Evangelical leaders condemn Capitol protest violence: 'Dangerous for our republic'

Our Church is very politically diverse, in that about 1/3 are conservative Republicans that held their nose and voted for Trump, 1/3 are pro-life democrats that held their nose and voted for Biden, and 1/3 are libertarians or moderates that voted 3rd party. Because of our political diversity, we stress the unity that we have in Christ. Our pastor preached a 4-week series on Political Unity and the Church, which you can watch here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I6uucpFRZU&t=73s(link is external) (True Citizenship) Phil. 2:1-18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ad2WX57mIc&t=249s(link is external) (Sojourners and Exiles) I Peter 2:9-17

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBoTEXz9tOI&t=729s(link is external) (Embassy) Jeremiah 29:1-14

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEnxRZjbg8M(link is external) (Walking in Love)-Romans 14:1-23

We also stress that unity doesn’t mean uniformity where everyone is in lockstep in their political beliefs. Yet we preach and teach Scripture, doctrine, and ethics to help our church with a Biblical worldview that will shape their decision-making in all areas of life, including politics. What’s been interesting is that our approach has filtered out people who made politics their idol. We’ve had a small group of people, both progressives and conservatives, that left our church when we applied doctrines such Imago Dei, original sin, and total depravity to the issues of the day. With the progressives, they want us to be open and affirming to the LGBTQ movement. For the conservatives, it’s about abortion, religious liberty, and how Trump is the only one who can stop the cultural destruction of the progressives against traditional values along with a socialist tide from destroying America. Basically, they want our church to fight the culture war.

[T Howard]

I don’t think I’ve ever categorized voting for Trump as a sin that requires repentance. And, I said earlier that voting for trump isn’t an issue of separation between believers. What I’ve repeatedly said is that voting for trump was a foolish decision because it’s based completely on political pragmatism. Christians are called to better.

While you may not have directly “categorized voting for Trump as a sin that requires repentance,” your stance on voting for the current president in the various threads has been quite clear, and together with you saying that the Trump voters need “teaching, rebuke, correction, and training in righteousness” rather than “teaching, rebuke, correction, and training in wisdom,” I don’t think I was too far off in thinking you held voting for Trump to be an unrighteous act, rather than simply a “foolish” one. Any unrighteous act would require repentance by definition.

However, since you are saying that you meant “foolish” rather than “unrighteous,” I’ll take your word for it.

Ah, that is the point of verses Isaiah 11:1-2. Jesus Christ, our returning king, will be a better David.

Well, I really can’t disagree with that, but since Jesus hasn’t returned yet, we still need sinful, human rulers. Even if we got one in the mold of David, the “man after God’s own heart,” the character flaws he displayed would still be obvious, and even though you can’t compare a generally righteous man like David to Trump, his actions in some of his worst moments would tend to indicate (at least to a casual observer) that his character also does NOT meet the standard we hopefully look for in our leaders. Since Jesus wasn’t on offer as the king following Saul, David is what they got — immensely flawed but certainly better than the king that Saul was. Still, I doubt he’d meet the standards being applied by some today for our secular rulers, and I can easily imagine the sermons about David’s actions proving his claims of being a believer to be false.

[JD Miller]

I have already said that I did not think the January 6th rally was a good idea, but I would like to know the specific words that Trump used to incite the riot so that I am more informed on this subject. I know that there was a lot of anger through the years leading up to the Million Man Marches and the Woman’s Marches, but anger over an issue is not the same as calling for incitement of a riot. I did give a link earlier that gave specifics about Kamala Harris’ words, but I would like to have specifics about Trump’s words as well.

Jim Geraghty outlines some of it here

People keep making the following comments in various posts: “If the Republican party puts up a candidate … ; The Republican party will either listen to what we want in a candidate, or the Republican party will lose elections.”

The “Party” itself does not choose candidates - Individual people voting in primaries choose candidates and the delegates vote at the Convention. If someone dislikes a Party’s candidate, the problem is not the “Party” as such but the millions of people who voted in the primaries. The solution is convincing all those people to vote for someone better.

Trump may very well have committed sedition by his actions and comments last Wednesday. Whether that justifies impeachment at this point in his administration is a political question.

