Two recent articles that attempt to explain why evangelical Christians would vote for President Trump in the 2020 elections have caught my attention -- Andrew Walker's "Understanding Why Religious Conservatives Would Vote for Trump" and John Fea's response in "The Problem with the Reluctant Trump Voter: A Response to Andrew Walker's National Review Essay." Walker is from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Fea is from Messiah College. They are from different theological stripes, and see most every issue from those stripes. One is apparently a "reluctant Trump" voter and the latter is an anti-Trump voter. The arguments seem to be focused on the person of Trump and his morality (or lack thereof) and the extent of progressivism in the Democratic Party among the candidates now running. How about "in spite of" Trump voting?
I did not cast my vote in the 2016 election for Trump. Neither did I cast my vote for Hillary Clinton. Nor did I cast my vote for any Green Party candidate or any other write-ins. People would say I am a "disengaged" voter, that I wasted an opportunity to exercise my freedom as an American voter. Perhaps. I am also a white, evangelical male, who attends an Anabaptist-Wesleyan church (Brethren in Christ) but who has also been an orthodox Presbyterian as well as a Reformed Baptist in my personal and ministerial career. It wasn't that I could not make up my theological mind, but rather that I sought to follow God's direction in my life and ministry through the years, and that direction led me to seemingly diverse theological and ministerial positions as well as training. So, it would not be surprising to say that I disagree with Walker as well as with Fea on a number of points.
I seek to be a biblical Christian. That means that I do not blindly follow the Religious Right or the Moral Majority or the Anabaptist counter cultural "upside down" kingdom model either. I vote, when I vote, on informed moral, cosmological or world-and-life viewpoint grounds. I am first of all a citizen of heaven through allegiance to Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior. I am an "alien" to the citizenry of any world order, including America. I love my country, no doubt, but I am not dependent on my country and its political woes or suppositions to determine my destiny. I obey my governmental leaders according to the precepts of Romans 13 in the Bible. I am not blind to their prideful, often ostentatious, lies and subterfuges and moral misgivings.
As with other evangelical believers, I believe abortion on demand is a horrific tragedy and a Holocaust of mega-proportions. But I also believe and know that no Supreme Court decision, nor a pro-life President, nor a Republican Congress can ultimately stop the practice or the inane thinking that the child in the womb is not a person in his or her own right. I remember the Christian Jimmy Carter as President as one of the most moral, yet probably most ineffective, President we ever had. Where are the Abraham Lincoln's of today? I have been part of an activist pro-life group in upstate New York when I pastored a church in Schenectady, NY, but also sought to pray for and discuss the issues with the Planned Parenthood president, a move that my pro-life brothers and sisters saw as tyranny of the worst sort. All people everywhere need the Lord, no matter their party or abortion affiliations.
So, I guess I am an "in spite of" Christian in America. Will I vote for Donald Trump in 2020? That will be up to prayerful direction sought from God and the Bible, not from the political ranker from either party. The bigger issue is not how moral or immoral a candidate for President is, but rather does his or her worldview comport with a biblically defined and crafted viewpoint? If neither does, then neither gets my vote. Many would disagree with me or say I am "compromised" in my thinking. So be it. The larger question always for me is the biblical salvation status of Donald Trump or the Democratic contenders for that party. At the end of the day, that is what will really matter, and should matter to us all.
