(Originally written in reply to a Facebook post about Evangelical writer Philip Yancey's wondering why Christians would support Donald Trump.)
... It's because they have learned to be practical. If a Christian is trying to get to church and has car trouble, he will use whatever vehicle service is available, even if run by a militant atheist. His excuse will be that church is important, and he is simply using that service to facilitate his attendance. Likewise, if it was a matter of their business or livelihood, they would make such an excuse. But for some reason, Christians have seemed to often reject this same logic when it comes to politics. They seem to hold their vote as some sort of sacrosanct act which must be given only to pure people. So they have at times refused to vote for the lesser of two evils, with the almost inevitable result of getting the GREATER of the two. Their selfish self-righteousness--which never applied when they as individuals were directly affected (hence it being selfishness)--ended up hurting them and the community. And all they did was shine their halos.
More Christians have come to see their political involvement as being a means to an end--that is, accomplishing good--rather than an end unto itself. They have learned from hard lessons the practical impact of such selfishness. They have learned that even as they would deal with spiritually lesser people to make money (I remember a local church elder in my former congregation doing contractor work on the home of a lesbian couple) or to maintain their spiritual standing with their church community (how many Christians would really refuse vehicle help from a wrecker with a "I VOTE PRO-CHOICE" bumper sticker?), they may have to do so in politics.
Jerry Falwell took heat for voting for the once-divorced Ronald Reagan over the Sunday School-teaching Jimmy Carter. He explained that he was voting for a President, not a Sunday School teacher. Today we would say that the "skill sets" are different. A good preacher is not necessarily a good mechanic (or a reliable customer of a contractor, for that matter).
And one last point: Before someone tries to argue that Christians have some sort of spiritual duty to (only) vote for "good" Christians, they need to ask what they would advise a Japanese Christian to do. Japan is literally 99 percent Shinto. (For the less educated, that is a form of Buddhism, and no, it's not Christian at all.) A Japanese Christian would be hard pressed to find a Christian to vote for. Yet, they have their duty to their community, even if the dominant religious culture is not Christian (Galatians 6:10). Unless this person would tell that Japanese Christian not to vote--and thus violate that duty--then they have to accept the need to refrain from letting spiritual status be the be-all/end-all of their politics.
Yancey has always been one to lean toward a certain sense of Christian separatism in society. And now, he is being a self-righteous fool, acting without regard to consequence to facilitate the fall of our nation. Donald J. Trump is the best hope for America. A strong America means a strong Occidental civilization. And that will facilitate the lives and work of Christians.
More Christians have come to see their political involvement as being a means to an end--that is, accomplishing good--rather than an end unto itself. They have learned from hard lessons the practical impact of such selfishness. They have learned that even as they would deal with spiritually lesser people to make money (I remember a local church elder in my former congregation doing contractor work on the home of a lesbian couple) or to maintain their spiritual standing with their church community (how many Christians would really refuse vehicle help from a wrecker with a "I VOTE PRO-CHOICE" bumper sticker?), they may have to do so in politics.
Jerry Falwell took heat for voting for the once-divorced Ronald Reagan over the Sunday School-teaching Jimmy Carter. He explained that he was voting for a President, not a Sunday School teacher. Today we would say that the "skill sets" are different. A good preacher is not necessarily a good mechanic (or a reliable customer of a contractor, for that matter).
And one last point: Before someone tries to argue that Christians have some sort of spiritual duty to (only) vote for "good" Christians, they need to ask what they would advise a Japanese Christian to do. Japan is literally 99 percent Shinto. (For the less educated, that is a form of Buddhism, and no, it's not Christian at all.) A Japanese Christian would be hard pressed to find a Christian to vote for. Yet, they have their duty to their community, even if the dominant religious culture is not Christian (Galatians 6:10). Unless this person would tell that Japanese Christian not to vote--and thus violate that duty--then they have to accept the need to refrain from letting spiritual status be the be-all/end-all of their politics.
Yancey has always been one to lean toward a certain sense of Christian separatism in society. And now, he is being a self-righteous fool, acting without regard to consequence to facilitate the fall of our nation. Donald J. Trump is the best hope for America. A strong America means a strong Occidental civilization. And that will facilitate the lives and work of Christians.
