I rarely get political here because my passion is to defend the veracity of the Christian faith, as I have to my children all their lives, and to rest of my brothers and sisters in Christ. But I feel I must in this case get political because I’m weary of left-wing, progressive, liberal (whatever) Christians thinking they stand in some politically transcendent place where they can condemn their conservative brethren for their moral profligacy of supporting President Trump. I was driven to write by a recent piece at Christianity Today by Scott McKnight, although I’ve encountered many such screeds directed at people like me, and the rest of Evangelical Trump supporters.
McKnight claims to be criticizing both ends of the political spectrum, but that rings hollow. After all, he’s defending Mark Galli, the outgoing editor of Christianity Today, and his editorial that “Trump Should be Removed from Office.” He also claims that there is a growing movement toward a “justice-oriented” Evangelicalism; maybe in his left-wing dreams. His criticism is something he calls “statism,” in his words, “the theory that the state ought to rule and the state can solve our problems.” In logic this is called a straw man. He’s stating that those he disagrees with believe something they may or may not believe, but he assumes they all believe it in the way he does, then he tears this straw man to the ground. Thus it is a logical falacy.
First of all, the point of having a state is that it must rule, it must have power to keep order in a society. Without a state that has effective power, you end up with anarchy, which harms everyone. So that is a terribly weak straw man. The other is even weaker: Who exactly is it among the politically active and engaged today that believes “the state can solve our problems”? The modern Democrat Party! As the good leftist progressives they are, Democrats believe that government can solve every problem. While Republicans often fall for this temptation, they argue for less government, and more individual liberty. McKnight seems to think if you take politics seriously, as I believe it is incumbent upon every citizen to do, especially Christian citizens, then you think “the state can solve our problems.” I’m sure McKnight is an intelligent man, but his argument is just plain dumb.
I’ll make a my case for Trump in a moment, but I want to point out that my job as a persuasive Christian parent is to not only persuade my children that our religious convictions are true, but that our political convictions are as well. These, as I mentioned above, are of a distinctly conservative bent. I am just as convinced that my children would no more go off to college and become political liberals, than they would become agnostics or atheists. And teaching them that politics and government are important doesn’t mean I’m teaching them they are all important, only that in a republic of the people, by the people, and for the people, it is very important. If conservative Christians don’t make their voices heard and their influence felt, their enemies most certainly will, and all Americans will suffer for it.
The most important reason to support President Trump and the Republican Party is because the Democrat Party is the party of fetal genocide. Long gone are the days when Bill Clinton, lying as he often did, said he thought abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” That was the politically expedient position for a Democrat in the 1990s. Today’s Democrats would call such a position “anti-woman,” and anyone who holds it a bigot. As proponents of slavery started to argue in the 1830s that slavery was not a necessary evil, but a positive good, so are the proponents of killing babies in the womb now arguing that abortion is a necessary and good thing for the flourishing of women and the nation (not so much for the dead babies). So much so that they are for killing pre-born babies up to the moment of birth, and sometimes after! How any Christian could vote for such a party is inconceivable to me, regardless of what else they believe politically. I could give many other reasons why I, and my family, are enthusiastic and proud supporters of the president, but abortion is the most obvious.
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