….where we are just might be a good question to ask. Now I am not an avid reader of QAnon and whatever else is in the “fever swamp” (I’ve never read QAnon at all, except when someone forwards or quotes it to me), and I’m wrestling a bit with how we ought to deal with that particular swamp. I’ve seen videos that say people were just let in to the Capitol….which are merely people walking down a sidewalk. I’ve read bits that state that Trump is going to declare martial law…ignoring the fact that Trump’s support in the military is far below that of Reagan or either Bush.

And so I come to the conclusion that a small but significant portion of the electorate, including many evangelicals, has started to fall for arguments that are (charitably speaking) horse manure. Then we have the question of why that is.

Part of it is that for decades—I remember receiving “Impeach Rather” bumper stickers back in the 1980s decrying his well known biases—conservatives have learned that they way to get the message out was via alternative media. First it was Rush and other AM radio hosts, then it was Fox News and WorldNetDaily, and now it’s impossibly complex—new venues are often led by those shown the door at the old ones, as far as I can tell. And with all of that, you’ve got the MSM doing themselves no favors with conservatives by flat out refusing to cover contrary data. For example, pretty much nobody but Fox covered the sweet deals obtained by Hunter Biden while his dad was conducting diplomacy in the very countries which gave him those deals.

So it strikes me that “the way out” is to understand why those parallel networks exist, why they are important, and how to “clean them up” without destroying them altogether or creating one or two “super-venues” which can easily be taken out by a scandal. Perhaps part of it is to gently point out to those spreading the nonsense that their source simply doesn’t say what it purports to say, or that there simply isn’t much evidence presented for that position—and then copy with a note to the source.

Wally said: “The “Party” itself does not choose candidates - Individual people voting in primaries choose candidates and the delegates vote at the Convention.” Actually, history tells us that the party at the convention has and can choose the candidate in spite of the primaries. I was a democrat/anti-war protester in 1968 who backed Kennedy and then McCarthy who had won the primaries. The DNC chose Humphrey who hadn’t even competed in a primary!

Ron: That was 1968, over 50 years ago. Not today. The only modern example of the “Party” choosing could be 2016 when the Democratic establishment worked to keep the nomination from Sanders. Trump was the Republican candidate in 2016 because he won enough primary votes and delegates. I never thought Trump would be the nominee in 2016, and I thought he did a poor job in many of the 2016 primary debates. But he got the votes and became the nominee. So if people want to criticize the Republican Party for a poor nominee, the ones to criticize and try to change are the individual people who voted for Trump in the primaries.

Obviously I was somehow not clear in my comparisons. I actually said in one of my posts that we did NOT have a choice between Saul and David in the last election. I don’t see either of the candidates as righteous in any biblical sense. I’ve been clear all along that I saw the previous two elections as “pick your poison,” where I saw one type as better than the other. I still do, in fact.

My point about David was that even if we had had as clear a choice as Saul and David, a “man after God’s own heart” can have large faults. If we had had a choice between Biden and a man who appeared to have real character, maybe by all reports was an actual Christian, what would we say if the man with character was elected and during his term he managed to get 70,000 or so innocent people killed, like David did, because of a “policy” decision (numbering the people)? Or he had an affair and sent the husband off to die in Afghanistan? I’m thinking there would be a large contingent of people calling for impeachment, removal, etc., and many in our circles claiming there’s no way he was a Christian. (And, BTW, just for clarity, I don’t think Trump is a Christian.)

There are plenty of us who still appreciate the good Trump managed to accomplish, while being disappointed in much of his behavior, especially post-election. But the fact is, he’s a man, just as flawed as any other. Yes, he has been a disappointment in many ways, but short of having Jesus on the throne when he returns, we are going to be disappointed by pretty much any candidate out there. We often talk about the fact that any of us could commit any sin under the right circumstances. Well, guess what, that applies to presidents too, and absent any better logic than I’ve seen, or an epiphany, I’m going to continue using the same voting strategy in the future, while hoping the candidate choices get better (though I’m not holding my breath).

[WallyMorris] So if people want to criticize the Republican Party for a poor nominee, the ones to criticize and try to change are the individual people who voted for Trump in the primaries.

If you don’t think the political parties put their thumb on the scales, just ask Bernie Sanders.

As I’ve said, if Christians didn’t vote for Trump during the primaries, he wouldn’t have been the Republican nominee. Period.

