Spiritualizing Our Own Demise
Why the Reasons We Hear for Christians To Stay Out of Politics Don't Work
During a recent conversation with a dedicated and serious Christian friend, he told me he would not be voting in the upcoming election. When I asked him why, his response was that he is tired of having to choose between the lesser of two evils. Because both candidates are evil, he refuses to participate in electing either one. For him, not voting is a matter of principle.
He said all this with an air of spiritual pride and conviction, believing his stance presents a powerful Christian witness to a culture in decline. I’m still confused as to what “principle” he thinks he’s upholding. Apparently, it never occurs to people like him that the reason we are left with the poor choices we have is that they didn’t vote the last time they were given the chance. But, sadly, my friend is not alone.
Rampant Civic Apathy
George Barna, the Christian social scientist whose surveys on the decrepit state of a biblical worldview paint a bleak picture for our future, just released another iteration of his data. Here’s what he found:1
Only 51% of “people of faith” are likely to vote in November—and a full 32 million Christians who regularly attend church probably won’t vote.
Massive numbers of eligible faith voters—a full 104 million—probably won’t vote in the November 5 election. This 104 million figure includes 41 million born-again Christians (defined by their beliefs regarding sin and salvation, not self-identification), 32 million regular Christian church attenders, and 14 million who attend an evangelical church.
Barely half of Christian churches—only 56%—bothered to take the simplest election-related activity: encouraging their people to vote. And in the past two years, only 61% of churches provided any sermons or teaching about the Bible’s stand on key cultural issues.
If you want to know why our civic leaders are generally hostile to Christian values, there’s your answer.
We don’t care enough to demand change.
Just Preach the Gospel
One factor that greatly affects the attitudes of these non-voting Christians is the ridiculous notion promoted by many faith leaders that we should stay out of politics and “just preach the gospel.” The mindset is centered on two things. First, that preaching the gospel will convict those who hear it and drive them to their knees. Second, that our silence makes us neutral.
No doubt, the former is true in some cases. Preaching the gospel is the duty of every Christian. And only the Holy Spirit can convict the rebellious to change their ways. But here’s the thing — our apathetic disconnection from politics will eventually lead us to the point where we can’t preach the Gospel.
Look at the photo at the top of this post. As Frank Turek regularly points out, there is a stark contrast between North and South Korea. And the nature of that contrast is political. The southern half of the Korean peninsula is a democracy. The northern half is a communist dictatorship.
Good luck trying to preach the gospel in North Korea. It’s illegal. So is owning a Bible.
The darkness of North Korea is more than an electrical grid problem. The absence of light is also a spiritual problem. And while it’s correct to say that if you want real political reform, you have to have spiritual revival first, those are not mutually exclusive goals. We can, and should, pursue both of them simultaneously.
No Neutral Ground
This is the issue with Christians boycotting politics. Removing yourself from the system is not a neutral stance. And despite its claims to the contrary, neither is the secularism that fills the void you create when you abandon the process. The culture will be affected by someone’s ideology. And guess who’s monopolizing it now?
In just one recent example, the “Hands Off My Porn” campaign is contributing $100,000 to one presidential candidate in hopes of convincing young men that the other candidate will dare to inhibit their access to pornography. God forbid that would happen!
Does anyone think the sexual libertinism that dominates our society and is reflected in all its forms — divorce, abortion, “trans-affirming” surgical mutilation of children, same-sex marriage, teaching secular ideology in our schools, adultery, and pornography to name a few — would be less pronounced if Christian values were better supported in the culture?
Does anyone seriously think that the government corruption at every level would be at the same level if actual Christian values were more prevalent among our lawmakers?
Does anyone think that the movement toward constraining the inalienable rights that have been endowed to us by our Creator would be as powerful as it is if it were more influenced by people who were followers of that Creator?
In his book, Correct, Not Politically Correct, Turek puts it this way. “Secularizing public education has been the key to our nation’s moral demise. Once public education went secular, the rest of society eventually followed, especially when the products of that system became our leaders. As Abraham Lincoln once observed:”2
The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.
~ Abraham Lincoln
Secularism is not neutral. It simply reinforces secular values and priorities while we sit on the sidelines and complain about it.
Our civic mission as believers is to limit evil in any way we can. And if you don’t see evil in the secular forces that are driving our culture right now, you’re just not paying enough attention to what’s going on.
Jesus Was Involved in Politics
Unfortunately, many Christians rationalize their own absence from politics by claiming they are just following Jesus’ lead. But that point of view illuminates a misunderstanding about Jesus’ approach to the culture of his day.
Christians are quick to note that Jesus regularly challenged the Pharisees. But, they claim, he only did so because they were religious hypocrites. The problem with that take is that the Pharisees weren’t just the religious leaders of their time. They lived in a theocracy in which they were also the political leaders of their time. So, to challenge them was to challenge the theocratic leadership that was both religious and political.
The claim from the secular culture that “you can’t legislate morality” is a lie. Every law imposes someone’s moral values on the law. If the church doesn’t at least attempt to support Jesus’ moral point of view in our lawmaking, the forces of secularism will be happy to impose theirs.
The political structure of western civilization was built around Christianity’s view of the moral law. And the promise of our nation was that the government could not mandate the citizens’ membership in any particular religion, not that religious ideas are prohibited from having an input into the moral foundations of our society.
Spiritualizing Our Own Demise
For those who hide behind the claim that “my vote doesn’t matter anyway,” the fact is that major U. S. elections — especially presidential elections — are decided by tens of thousands of votes in each of the “swing states” that really end up determining the outcome. This, while tens of millions of Christians sit out election day.
Your vote does matter. Please stop pretending otherwise.
If that’s not enough, consider the fact that millions of our forebears and those who currently serve in our military have willingly stood in the gap — and many have died — to defend your liberty. Included in that liberty is the historically rare and precious right to vote. Please don’t dishonor their sacrifices through apathy or some misplaced desire to prove a point.
Christians who preen about their spiritual maturity while abdicating their responsibility to defend and uphold Christian morals and values in the culture aren’t making the case they think they’re making. There is no “honorable” way to sit back and watch the culture descend into moral chaos while you forgoe your civic responsibility to try to do something about it.
Nero is famous for fiddling while Rome burned. There is nothing spiritually mature about doing the same thing on a smaller scale. Too many Christians bear some responsibility for the culture’s moral demise. And, sadly, too many Christians can blame our descent into that cesspool of societal decline by looking in the bathroom mirror.
Frank Turek, Correct, Not Politically Correct, (Moringstar Publications, Charlotte, NC, 2023), pp. 118-119
Thank you for this insight!
Well my friend, you have done it now! Shaken everyone who reads this article to the core. Good for you! As Christians we have been allowing this moral demise in America for much longer than just 30 years, 50+ by my account. I hope this article will inspire Christians to exercise their responsibility to vote. I will be passing this article on to family and friends!