“I will do whatever it takes to ensure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office, and I mean it.” So declared Rep. Liz Cheney after losing her Republican House primary last week. When asked if she plans to run for president, she said later, “That’s a decision that I’m going to make in the coming months . . . but it is something that I am thinking about.”

Now a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that if she were to run for president as an independent in 2024, she could actually help to reelect Mr. Trump.

In the poll, if the 2024 election were held today and were a rematch between President Biden and former President Trump, Biden would lead by four points among registered voters. But if Cheney were on the ballot as an independent, she would draw so much Democratic support that Trump would vault to an eight-point lead over Biden, 40 percent to 32 percent, while Cheney would receive 11 percent of the vote.

In other words, her candidacy could accomplish the opposite of its intended purpose.

UN preparing to declare abortion a “human right”

One of the many reasons it is difficult to effect moral transformation through political means is that political outcomes are so unpredictable. Three days before the 2016 election, the Princeton Election Consortium gave Hillary Clinton a 99 percent chance of winning the election. The 1980 election was widely considered “too close to call” before Ronald Reagan won in a landslide.

Another is that political entities so often get moral issues so wrong. For instance, delegates at the United Nations General Assembly are finalizing negotiations on a resolution that would require all UN agencies to declare abortion a human right. And a judge ruled yesterday in support of a Maryland school district that allows children to “transition socially to a different gender identity at school” without parental notice or consent.

The most egregious example in recent decades came in the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision that discovered a right to same-sex marriage in the US Constitution. Writing for the five-to-four majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy assured those opposed to gay marriage on religious grounds: “The First Amendment ensures that religions, those who adhere to religious doctrines, and others have protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths.”

In the years that have followed, Christian bakers, florists, wedding chapel operators, photographers, and the like can testify that he was tragically wrong.

Now the so-called Equality Act would grant LGBTQ persons protected class status while allowing no appeal to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act or First Amendment protections for those who object on religious grounds. The so-called Respect for Marriage Act could be used by the IRS to strip nonprofit, faith-based organizations of their tax-exempt status if they adhere to their religious beliefs regarding marriage. And a lawsuit filed against religious colleges and universities that uphold biblical sexuality could cost them billions of dollars in student aid.

Why was Justice Kennedy so wrong? How did conservative Christians become cultural pariahs almost overnight?

How Christian truth became hate speech

In his 2017 book, Strangers in a Strange Land, Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput brilliantly analyzes this cultural moment. He lists various Christian “convictions about the dignity of life and human sexuality” such as “abortion, contraception, gender identity, marriage, and family,” noting that they are “rooted not just in biblical revelation, but in reason and natural law.”

Then he notes: “Critics of the Church reduce all these moral convictions to an expression of subjective religious beliefs. And if they’re purely religious beliefs, then—so the critics argue—they can’t be rationally defended. And because they’re rationally indefensible, they should be treated as a form of prejudice.”

Here’s the result: “Thus two thousand years of moral truth and religious principle become, by sleight of hand, a species of bias.” For example, “Opposing same-sex marriage (so the reasoning goes) amounts to religiously blessed homophobia.”

Further, “When religious belief is redefined downward to a kind of private bias, then the religious identity of institutional ministries has no public value—other than the utility of getting credulous people to do socially useful things. So exempting Catholic adoption agencies, for example, from placing children with same-sex couples becomes a concession to private prejudice. And concessions to private prejudice feed bigotry and hurt the public. Or so the reasoning goes.

“Insufficiently ‘progressive’ moral teaching and religious belief end up reclassified as hate speech.”

“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie”

How accurately does this text describe our culture? “God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:24–25, my emphasis).

Our root problem is simple and tragic: people will accuse the truth of being a lie if it contradicts lies they want to believe are true. Our first parents wanted to be their own god (Genesis 3:5). They wanted what seemed “good for food,” a “delight to the eyes,” and “desired to make one wise” (v. 6). And so they ate the forbidden fruit, and the human race has never recovered.

Don’t think for a minute that you and I are less susceptible to lies we want to believe. This is why we should submit every day to the guidance of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), then partner with him by seeking to have our “powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:14).

Because of our fallen condition, we should work for cultural transformation through humility that admits our shared fallenness and prayer that seeks what only God can do. And we should make time every day to experience God through transforming personal worship that empowers us to love our Lord and our neighbor (Mark 12:30–31).

The poet wrote: “My heart an altar, and Thy love the flame.”

Who—or what—is the flame on your altar today?

