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        A Response to Wayne Grudem Voting for Trump

        Wayne Grudem’s response in The Christian Post to John Piper’s widely circulated article, “Policies, Person’s, and Paths to Ruin,” made many good points.  While Grudem’s arguments struck me well for the most part, there are two glaring errors in what he had to say, errors that far too many evangelicals make in defending their support […]

        Evangelicals Made a Bad Bargain With Trump

        In public, donald trump has spoken in glowing terms about his evangelical supporters, calling them “warriors on the frontiers defending American freedom,” people who are “incredible” and “faithful,” a bulwark against assorted moral evils. But behind the scenes, as The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins recently reported, “many of Trump’s comments about religion are marked by cynicism and contempt, according to people who have worked for […]

        How QAnon uses religion to lure unsuspecting Christians

        Parker Neff was scrolling through conservative posts on Facebook when he saw an unfamiliar hashtag: #WWG1WGA. Recently retired after serving as a Southern Baptist pastor for more than 20 years, his time was free and curiosity piqued. “I started looking into it online,” Neff said. “Doing some research.” And with that, the 66-year-old retiree, and […]

        “Never Trumpers” are key to Biden’s Lead in the polls

        A new PoliticalIQ.com national survey shows that so-called “Never Trumpers” are the key to former Vice President Joe Biden’s lead in the polls. The survey offered voters a choice between 4 presidential candidates with equal skills and temperaments. Thirty-six percent (36%) say they would favor a Republican who supported policies similar to President Trump while 12% would support […]

        Where Liberal Power Lies

        A striking thing about the current moment is that if you switch back and forth between reading conservatives and liberals, you see mirror-image anxieties about authoritarianism and totalitarianism, which each side believes are developing across the partisan divide. Last Sunday I wrote in response to liberals who fear a postelection coup or a second-term slide toward autocracy, […]

        Donald Trump Is Not Pro-Life. His Response to COVID-19 Proves It.

        As Americans have begun to vote in the presidential election, one must make an important distinction in Donald Trump’s record in office. It’s entirely fair to call him nominally anti-abortion. It’s not credible to call him pro-life. And the distinction matters. As a young pro-life activist, I still remember the publication of Pope John Paul […]

        The caesarship of a fake empire

        Like millions of other Americans, I found that watching the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden gave rise to a curious admixture of emotions. The first of these was, for me anyway, surprise at the inability of the moderator to restrain either of the participants, followed by boredom, and, finally, an almost […]

        A new group of evangelical leaders forms in support of Biden

        When he was pastor of a prominent megachurch in Orlando, Joel Hunter never told anyone how he voted, but like many White evangelical leaders, he picked Donald Trump in 2016. Trump was friendly with the conservative Christian community, and Hunter thought, “Well, let’s give it a shot.” “Hillary Clinton never did reach out to the […]

        How Hatred Came to American Politics

        To anyone following American politics, it’s not exactly news that Democrats and Republicans don’t like each other. Take what happened in the presidential debate last week. President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden did little to conceal their disdain of one another. And although the debate marked a low point in our national discourse, it […]

        America Is Having a Moral Convulsion

        American history is driven by periodic moments of moral convulsion. The late Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington noticed that these convulsions seem to hit the United States every 60 years or so: the Revolutionary period of the 1760s and ’70s; the Jacksonian uprising of the 1820s and ’30s; the Progressive Era, which began in the […]

        Proud Boys celebrate after Trump’s debate callout

        The Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, pledged allegiance to President Donald Trump on Tuesday night after he told the group to “stand back and stand by” during the first presidential debate. Many people on social media who identify with the group echoed that language, saying they were “standing down and standing by.” One known […]

        The President Is a Sociopath. And 60 Million Americans Like It.

        The Cleveland debate was a miniature, 90-minute version of the last 4 years: depressing, exhausting, full of craziness and lies. Who won? I don’t know. Honestly: I cannot understand how anyone with an IQ over 80 could have watched this disgrace and not come away understanding that the president of the United States is a […]

        Trump Can Afford to Slip Among White Evangelicals, But Not White Catholics

        While white evangelicals remain a core voting bloc for President Donald Trump, in the 2020 race against Joe Biden white Catholics are expected to be a crucial demographic. Data indicates that Biden—a lifelong member of the Catholic church—may shift the white Catholic vote away from the Republican leanings it held for the past four presidential […]

        Jennie Allen: Take The Path Of Most Resistance

        One of the only things I can still recite from school is Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken.” I have always craved that overgrown path in the wilderness, even though it scares me. But I definitely didn’t set out to go against the system when I created IF:Gathering, a nonprofit for women who desire […]

        How Trump’s Race-Baiting Lets Liberals Off the Hook

        On the last day of August, the Fox News host Laura Ingraham interviewed President Trump on her show, “The Ingraham Angle.” Five weeks earlier, Trump endured a half-hour interview with the Axios political reporter Jonathan Swan, who grilled Trump about Covid-19 with the kind of disdain economics professors reserve for a graduate student who botches the calculation. Ingraham was […]

        Do Pro-Lifers Who Reject Trump Have ‘Blood on their Hands’?

