“Evangelicals don’t have to change who they are, they just need to reaffirm who they are by voting for someone who better reflects Christian values.”
— From “Upholding Christian Values” on the Evangelicals For Harris website
In his classic work, Christianity and Liberalism, originally published in 1923, theologian and founder of Westminster Theological Seminary, Dr. J. Gresham Machen, said something that one would think would be unequivocally and univocally affirmed by the vast majority of, if not all, professing Christians today, that,
“The Christian gospel consists in an account of how God saved man, and before that gospel can be understood something must be known (1) about God and (2) about man. The doctrine of God and the doctrine of man are the two great presuppositions of the gospel. With regard to these presuppositions, as with regard to the gospel itself, modern liberalism is diametrically opposed to Christianity.”[1]
I cite Machen’s words against the backdrop of the upcoming presidential election in America, on November 5, 2024, when Republican Donald John Trump faces off against Democrat, and sitting Vice President of the United States, Kamala Devi Harris, arguably two of the most controversial if not factious presidential candidates in recent United States electoral history. Speak with almost any individual who is likely to vote in November and you’ll invariably discover how deeply entrenched is their support of, or opposition to, depending on who you talk to, each candidate. In other words, when it comes to both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, there appear to be no gray areas in terms of the loyalty or disdain voters harbor toward them.
An example of such rigid and unyielding allyship is a group of Kamala Harris supporters who refer to themselves as “Evangelicals for Harris.” Notwithstanding that such a group of self-described “evangelicals” exists to begin with, despite the fact that Harris’s stance on such issues as abortion is unarguably antithetical to the gospel, such a philosophical disconnect confronts professing believers in Christ with the crucial question: What is an ‘evangelical’ to begin with?
There was a game show that ran on television in the mid-1950s (several years before my time) called The $64,000 Question, in which contestants earned money by answering basic questions, the amounts of which would double as the questions became more difficult. As it relates to “Evangelicals for Harris,” the $64,000 question would undoubtedly be: What is an evangelical?
The $64,000 question for us all in the age of Evangelicals for Harris is, "What is an evangelical?"
In answering that question, church historian and Ligonier Ministries teaching fellow W. Robert Godfrey explains,
The label “evangelical,” the phrase of “evangelical Christians” really originates in Germany in the 16th century, where the Protestants there identified themselves as evangelicals over against the Roman Catholics. And so, in 16th-century Germany, “evangelical” meant someone who accepted the authority of the Bible to understand the gospel. “Evangelical,” after all, is just a Greek word for the gospel, for the good news.
Inherent to Dr. Godfrey’s definition of “evangelical” is something that warrants our thoughtful consideration, namely, that the term “evangelical” refers to individuals who accept the authority of the Bible. In other words, an “evangelical” is someone who both acknowledges and submits to the authority of Scripture over and above anything and anyone else. A biblical example of that truth is found in Acts 5:27-29, where the apostle Peter, having been ordered to “not continue teaching in this name [Jesus],” replied, “We must obey God rather than men.” Conversely, in 1 Thessalonians 2:13, the apostle Paul commends the Thessalonian believers for accepting the word of God, “not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God.”
To, as the apostle Paul said, “accept” the word of God for “what it really is,” is to first and foremost acknowledge that it is God Himself who is the Author of it. And if God, from whom “every family in heaven and on earth derives its name” (Eph 3:15), is the Author, and He is (2 Tim. 3:16), who are we, as mere created beings, to partition, segregate, or pie-chart, so to speak, His word as if certain portions of it are to be regarded by us as authoritative and others not?
A Christian . . . is called to seek the mind of Christ; to seek an understanding of his or her world from the viewpoint of the eternal; to see things, as best as we possibly can, the way God would have us view them, so that the things we affirm are the things that God affirms, and the things that we deny would be the things God denies.
