Politics is no longer a battle of red vs blue. The voting booth is no longer liberals vs conservatives. Politics is no longer a battle of values, it is a battle of identity.
Many people have seen this political issue on the rise and have expressed frustration with it. In the evangelical world, leaders have done everything in their power to avoid this heavy emphasis on identity. It is very easy to find Christian comments on the negative aspects of “tribalism”, and reminders for Christians to prioritize our heavenly citizenship. A quick keyword search for “identity” on The Gospel Coalition website returns over 10,000 results. It seems as if everything is a form of an identity crisis: transsexualism, homosexuality, racism, abuse, misogyny, greed, and almost anything under the sun. It seems as if every Christian leader out there has an opinion on what a Christian’s identity should be, yet confusion is still running rampant. When it comes to politics, voting is once again seen as an identity crisis. Christians are told to not be earthly-minded, but at the same time encouraged to participate in change for the better. A very loud voice in this evangelical crowd comes from Tim Keller, who consistently emphasizes that neither political party will embody a Christian’s values.1https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/christians-politics-belief.html The end result is a fractured Christianity approaching the voting booth, unsure of the difference between the dreaded “tribalism” and what could be considered a temporal good.
As well-intentioned as some of the advice has been, Christians need to wake up. Politics is no longer a battle of Left vs Right. Your vote does not support a “principal”, your vote is for an identity, whether you like it or not. This trend has been obvious to many people, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Looking at the 2022 election results has been incredibly enlightening in this regard. In particular, I want to examine the only voting matter that I care about anymore: abortion.
Abortion Results
Since Roe vs Wade has been overturned, a record number of states have proposals on the ballot this year, attempting to codify a stance on abortion. For Vermont, Michigan, and California, these proposals had the language of “reproductive rights”, and looked to entrench on a state level the right to murder. All three of these proposals were passed.2https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/11/08/us/elections/results-abortion.html The other two states with proposals, Kentucky and Montana, were attempting to codify pro-life rights. Both these states failed.
For starters, it should be incredibly clear that the abortion debate is not over. Many Christians have been functioning as single-issue voters for years, but with the Dobbs v Jackson ruling, the political issues only worsened. There was no question about which political party was pro-life, and being an anti-abortion Christian means voting for a (mostly) pro-life party. Opposition to abortion was something all Christians could rally behind, but now that the opportunity for action is presented, it seemed as if many evangelical leaders would rather sit and watch. With a large number of Christians rejoicing in the Dobbs v Jackson supreme court ruling, Carl Trueman expressed his frustration with the silence of other evangelical leaders.
“The post-Dobbs silence of Russell Moore, official public theologian at evangelicalism’s flagship magazine, Christianity Today, is a case in point. In June 2022, when Roe finally fell and public space in the United States was aggressively queered as never before, neither issue apparently rose to the level of importance that required public comment from the most well-known evangelical public theologian in the country. That is deeply sad and a complete dereliction of duty at a time when so many evangelicals want help in thinking through these matters.”
Carl Trueman, “Christians Should Rejoice Over Dobbs” – 07/07/2022 3https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/07/christians-should-rejoice-over-dobbs
For some, the silence is mystifying. How could Christian leaders not be rejoicing with this momentum shift? After waiting for 50 years, states were finally given an opportunity to stop this bloodshed, yet the celebration was not heard everywhere. Why would a big evangelical influencer stay silent on the matter of abortion, you ask? The answer is not incompetence.
Abortion Voters
In order to understand the inescapable link between identity and politics, we must look at the demographics of the voters. In a truly democratic system, the left-right divide should be fairly even. In the 2022 national election, exit polling has produced results that would indicate this theoretical democratic system does not exist. Instead of citizens for candidates that support their views in a liberalism/capitalism divide, exit polls indicate that voters widely supported candidates that were integral to their identity. A quick glance at the data shows that sexual identity is a huge factor in determining which political party to vote for.
If the left/right divide was a matter of liberalism and conservatism, the demographic differences would be mostly even. In this case, the cultural divide could not be more obvious. The largest subsets of voters that supported the democrat party and their “reproductive rights” tended to be unmarried women (Fig 1&2) and LGBT+ individuals. While these numbers may not be surprising to you, the ramifications of these divides may not be so obvious.
