The 2008 Election Campaign

With the 2008 presidential election campaign already in full swing, the inevitable arguments about what candidate those on the so-called Christian Right should support will soon be the subject of heated debate. Recent history shows that once the major party primaries are completed, any principled candidates will have long since been winnowed out of the field, and the usual quartet of pragmatic insider politicians will be on the ballot. The Democratic candidates will be liberals and progressives masquerading as moderates, and the Republicans will be moderates-to-liberals masquerading as conservatives. One contemporary analogy characterizes the Democrats as locomotive engineers running the train of state at 100 MPH toward a steep cliff at the end of the tracks. The Republicans feign shock at the Democrat’s extremism and urge that they be elected, promising to drive the same train at only 55 MPH.

The January/February 1999 issue of The [John] Lofton Letter reminds us that this situation is not a new one, quoting 19th century theologian Robert L. Dabney:

“[The history of secular conservatism] has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the acceptable principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn.”

“American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward to perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It tends to risk nothing serious for the sake of truth.”

Thus, the major parties offer the choice between the fast and slow trains to perdition, and the leadership voices of the Christian Right overwhelmingly urge support for the slow train as being the only viable option. Pragmatism, expediency, compromise with the world, and the perceived comfort of the moment are touted as the only proper Christian response, i.e. vote for the Republican candidate, and those within the Christian Right who urge that only principled candidates and parties be supported are pilloried and dismissed for drawing away support for the lesser evil and in effect giving the election to the 100 MPH’ers.

As reformed believers who espouse the absolute sovereignty of God and that “all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture” (WCF I.VI.), we are called away from the conformance to the world that has long dominated Christian political thought and action and in large part has led to our present perdition, and toward biblically principled thought and action in the political arena and for that matter all areas of our lives. I offer the following points not as an exhaustive exegesis of this subject, but as a few applications as food for thought:

* God has ordained government for specific purposes and we should support only candidates and governments that conform to God’s design for Government. (Romans 13:1-7 etc.)

* In the USA, our national, state, and local governments are those of a constitutional republic, i.e. their powers are limited to what is granted to them in their particular constitution, charter, or bylaws, and we should support only candidates and governments that stay within their prescribed limits of power. (8th and 10th Commandments, Luke 20:25 etc.)

* God ordains particular leaders for particular times for particular circumstances according to his sovereign, eternal providence, and does not need man-made assistance like compromise, pragmatism, relativism, syncretism, and lesser-of-two-evilsism. (Daniel 2:21, 5:21 etc.)

* God calls us to keep his laws and commandments in matters of elections and politics as in everything else - no matter what the temporal cost. (Daniel 3:16-18, John 16:2-3 etc.)

I close this first essay with the inspired words of Paul, “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure…That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world (Philippians 2:13, 15). May we be those willing and doing lights – in politics, elections, and all throughout our lives.