In my ten years of pastoral ministry in a small town in Illinois, I've gone from avoiding anything even remotely political, to looking for reasons to attack woke/leftist ideology. In this post I want to explain why I've made this deliberate change:

First, some background...

I grew up in southern New Hampshire, which is ground zero for presidential primary politics. My first paying regular job was working as an intern in Dan Quayle's presidential campaign (I mostly did database work.) I devoured talk radio and political writing, and saw myself becoming a professional political campaign worker and maybe a political writer or talk radio show host. Then I was called to the ministry.

After college I became purposely non-political. I was particularly uncomfortable with the way many Christians talked about Barack Obama. Though he was a man I voted against twice and someone whose policies I deeply disagreed with, it seemed like I was watching people I knew radicalize in real time and lose any sense of Christian bearing. (Obviously, Trump didn't help this trend.)

When I became a pastor, I deliberately avoided any talk of politics in my sermons and when it did come up, it almost always came up as a warning against the excesses of the right (who remain my crowd.) I thought then (as I do now) that most of the people in my congregation are tempted to consume a constant diet of cable news and talk radio - and that that isn't healthy. If I ever said something critical of a politician from the left, I was also careful to "balance" it with something critical of a politician from the right.

I think this attitude probably describes a lot of pastors in my generation (I'm 39.) We are uncomfortable with the way the boomers (and to a lesser extent Gen X) has done politics, and we want to distance ourself from it as much as possible. I also think that this is a blind spot and a weakness, and it is a tactic that needs to be abandoned. Let me explain why:

1. The left is attacking foundational truths of God's word and God's order.

The left is not neutral when it comes to the faith. The modern left is deliberately attacking foundational truths of God's order, including but not limited to: - God's creating us male and female - The importance of the family - The very notion of objective truth - The nature of atonement and sins


The modern left isn't neutral - they are on the attack. Anytime a Christian tries to vote his values we are "Christian nationalists." People who are pro-life and pro-order are "facists." Make no mistake about it - if you believe the Bible to be true and actually want to live it, you are the enemy.

2. The left holds all of the power to indoctrinate our children.

The public school system is just about wholly taken over by leftist ideologues. I live in an extremely red town in Illinois. Even in our small town high school we have lectures on pronouns, teachers and staff encouraging transgenderism, and even students who "identify as feline."
 If public schools are bad, secular universities are far worse. Reading the student newspaper from our local university (Eastern Illinois University) feels like going into the twilight zone. Every leftist talking point is assumed true. Students regularly engage in ridiculous protests for far-left issues. A student who attends our church and is studying history there told me that the 1619 Project was introduced and discussed in week one of freshman year.

3. Young men (in particular) are lost and angry.

The fallout of this leftism has hurt young men the most. White males (especially Christian white males) are the villain in every story. Toxic masculinity and patriarchy are the named evils being fought against in classrooms across the country.

In response to this, many young men are either giving in and embracing the ideology, checking out and consuming themselves with video games and porn, or turning to angry corners of the internet and radical forms of politics.

4. The left and right are not moral equals.

The American right has its problems. Donald Trump is basically the living embodiment of everything Proverbs warned us about - and Donald Trump is absolutely worshipped by large swaths of the American right. The right is often petty, short-sighted, mean-spirited and has a bad habit of committing unforced errors.

But for all the right's sins, the right and left in our country are NOT moral equals. One side may be hypocritically co-opting biblical Christianity, but the other is outright attacking it. One side might glorify a man who exemplifies toxic masculinity - the other side attacks the very idea of gender and godly order.

If you think it is all a reaction against Trump, you have a very short memory. They attacked Mitt Romney (Mitt Milquetoast Romney!) as a racist, sexist homophobe. They made fun of his family and his wife. They tried a similar treatment with John McCain (John "Is he even a republican" McCain!). This isn't about Trump - it's an attack on God's created order and anybody who dares to represent it.

The left has been on war footing for at least the last twenty years, and what they have been warring against isn't toxic republican politics - it's anything that reminds them of traditional morality. We are now living in a day when the federal government is openly advocating giving hysterectomies and mastectomies to 15 year olds, when small town public schools are putting litter boxes in their gender-neutral bathrooms, and where drag shows are being put on for small children in public libraries - and none of that is coming from the right.

5. People need to see the Biblical vision

If the church can't show a biblical alternative to the madness - who will? If a church can't stand against this blatant anti-God foolishness - who will? If the church can't show young men why they were made and young women why they were made - who will?

There are plenty of radical voices on the internet speaking to those lost in the madness - but they aren't grounded in the truth and grace of the gospel.

We desperately need to recover a vision of the beauty of God's creation and the beauty of His truth. We especially need to speak up where the powers of darkness are fighting the strongest. We need to be completely unambiguous about this and we need to do it in love.

That is why I'm not shying away from the political culture war anymore. I wish we weren't living in this time - but we are. If we don't speak up for the truth, who will?

Closing clarifications:

I'm not recommending you make your pulpit a wing of the republican party. I'm merely saying I've made the deliberate decision to stop shying away from cultural issues that have become political and I want to be unambiguous where I stand.

I'm probably as disgusted as you are at preachers bringing in political candidates and endorsing people for office. I'm not going to give my pulpit time over to Ron Desantis or Donald Trump - it's for talking about Jesus.

But I am going to be loud and clear about things like: - Biblical marriage - God making us male and female - The goodness of both masculinity and femininity - The evil of abortion - The nature of forgiveness from sin and abiding guilt (and how CRT distorts that) - The traps of indoctrination in the public school system.

I'm not going to shoe-horn these things into an exposition of Romans 3, but when it does come up (and these things come up often in scripture) I'm not going to be afraid to say where we should stand.