, let’s say, strictly as a means of achieving some policy objective, we might overlook or perhaps even encourage all manner of evil in voting for politicians who promise that if we’ll only give them more power, they’ll give us what we want.
Read 8 tweets
17 Sep
Recent discussion of CRT in conservative evangelical circles is, I think, largely if not entirely a distraction from substantive issues. It’s a transparent attempt to delegitimize the demand for institutional justice without any substantive engagement on real issues.
In point of fact, the concept of systemic racism is used across a number of disciplines to describe a variety of different phenomena. Two general fields of application stand out. One has to do with psychology—racist attitudes and so forth. The other has to do with institutions.
A lot of political and cultural conservatives (some of them evangelicals) identify all claims about systemic racism with CRT, and then define CRT strictly in terms of psychological theorizing about racist attitudes.
Read 11 tweets
12 Sep
An alarming number of evangelical males think that since Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the temple, they have license to turn Christianity into some sort of gnostic virility cult.
They’re calling for a return to 1950s-era norms of masculinity—conveniently omitting the fact that we didn’t live through the great depression or kill any Nazis. A lot of them actually drink lattes. Lattes.
I cannot imagine a more comfortable mode of human existence than that of a 21st century, latte-drinking John Wayne with a smartphone and nothing better to do than tweet at Beth Moore while his wife folds his laundry.
Read 5 tweets
10 Aug
Periodic reminder that sometimes @johnmacarthur just makes stuff up when it suits his purposes.

For instance:
Here @johnmacarthur ‘s text is meant to be Isaiah ch. 3; and his exposition has literally nothing whatsoever to do with Isaiah ch. 3.
The only reference to women in power found in the text is in v. 12, where the prophet mentions governance by women as a consequence of Israel’s iniquity.

Note three things:
Read 9 tweets
14 Jul
Even if it’s your right as an American to endanger others for the sake of your own comfort and convenience, it is your duty as a Christian to refrain from exercising that right.
Decades of pursuing political power have so seared the Culture Warrior’s conscience that he answers basic moral truth claims with endless excuses and complaints about what all the other kids are doing—whataboutabortion? whataboutantifa? whataboutBLM?
Yeah, what about it?

Since when does your calling depend on the conduct of others? And what’s all this whining about?
Read 7 tweets

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