At a recent rally in Juneau, Wisconsin, Donald Trump urged evangelical Christians to vote, saying:
I’ll tell you another one that don’t vote — I love these people — evangelical Christians. The Christian community doesn’t vote as much as they should. They go to church. So now what we are going to do is go to church and we are to get out and vote. … If they did vote, we couldn’t lose an election.
Trump’s concerns are echoed by a recent article in The Jerusalem Post, which cites a recent report from the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University. The study revealed that “approximately 104 million people of faith, including 32 million self-identified Christians who regularly attend church, may abstain from voting this November.”
The report cites lack of interest in politics among both congregants and pastors, as well as lack of engagement with social issues. Some pastors even refuse to encourage congregants to vote.
A deeper reason many evangelicals (and other Christians) are not voting is that many churches and church leaders over the last few decades gradually have absorbed the left’s draconian secularist view of separation of Church and State. In essence, the agenda requires the total submission of the former to the latter. Worse, in the past and even in the present, secularist totalitarian regimes like the CCP seek to eliminate the Christian religion altogether, replacing it with anti-God ideology.
Unfortunately, many Christians have not adequately understood, much less defended the history of or the original meaning of the separation of Church and State as understood by the writers of the Constitution: that the state would not establish a particular denomination as the official church of the land.
Those who fought in the American Revolution knew they were fighting a government that was allied with a particular church — namely, the Anglican church of England. That denomination had been ascendant since the time of Henry VIII, who discarded the idea of the pope as head of the church and substituted his very self as head of the church. The founders of America did not want to replicate England’s example.
Unlike certain political candidates for office who believe we must be “unburdened by the past,” the writers of the American Constitution took note of history and learned from it. They were familiar with the internecine religious warfare that had convulsed Europe for centuries, most notably from the time of the Reformation. They recalled the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which affirmed the Peace of Augsburg (1555). The peace was the beginning of the establishment of the idea of religious tolerance for the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Catholic churches.
The founders, heavily influenced by the writings of John Locke, including his “Letter Concerning Toleration,” wished to guarantee freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and freedom to practice one’s faith.
But the founders most certainly did not reject Christianity or seek to encode via the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution the very means by which a secularist faith would seek to rid America of Christian influence in all spheres of society — as would be attempted by French revolutionists.
For at least several generations, a secularist worldview has insisted that separation of Church and State means that Christians must stay in a sphere that includes only personal piety and private rituals of worship. Christians are not to have influence in, much less ascendency in any sphere of society. Certainly, Christians and their principles are seen as having no place in politics.
Unfortunately, many Christians and their denominations have absorbed the secularist worldview. Thus, emphasis on personal piety and a diminished presence in all spheres of society, including academia, public education, the arts and politics — be it domestic or foreign affairs — has gained gradual acceptance in many, if not most, evangelical churches.
In short, to a large degree, evangelical Christians and their leaders have accepted consignment to the backwaters of influence. Many pastors do not even urge their congregations to vote. In fact, many Protestant denominations and sects are actively against voting.
But the idea that Christians are to separate the spiritual life from the world is an essentially heretical gnostic idea, one that sees the material world as evil and the world of the spirit as good.
The attempt to separate spirit and the world from intersecting is a futile and dangerous idea, as it essentially hands institutions and governance over to the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. Such a viewpoint obliterates the light of faith and ensures that darkness will creep into every sphere of life.
The passivity and outright retreat of Christians to their subcultures has only ensured increasing attacks on the rights of Christians to fully participate in and influence the culture. Their cowardice and even outright refusal to exercise their right to vote is essentially a vote for the anti-God project the left has been devoted to for many decades.
Fortunately, there are those who understand that a cultural realignment, including in politics, is necessary if evil is not to prevail.
In a recent video, Tucker Carlson spoke with Russell Brand about the spiritually evil, anti-God project of the “woke” movement now dominating the Democrat party. Carlson stated, “The only framework that makes sense is the spiritual one.” He and Brand went on to agree that alliance with death, be it via economics or politics — or via literal death, such as open advocacy of abortion — requires a spiritual realignment.
Interestingly, Brand and Carlson shared Holy Communion at the opening of the video. For many, if not most Christians, that sacrament is an essential life-giving practice. It is notable that during COVID, most churches gave up participation in the Lord’s supper in obedience to the State’s directives, thus starving their flocks of spiritual sustenance.
It is not for nothing that in these post-COVID times, governors such as Gretchen Whitmer now feel free to mock the Eucharist, as the passivity of Christians concerning essentials of their faith gave evidence of cowardice and weakness that invited ridicule and dismissal.
The realignment away from the anti-God and anti-Christian crowd must include Christians, whose best thinkers (such as Abraham Kuyper) already have clearly articulated the Christian worldview, including the call of Christians to participate in all spheres of society. Christians have much to say about the political order.
Fortunately, many Christians have expressed the need for voices to help them confront the anti-God movement that has trashed America’s churches and culture.
As The Jerusalem Post noted, Arizona Christian University president Len Munsil believes there are things Christians must take note of as this critical election nears: “First, that Christians could be the deciding factor in a bunch of federal and state races — and are choosing not to be. And second, that they are longing for their local church to instruct them on how to think biblically about policy and politics.”
As a first step, Christians must participate in the efforts of spiritual realignment by voting against the anti-God movement now in charge of the Democrat party.
Fay Voshell holds a M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary. Her thoughts have appeared in many online magazines, including American Thinker. She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com.
Image: Darkmoon_Art via Pixabay, Pixabay License.
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