Denison Forum

The former director of the Central Intelligence Agency recently claimed that the modern-day Republican Party is the most “dangerous” political force he has ever seen. With Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s ambitions for global dominance, Iran’s growing power in the Middle East, and North Korea’s nuclear threats, this is quite a statement.

In similar news, Vanity Fair published an article titled “Republicans appear to be realizing all their candidates are dangerous weirdos.” And Democratic strategist James Carville is condemning the media for covering “both sides” equally when some Democrats are “just silly” but Republicans are “evil.”

By contrast, Republican House candidate Sarah Palin told a cheering audience, “It’s no longer Democrat versus Republican. This is all about control versus freedom. It’s good versus evil. It’s a spiritual battle.” A national conservative commentator said of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, “I just think she’s an evil woman. A woman who is consumed with power. . . . it just makes me disgusted.”

More than 40 percent of Democrats see Republicans not as political opponents but as enemies; close to 60 percent of Republicans view Democrats in the same way. And Pew Research Center reports that 72 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of Democrats say members of the other party are more immoral, dishonest, and close-minded than other Americans.

We are seeing a level of political divisiveness and hatred today that challenges our confidence in democracy itself. One researcher warned that Americans are “losing faith in elections, institutions, and the ability of democracy to survive.”

More than at any time in my lifetime, it is urgent that Christians be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

“Our Christian political ethic is upside down”

Christian cultural commentator David French published an article yesterday in which he wrote: “The longer I live the more convinced I am that our Christian political ethic is upside down. On a bipartisan basis, the church has formed its members to be adamant about policies that are difficult and contingent and flexible about virtues that are clear and mandatory” (his emphases).

Dr. Tim Keller agrees. In a typically perceptive analysis, he stated: “One of the many reasons for the decline of church-going and religion in the US is that increasingly Christians are seen as highly partisan foot-soldiers for political movements. This is both divisive within the church and discrediting out in the world. Many Christians publicly disown and attack other believers who share the same beliefs in Christ but who are voting for the ‘wrong’ candidates. They seem to feel a more common bond with people of the same politics than of the same faith.

“When the church as a whole is no longer seen as speaking to questions that transcend politics, and when it is no longer united by a common faith that transcends politics, then the world sees strong evidence that Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx were right, that religion is really just a cover for people wanting to get their way in the world.”

Here’s a virtue that is “clear and mandatory,” to cite French: Paul instructed Titus to “remind” Christians “to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people” (Titus 3:1, 2, my emphases).

Why should we extend such grace? “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another” (v. 3).

What changed? “When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy” (vv. 4–5). As a result, Christians are to “devote themselves to good works” (v. 8) and to “avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless” (v. 9).

This is such an urgent issue that Paul advised Titus, “As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned” (vv. 10–11).

We know the real enemy

Does this mean that Christians should not stand boldly for biblical truth and morality? Absolutely not. Early Christians were condemned and martyred by the authorities of their day precisely because they would not stop preaching the gospel and speaking truth to power.

But it does mean that we must refuse to condemn those with whom we disagree. This fact is vital in a democracy—if people who disagree cannot work together, ultimately they cannot live together and the future of their nation is imperiled. We can coexist with people who are “wrong,” but living with people who are “evil” is another matter.

As those who have been transformed by grace, you and I can—and, in fact, must—take the lead here. We know that the real enemy is Satan, the one who “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4). And we know the One who is the only true hope of the world (Acts 4:12).

As “sons of God,” we are called by Jesus to be “peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9). We are forbidden by Scripture to say about someone what we would not say to them (cf. Matthew 18:15). We are likewise forbidden to slander (1 Peter 2:1), lie (Exodus 20:16), or gossip (Proverbs 16:28).

Rather, we are to pray for our leaders (1 Timothy 2:1–2). We can and should hold them accountable (Luke 17:3), but in a spirit of encouragement rather than condemnation (1 Thessalonians 5:11). We can and should participate in our political process, but as salt and light rather than as divisive partisans.

Ronald Reagan’s example

Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels once worked for President Ronald Reagan. When asked what impacted him from those days, he said, “He would encourage us to remember that we have only opponents, not enemies. He learned how to turn the other cheek and never lost sight of the fact that we are all in this together—as Americans.

“He would never stoop to the level of personalizing things, even if his opponents were doing it to him. It’s really important never to demonize groups or people in political life, and he led by example in this regard.”

Let’s do the same today, to the glory of God.

Denison Forum