When wrestling with the concept of Christian identity, very few Christians bother to unpack what this means in a practical, political aspect. Being a Christian man or woman does not mean renouncing maleness or womanhood. At the same time, being a Christian man or a Christian woman means rejecting certain cultural claims about a person’s sex. But when the cultural trends of the day coerced unmarried women to vote for the democratic party, the big evangelical voices were mysteriously silent. There are many potential reasons for this, but the cultural entrenchment of identity appears to be the largest factor of them all. Is it possible for big evangelical Christianity to speak to the evils of the democratic party without ostracizing unmarried women?
After the Dobbs ruling, many Christian influences looked to steer the influence away from politics, and into a “pro-ALL-of-life” approach. In particular, David French envisions a pro-life movement that shows “a profound humility and absence of malice toward their political opponents.” 4https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/pro-life-dobbs-roe-culture-of-life/661394/ When I first read this sentence of his article, I assumed this was a mistake. What does humility toward a political opponent have to do with being pro-life? The clarity came later: French wasn’t talking about the politicians. He was talking about the disproportionate amount of unmarried people, women, and homosexuals that would be considered “opposition” to a Christian movement. Rather than attempting to speak to the culture-infused evils in these identities, French ignores the issue. Rather than turning to the law of God, David appeals to statistics in his “pro-life” argument, showing how abortion rates have actually been going down in the last 30 years when abortion was legalized.5https://data.guttmacher.org/states/trend?state=US&topics=65&dataset=data
This pathological need to be liked is unsustainable. The Christian stance on abortion is perhaps one of the easiest and most straightforward positions to maintain, yet it is constantly compromised and diminished for the sake of identity politics. But the male/female divide is not the only one David French is trying to avoid.
The Racial Divide
“But today, with a powerful racial element irreversibly injected into our politics as a result of immigration and multiculturalism, Left and Right have achieved greater permanence, since one cannot change one’s race as one can an ideology or economic viewpoint. To self-identify as white today has a profound political ramifications and permanently stamps one as part of the Right, regardless of where one falls on the socialism-capitalism divide.”
Spencer J. Quinn, “Solzhenitsyn and the right” – 2021 (p. 12)
Quinn’s words are self-evident. Identity politics now dominates the public landscape, exacerbating racialism across the country. Once again, the exit polls only prove the obvious.
Once again, the exit polling provides evidence of an issue that many people already felt. Politics has created a cultural wall between the black man voting with his race, and the white Christian voting pro-life. Once again, the diverse, liberal megachurch comes to a crossroads: Is it possible to speak clearly and forcefully on the subject of abortion without being racist? Or misogynistic? Or homophobic? Big evangelical leaders avoided the question because the implied answer is unavoidable.
The exit poll results are the direct consequence of today’s secular dogmas. Voting for your Christian conscience is a form of racism. Voting for your Christian conscience is a vote for misogyny. Voting for a Christian conscience is voicing your support of homophobia.
“To identify as pro-life post-Dobbs is not simply to hold an opinion many regard as wrong; it is to be part of an act of political and social ‘oppression.’”
Carl Trueman, “Christians Should Rejoice Over Dobbs” – 07/07/2022
The Appropriate Response
Personally, I have no interest in being a Christian racist, a Christian misogynist, or a Christian homophobe. A Christian should not strive for these things. However, the political positioning of the age makes these ridiculous charges unavoidable. Rather than risk being labeled a misogynist, men such as Russell Moore chose to stay silent in a time of celebration. To reject the pro-life position for fear of being called a racist is to reject the words of Christ: “Blessed shall ye be when men revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you for my sake, falsely. Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the Prophets which were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-12)
The carefully constructed pagan social dogmas enforced by this culture will never be able to contain Christianity. The man that is reviled and persecuted for righteousness sake will be blessed! It is good and right for Christians to rejoice when the enemy’s laws are overturned, and it is good and right to rejoice when the enemy calls you a racist for celebrating.
“There are two reasons cited for rejoicing in this persecution which brings on blessings. First, it is for righteousness’ or justice’s sake. It is for the sake of justice. It is because we stand faithfully in terms of God’s entire law-word (Matt. 4:4; 5:17-20). Second it is for Christ’s sake.”
Then indeed we are blessed, and we can rejoice.
R.J. Rushdoony, “The Sermon on the Mount” – 2009 (pg. 42)
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