But, the reason we continue to get crappy candidates is because we follow Dave’s advice and keep foolishly voting them into office because of political pragmatism.

Stop the madness! Demand better!

[T Howard]

As I’ve said, if Christians didn’t vote for Trump during the primaries, he wouldn’t have been the Republican nominee. Period.

That’s probably true, but I know of only a couple of Christian relatives, friends, or church members who voted for Trump in the primaries. In fact, I don’t know any of my Republican unsaved friends that voted for Trump in the primaries either. We voted otherwise for all the good it did us. We wanted a better candidate. We didn’t get it.

But, the reason we continue to get crappy candidates is because we follow Dave’s advice and keep foolishly voting them into office because of political pragmatism.

Stop the madness! Demand better!

I’m curious as to what strategy you would suggest that would have worked in 2016 to keep both Clinton and Trump out of office. There would absolutely not have been enough “Christian” votes to get any 3rd-party candidate in (and I didn’t know of any who would have been a good choice). At best, it would have ended up like 1992, where about 19% of the vote went to Perot, and Clinton got in anyway and defeated Bush, with far less than 50% of the vote. It makes for an interesting historical anecdote, but it went nowhere to change the way candidates are elected.

THoward: My last post mentioned Sanders.

I didn’t vote for Trump in the 2016 Indiana primary. Trump was the only choice offered on the ballot in the 2020 Indiana Republican primary.

“Demand better” from who? You can’t force people to run for political office. If better people don’t offer themselves as candidates, then who are we to demand from? And if the voting population does not vote for a better candidate but instead the majority/plurality vote for a poor candidate, there’s nothing you can do. So once again, the option is not to criticize the political party but instead convince people to vote for better people, IF they choose to run for office. But since the general population is deteriorating in moral discernment, then what is it that we expect from them?

[T Howard]

If you don’t think the political parties put their thumb on the scales, just ask Bernie Sanders.

That is primarily a problem among the Dems. The Republicans don’t have the same system, as I understand it.

[dcbii] I’m curious as to what strategy you would suggest that would have worked in 2016 to keep both Clinton and Trump out of office. There would absolutely not have been enough “Christian” votes to get any 3rd-party candidate in (and I didn’t know of any who would have been a good choice). At best, it would have ended up like 1992, where about 19% of the vote went to Perot, and Clinton got in anyway and defeated Bush, with far less than 50% of the vote. It makes for an interesting historical anecdote, but it went nowhere to change the way candidates are elected.

I already said Christians should not have voted for Trump. That would have kept him from winning the Republican primaries. With another Republican candidate on the ticket (assuming he/she met the three qualifications I laid out earlier), I would have voted for him/her in the general election. I don’t know if he/she would have beat Clinton in the end or not. But, that cannot be the ultimate criterion that determines my vote. I vote based on the three qualifications I enumerated before. If two or more candidates meet the three qualifications I laid out and one is more electable, at that point I would chose the more electable candidate. If no candidate meets my qualifications, I either don’t cast a vote for that office or I vote third party.

I refuse to reward the Republican party with my vote when it offers up terrible candidates.

[Don Johnson]

T Howard wrote:

If you don’t think the political parties put their thumb on the scales, just ask Bernie Sanders.

That is primarily a problem among the Dems. The Republicans don’t have the same system, as I understand it.

The Republican party may not use the same system, but it has the same thumb.

You really should be careful about asserting that a vote for Trump was unethical (if not sinful). There was no way to know that the events that happened would happen. You can sit there and crow “I told you so,” but none of it was inevitable.

Did Trump have issues at the start? Yes. But they could have been overcome.

How would you feel and what would you do if you won election despite everyone saying it was impossible, and your party even won the House and the Senate, but then you later found out the opposition party had started a spying campaign againt you? And then your own party leadership mostly believed the claims of the spying campaign so they actually believed you were working for Putin and was his “puppet”?

That would taint you view of things I expect.

So you got little done in 2 years of single party rule, with various leader of your own party strutting around claiming you were unqualified, and a bigot, and a racist.

How would you react?
I claim what Trump experienced would try any man’s soul.

Did he earn a lot of it? Yes. But a lot came his way he did not deserve.

So, the point is that the deterioration of Trump’s presidency was no inevitable. It was the result of the combination of his failures and the failures of those around him and his opponents.