        I don’t often post the trolling, angry tweets that I receive on a daily basis, but I thought I’d make an exception to launch a longer, important discussion that we simply don’t see enough in American Christianity: How do politics impact abortion rates in the United States? It has been almost 50 years since Roe v. […]

        ‘Christianity Will Have Power’

        They walked to the sanctuary in the frozen silence before dawn, footsteps crunching over the snow. Soon, hundreds joined in line. It was January 2016, and the unlikely Republican front-runner, Donald J. Trump, had come to town. He was the boastful, thrice-married, foul-mouthed star of “The Apprentice.” They were one of the most conservative Christian […]

        The Malignant Cruelty of Donald Trump

        “I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the President of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him—the memory of my dead wife—and perverted it for perceived political gain.” There may be a more damning thing that’s been said about an American president, but none immediately comes to mind. […]

        If we had a real leader

        This week I had a conversation that left a mark. It was with Mary Louise Kelly and E.J. Dionne on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and it was about how past presidents had handled moments of national mourning — Lincoln after Gettysburg, Reagan after the Challenger explosion and Obama after the Sandy Hook school shootings. The […]

        Abortion isn’t the only issue on the presidential ballot

        For most of my life, had you asked me whether I could vote for a pro-choice presidential candidate, my immediate reply would have been “no.” Protecting unborn children — undeniably alive, distinctly human, possessed of their own genetic identity — is the commitment of a compassionate, welcoming society. Yet my “no” has always been qualified. […]

        How the G.O.P. Might Get to Yes on Replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg

        Imagine a Republican senator uncertain whether to vote for the Supreme Court nominee that President Trump is poised to put forward. He is part of a select group, our senator; perhaps we can even guess how many children and grandchildren he has, how steeply his hair still rises from his brow, how close he once […]

        America Is Being Pulled Apart. Here’s How We Can Start to Heal Our Nation

        For the first time in my adult life, it’s easy for me to foresee the possibility of a genuine constitutional crisis in the United States of America. The scenario is simple. Imagine that either Joe Biden or Donald Trump wins the 2020 election in a close race. There is a surge in voter-suppression claims and mail-in ballot controversies.

        The power of conservative radicalism in an age of upheaval.

        Radicals are not my cup of tea, but I’m grateful for them. The radicals who brought us Occupy Wall Street and the Bernie Sanders campaign gave the problem of income inequality a prominence it wouldn’t have had without them…

        The Daily Dose

        Daily Devotionals for radical togetherness and awakening the church.

        A BONHOEFFER MOMENT

        Almost everywhere you turn – left and right – you will hear or read people saying, “This is a Bonhoeffer moment.” For some, that means standing gallantly against the menace of a right wing authoritarian. For others it calls for champions throwing themselves selflessly against an oncoming socialist regime. It may be forcing the choice […]

        A Crisis of Empathy

        The language of dehumanization is all around us. Whether it is Nancy Pelosi saying President Trump will be “fumigated out” of the White House if necessary, Trump tweeting that “Nervous Nancy is an inherently ‘dumb’ person,” the polarizing speech of media outlets across the political spectrum, or our arguments on social media, empathy is all too often absent from […]

        Dear White Christian Pro-Life Friends

        Dear White Christian Pro-Life Friends, If you from time to time have second thoughts about what the pro-life movement is doing to our country, our faith, and your own soul, this four-part series is for you. I only ask that you read it prayerfully and thoughtfully, with an open mind and heart.  I’m a family-oriented […]

        No race problem here: Despite summer of protests, many practicing Christians remain ambivalent

        As racial tensions have risen in recent months, a new report reveals that some Christians are becoming less motivated to act on racial justice, and an increasing share say there is “definitely” not a race problem in the country. “Christians generally, and practicing Christians in particular, have changed their minds on addressing racial injustice, but […]

        How to Navigate the Generational Divide in Politics

        For many of us, the disappointment is not primarily that our parents, pastors, or role models would vote for Donald Trump. Given the extreme pro-abortion policies, Maoist enforcement of speech codes, and guillotine optics of the other side, we can understand why Christian voters might find Trump the lesser of two evils. What’s disappointing is when our elders don’t seem to […]