– Dr. R.C. Sproul [2]
The gospel is the message of a holy, omnipotent, and omniscient God to sinful, weak, and feeble humanity (2 Tim 3:16). As professing Christians, that Creator-creature distinction should produce within us an attitude of humble reverence and submission, not of arrogant and supercilious rebellion. As the apostle James writes in James 4:6, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Believers in Christ willingly submit to the authority of God’s word because we recognize God—for no other reason than that He is God and we are not—as being in sovereign authority over us.
As the Scriptures clearly declare, it is God who made us and not we ourselves (Ps 100:3). Consequently, the authority of Scripture, solely because it is the word of the One who, merely by virtue of His existence, rules and reigns over all that exists (Jn 1:1-3), should be the rule by which every “evangelical” orders his or her life—in every area of their life—including politics, for there is no sphere of our existence in this world over which God’s word does not carry authority. As theologian Christopher Ash affirms, “The claim that God has spoken is one of the great glories of the Christian faith. God has spoken repeatedly and reliably. And he has made sure that men and women have a trustworthy record of his words. If this is true, it is a wonderful thing. The heavens are not made of brass. There is a living God; he is not distant; he has spoken to us. He wanted to speak; he has succeeded in speaking, to teach us his law and to call us back to him by his gospel. And we must heed his words.”
It was the 20th-century Welsh theologian D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones who astutely observed,
There can be no doubt whatsoever that all the troubles in the Church today, and most of the troubles in the world, are due to a departure from the authority of the Bible. . . . Human philosophy took the place of revelation, man’s opinions were exalted and Church leaders talked about ‘the advance of knowledge and science,’ and ‘the assured results’ of such knowledge. The Bible then became a book just like any other book, out-of-date in certain respects, wrong in other respects, and so on. It was no longer a book on which you could rely implicitly.
What Lloyd-Jones is contending is principally how political fan clubs like “Evangelicals for Harris” are borne. Such doctrinally arbitrary entities are a direct result of human philosophy having taken the place of biblical truth in the hearts and minds of “evangelicals” whose regard for the authority of Scripture is situational at best and inexistent at worst. Consequently, what Scripture teaches about the origin and worth of image-bearers of God (Gen 1:27; 5:2), is of less weight and significance than the words of a politician who promises to ensure that murdering those image-bearers who are unborn remains a right under the pretense of “reproductive freedom.”
In America, freedom is not to be given, not to be bestowed, but it is ours by right. And that includes the freedom to make decisions about one’s own body, and not have the government telling people what to do.
– Vice President Kamala Harris [3]
What legitimate reason is there for any “evangelical” to not subject literally every component of their life in this temporal world to the authority of the Word of God? Needless to say, there isn’t any—not biblically anyway. In light of the objective reality of the authority of the word of God over every detail and facet of the life of a professing believer, the verbal construction “Evangelicals for Harris” is an ontological contradiction in terms. I don’t say that flippantly or facetiously, but against the words of Jesus Himself who, in Luke 6:46, poses what is arguably the most profound rhetorical question in all of Scripture, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”
Truth is truth, and error, error, and that which is unlawful is unlawful, whether men think so or not. God has put an eternal difference between light and darkness, good and ill, which no creature’s conceit can alter; and therefore no man’s judgment is the measure of things further than it agrees to truth stamped upon things themselves by God. — Richard Sibbes (1577-1635), Christ’s Wise Government
Speaking of rhetorical questions, the apostle Paul asks in 2 Corinthians 6:14, “What partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?” That is the fundamental question as it relates to the raison d’être—the reason for existence—of “Evangelicals for Harris.” For further hermeneutical context, it is helpful to understand that the word “partnership” in 2 Corinthians 6:14, is the Greek noun μετοχή (metochē), which means to have something in common. Conversely, the word “fellowship” is the Greek noun κοινωνία (koinonia), which denotes communion, sharing, participation. Further, the Lexham Theological Workbook comments that “fellowship” is a term that conveys a sense of commonality, solidarity, and shared responsibility among households or individuals.[4]
This fight will be won only when we secure reproductive rights for every person in every state. Congress must therefore pass a bill that defends freedom and liberty by putting the protections of Roe v. Wade into federal law. – Vice President Kamala Harris
With specific regard to “Evangelicals for Harris,” the question at hand is fundamentally theological not political. It is a question that is firmly rooted in the principle of participation found in 2 Corinthians 6:14. Consequently, it is an inquiry that every “evangelical” devotee of Kamala Harris must answer: What shared responsibility, commonality, or solidarity can any professing “evangelical” have with a political candidate – any political candidate – who so brazenly advocates for the murder of unborn image-bearers of God? What justification could ever be posited that could possibly serve as an acceptable, meaning biblical, apologetic for why any “evangelical”—as Dr. W. Robert Godfrey rightly defined the term—should be “for” Kamala Harris?
