Matthew Mittelberg

There’s a Christian news site I keep seeing ads for. Their whole value proposition is about how they don’t have a partisan bias. They say things like: “There are 1.5M+ Christians who don’t want their faith fused to a certain party. So we don’t do that.” “As a Christian who can no longer align with either major political party, I’ve realized I don’t want my news reinforcing a political identity.” “If you’re a Christian who doesn’t feel at home in either party…” I have not used this news service, so what I’m about to say is not an evaluation of the service itself. But I want to comment on how naïve and detrimental this messaging is. On the surface, these statements appeal to many Christians because they sound good. “Hey, I don’t want my faith fused to a political party! I don’t want my news reinforcing a political identity! I disagree with things in both parties and don’t feel ‘home’ anywhere!” All of this presupposes that non-partisanship is the ideal for Christians—that we shouldn’t align with one side more than another in our two-party system because our allegiance to Jesus transcends earthly politics. This is both poor logic and poor theology. Of course our allegiance to Jesus as Lord and Savior transcends earthly politics. Who Jesus is, what He has done, and our relationship with Him is the starting point for all things in the Christian life. But putting Jesus first doesn’t somehow make us politically neutral by default. To the contrary, putting Jesus first means the Christian CANNOT be politically neutral! It means that we understand and apply what God’s Word says about the God-given role of government to promote good and restrain evil (Romans 13). The specifics of what we advocate for in society as Christians depend on the time and place in which we live. As Christians in the US, we have an incredible opportunity to influence government toward promoting good and restraining evil through our ability to vote. And contrary to the non-partisan “feel good” speak of websites like the one I keep seeing ads for, the two political parties we have are in no way equivalent such that it makes any biblical sense to appeal to non-partisanship as some kind of Christian virtue. Both parties are incredibly flawed, feature corrupt politicians, typically move at a snail’s pace, and will never be perfectly aligned with how Christians would want a society to run. But they are NOT morally equivalent in their visions for how society should function—what it means to be a human, the nature of freedom, the definition of marriage, the nature of parental rights, the role of the state, the nature of public education, the definition of human rights, and so much more. The progressive views of the Democratic party will move the country further and further away from biblical views on all of these issues. That doesn’t imply the Republican party will always move things toward the biblical view (plenty of times it doesn’t), but it does mean the parties have vastly different philosophies that guide their general direction and Christians need to clearly understand that progressivism is fundamentally at odds with a biblical worldview. Your faith isn’t “fused” to a political party, disproportionately “aligned” with a political party, or feeling too “at home” with a political party by recognizing this. Be very skeptical of any person or organization who tries to convince you otherwise. VOTE like your country depends on it. It does.