        This Is What We Mean When We Say ‘Character Is Destiny’

        There are many, many strange things about the Republican political reaction to the Donald Trump presidency, but one of the strangest is the refrain I’ve heard time and time again—“Pay no attention to what Trump says. Pay attention to what he does.” In essence, the argument is that the Trump administration consistently saves Trump from himself by […]

        White evangelicals and Catholics may finally be opening their ears

        To whom can I speak and give warning? Who will listen to me? Their ears are closed so they cannot hear. — Jeremiah 6:10 Jeremiah was as good as it gets in the prophet business, but he could be a bit of a downer. In this respect, the opinion columnist is his natural successor. But […]

        When a Heart Is Empty

        This is not an intellectual stupidity. I imagine Trump’s I.Q. is fine. It is a moral and emotional stupidity. He blunders so often and so badly because he has a narcissist’s inability to get inside the hearts and minds of other people. It’s a stupidity that in almost pure clinical form, flows out of his […]

        Conservatives Have Only One Choice in 2020

        “You’re a traitor to the cause.” In one form or another, that’s the charge most often made against so-called Never Trumpers, a group of which I consider myself an early and unofficial co-founder. The well-being of both the Republican Party and conservatism, according to this line of thinking, requires supporting Donald Trump. To be against him is to […]

        Donald Trump’s Dangerous Attack on Free Speech Online

        Few public debates have been as confusing or more filled with flawed legal arguments than the fight over content moderation on social media. But on May 28 Donald Trump took action that brought the true stakes into sharp focus. Acting to protect his own Twitter feed, Trump initiated a direct attack on free speech online…

        Mona Charen: Why this pro-life conservative is voting for Biden

        Since I announced publicly that I will be voting for Joe Biden in November, I’ve received a few communications from puzzled readers. “How can you, a supposedly pro-life woman, support someone who believes in killing babies?” I will try to respond for the sake of those who, like me, find themselves alienated from the Republican […]

        Let’s Make July Fourth a True Independence Day

        On July 5, 1852, the great African-American statesman Frederick Douglass asked a provocative question at a Rochester Independence Day event: “What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?” His question still resonates and demands that we come to grips with the fact that America’s first promise—equality—has not been fully realized.

        I Pledge Allegiance?

        Here’s a truth of Christian cultural and political engagement you can take to the bank: If we don’t get our allegiance right, we’ll get everything else wrong…

        John Kingston: 2020 Could Be The Beginning Of An American Comeback

        John Kingston’s journey for public office took him on a journey through America. While gunning for the U.S. Senate seat held by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Kingston was introduced to thousands of Americans experiencing pain, disillusion, anger and resentment…

        Trump, Idolatry, & White Evangelicals

        Confusion. Disbelief. Frustration. Disappointment. These are the feelings I most regularly experience these days. The primary cause?  White American Evangelicals…

        Still Amusing Ourselves to Death

        The good news for Trump and his supporters is that if politics really has become this dominated by the television age, he’s well on track for reelection. He definitely has Biden’s number in the entertainment sweepstakes. The bad news is that voters might be willing to watch the country fall apart in the long term […]

        Your Bonhoeffer Moment

        I think Amy Sullivan said it best when she wrote that Trump is “pretty much the human embodiment of the question ‘What would Jesus not do?’” Indeed, Trump’s personal mottoes—“always get even” and “hit back harder than you were hit”—represent the antitheses of Jesus’s own, which were “blessed are the merciful” and “love your neighbor […]

        Poll: Third party voters from 2016 are backing Biden 2-to-1

        One of the major differences between 2016 and 2020 is that this year’s presidential contest features a smaller third-party vote than four years ago, and Gary Johnson/Jill Stein voters from 2016 are breaking more toward Joe Biden than they are Donald Trump…

        FactChecking Trump’s Fox News Interview

        In an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that aired over two days, President Donald Trump made several false, misleading and unsubstantiated claims…

        Trump announces new Supreme Court justice options in apparent appeal to religious base

        President Donald Trump made what appeared to be a targeted appeal to his conservative religious base on Wednesday afternoon (Sept. 9), announcing a slate of potential Supreme Court candidates who he suggested would protect religious liberty, oppose abortion and keep “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance….

        For Election Administrators, Death Threats Have Become Part of the Job

        “Go find a gun and kill yourself. Every person that didn’t get to vote because of you should get to beat the shit out of you.” The man, who identified himself as a Washington, D.C., resident, expressed hope that Dearing, a “bigoted whore,” would be mangled in a flaming car crash.