The truth is there isn’t any.
Voting Kamala, for me, is so much greater than policies. It’s a vote against another four years of faith leaders justifying the actions of a man who destroys the message Jesus came to spread, and that is why I get involved in politics. — Jerushah Duford, granddaughter of the late Rev. Billy Graham, as quoted in this article published on The Christian Post website
Undoubtedly, the what-about-ists within the “Evangelicals for Harris” camp will argue that this same criticism could—and should—be levied against Donald Trump given his own ductile and malleable stance on abortion. They’re not necessarily wrong in saying that. Then, again, Donald Trump, to my knowledge anyway, isn’t the one claiming to be an “evangelical.” When and if he does make such a documented claim, I’ll be more than happy to call out his hypocrisy as well.
If my saying that perturbs you, I humbly suggest you temper your emotions for a moment and consider that it is one thing to have to choose between two sinners for president in November (Eccl. 7:20; Rom. 3:23), but it is another matter altogether for a group of professing “evangelicals” to openly endorse, fund, and advance the candidacy of someone whose platform is demonstrably more unbiblical than the other, particularly when it comes to the murder of unborn image-bearers of God (Ps. 52:3-4; Eph. 5:11).
The last year for which the CDC reported a yearly national total for abortions is 2021. It found there were 625,978 abortions in the District of Columbia and the 46 states with available data that year, up from 597,355 in those states and D.C. in 2020. The corresponding figure for 2019 was 607,720. — Pew Research Center, What the Data Says About Abortion in the U.S.
When considered altogether, particularly against the teachings of Scripture, it must be said that “Evangelicals for Harris” is nothing more than a coalition of agenda-driven, progressive “evangelical” pretenders who are willing to compromise and compartmentalize the gospel of Jesus Christ for the sake of political convenience and expedience.
Motivated, at least in part, by a seemingly insatiable lust for political requital, they are wholly content to seek the esteem and applause of sinful men rather than the divine favor and approval of the God who, irony of ironies, gives them life and breath to promulgate even those ideas and propositions that are egregiously antithetical to His gospel (Acts 17:25; Gal. 1:10).
If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. — 1 John 1:6 (NASB)
Soli Deo Gloria!
When considered altogether, particularly against the teachings of Scripture, it must be said that "Evangelicals for Harris" is nothing more than a coalition of agenda-driven progressive "evangelical" pretenders who are willing to compromise the gospel of Jesus Christ for the sake of political convenience.
FOOTNOTES
[1] J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, Ligonier Ministries (2023), paperback, p. 51.
[2] Message given by Dr. R.C. Sproul, “How Do We Know What We Know?” Quote can be found starting at 5:28, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVAu19oEm_s
[3] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/freedom-is-ours-by-right-vp-kamala-harris-speaks-at-abortion-rights-rally-in-savannah/ar-BB1hSCCS
[4] Derek Leigh Davis, “Assembly, Religious,” ed. Douglas Mangum et al., Lexham Theological Wordbook, Lexham Bible Reference Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).
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