Are 'Evangelicals for Biden' happy now?
This is a transcript from my radio show. You can listen here every weekday from noon to three.
Andrew Walker, a friend of mine who is an ethics professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary put up a tweet that we need to discuss.
You all know where I stand. I am in seminary and consider myself an evangelical Christian of orthodox beliefs across the board, but I really don't care where you stand on the issue. I mean, for theological purposes, yes, but for your day-to-day civic life, I don't care. You can support the transgender agenda, the alphabet gang agenda, the abortion agenda and we can agree to disagree. The problem is, you'll be made to care these days and it's always my side who has to agree. Why the hell, by the way, are we the culture warriors when we're the ones simply arguing for traditional values? We must change and somehow I'm the cultural warrior for standing still. I don't get that, but the secular elites write the playbook until we get to heaven and then they realize they had the losing playbook.
There have been massive amounts of hand ringing for years over evangelicals supporting Donald Trump. Just so you understand, I did not support Donald Trump in 2016. I did in 2020 but did not in 2016. In 2016, my rationale was character counts and Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he has never ever had anything he needed to repent for. In fact, to this day, Donald Trump maintains that. To be a Christian, you have to repent and I didn’t want to vote for the guy. I didn't vote for Clinton either. Many people told me if I don't vote for him, Clinton was going to get elected. She did not. After he was elected, I was pleasantly surprised with much of the policy he and Republicans pursued. In fact, we got a lot of great policies from Donald Trump.
You may not like Donald Trump, and I'm not a fan, but we got a lot of really good policies out of the Trump administration and he had a great way of exposing the elite and the experts as wrong. Remember that massive Middle Eastern war we were going to get by moving the embassy to Jerusalem? Remember the massive international boycotts we were going to get by getting out of the Paris Accord? Remember the Iranian tactical nuclear strikes that we would see by getting out of the Iran deal? Remember the economic wreckage we would get by his tax cuts? Remember all of the dead people caused by net neutrality repeal? A lot of the experts made a lot of bold claims and he proved them wrong. He was also the most pro-life President in American history. Republicans had continued to fund Planned Parenthood and Donald Trump found a way to defund Planned Parenthood that was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the most liberal circuit in America.
No prior administration, even the very pro-life George W. Bush administration, had done that. He put Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. He put a lot of pro-life people there. Now, listen, I don't care for the guy. He's not my cup of tea. I like Mike Pence a lot and he’s a longtime friend.
In 2019, I realized a lot of the stuff that I thought we were going to get from Donald Trump, we didn't. In fact, we got very good stuff. He surrounded himself with very good people and I was convinced to vote for him in 2020. My breaking point with Trump was the aftermath of the election and the January 6th stuff. I thought he overplayed his hand there to his detriment and the nation's detriment. Still, I would have much preferred the Trump administration over the Biden administration. I want that all on the table so you understand where I come at this.
In 2016, I was very much of the opinion that evangelicals were in danger of harming their witness. You saw a lot of that with people like Robert Jeffries and Jerry Falwell Jr. who made it very difficult for many evangelicals. It's one thing to go out there and say, "I voted for Trump. I don't necessarily like him personally but it's going to be a Republican or a Democrat and I would rather a man who's going to protect the innocent unborn and defend American interests instead of someone who's going to push an abortion agenda, persecute churches, and apologize for everything America's ever done." The problem is that the cultural elite within a number of Christian publications rushed out with all sorts of condemnatory pieces on evangelicals.
I tried to explain one time on CNN that there was a clear reason evangelical Christians would vote for this guy. The Obama administration literally was persecuting nuns who did not want to perform abortions or pay for the performance of abortions. The Obama administration was literally targeting faith-based businesses and family-owned businesses like Hobby Lobby who did not want their money to go to murdering children. During the Obama years, butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers were forced to provide goods and services to gay weddings. The Left was culturally emboldened to persecute Christians. They were simply targeting Christian institutions.
The Obama administration's own Solicitor General argued that faith-based organizations and churches could see the end of their tax-exempt status if they did not support gay marriage. So a lot of Christians in this country looked at Donald Trump and said, "You're not one of us, but you're not out to get us. I'll go with you." This was opposed to Hillary Clinton who really was out to get them. I think that we have to recognize and understand that it was always a complicated choice. While I didn't go along with a lot of my friends on the Right in 2016, in 2020 I thought I could support this guy. But among the cultural elite also within Christendom, there's been derision, ridicule, and shame heaped upon anyone who would come out and say, "I'll take him over them."
Evangelicals For Biden
There was a group formed called Evangelicals For Biden that was praised by the media. You'll remember in 2010 with the rise of the Tea Party, the Left offered up the Coffee Party. The New York Times did a massive story on a bunch of Leftists who get together and rail against the Tea Party. They would get together in Starbucks, read the New York Times, and lament those bigoted Southerners and their Tea Party nonsense. They did the same for Evangelicals For Biden in 2020.
Fast forward to Evangelicals For Biden. If you didn't like Trump in 2020, you could have written someone in. You could have just not voted for President. You could have written in, I don't know Jesus Christ or Mickey Mouse.
Many on my side hated Trump so much they voted for Joe Biden. They knew full well what they were going to get and they've gotten abortion on demand policies. They've gotten the gay pride flag at the Vatican. Where are the think pieces on them? The cultural elite tried to shame evangelical Christians for supporting Donald Trump. They may not like the guy, but they knew he wasn't going to persecute them. The same cultural elite say there is no Christian persecution in America. Pay no attention to the baker in Colorado who was constantly harassed by the government to be put out of business. That's not real persecution because they're not killing him. It's amazing we've even redefined persecution to claim it isn't so. One of the Left-wing postmodern things that come from critical theory is control of language. You redefine the terms. If you're not dying, you're not being persecuted, according to them.
Where's the accountability for these Christians who said, "I've got to go for Biden because character matters"? Where are the big think pieces on them? You know they're never going to come. They're never going to happen, but we should at least be willing to acknowledge that voting can be complicated and sometimes the choices are flawed and you're left choosing the lesser of two evils as opposed to the evils of two lessers. What we're seeing is that the cultural elite will always shame the committed Christian. The Left loves to point out hypocrisy and then engage in it.
Again, your first 6 paragraphs, Erick, are me in 2016 and 2020. And, about those "Evangelicals For Biden": They had RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM a 115 page list of reasons why voting for Biden was a surpassingly bad, in fact irresponsible, idea in the form of the Sanders/Biden "Unity Agreement". And, if they care to refer back to that document, they'll discover that it wasn't just a list of vacuous promises to be made at the time and abandoned later, but rather a frighteningly detailed political to do list, which the Marxist radicals who control the Democrat Party fully intend to implement - IF we let them.
Yes, character matters. And yes, Donald Trump was more often than not his own worst enemy. But anyone who was willing to do so could see the steel glove in a velvet glove that the left intended to use on the American people with a Biden presidency. If Evangelicals are wringing their hands and clutching their pearls over what they voted for, then I say, "Ladies and gentlemen of the Evangelical community: You bought it, so you pay for it. The rest of us will set about trying to draw America back from the abyss - and frankly in regards to advocacy, it's best you sit this one out."
Joe Biden's said to be a nice guy, and Donald Trump a real SOB. The pragmatist in me just wants to grab these people by the lapels, shake them, and firmly point out that the SOB did more for them and their pet causes/policies in 4 years than anyone named Bush did in 12 years. RESULTS matter too.
I did the exact same thing that you did both election cycles.Anybody that voted for Biden cannot claim ignorance, we all knew what he was going to be like.