Making the rounds in several of my circles this week is Wayne Grudem’s recent article “Why Voting for Donald Trump is a Morally Good Choice.” I don’t know Dr. Grudem, but I know his theological work well and believe him to be a great servant of God and a wise, Biblical thinker. His opinion on this year’s presidential election is one I’ve heard from others over the last six months, but I find myself disagreeing with it strongly enough to offer an alternative point of view.
Politics
Scalia Would Want Obama to Nominate His Replacement
As an amateur Supreme Court watcher and a constitutional originalist, the death of Justice Scalia has me thinking a lot this week about the state of American politics. I read each of the court’s opinions, and frequently SCOTUSBlog also, and have come to know a bit about each of the justices over the past few years. While a controversial one, I’ve found Scalia to operate within a pretty predictable and consistent interpretive perspective over the years. Like any enthusiastic, potentially delusional, amateur, this leads me to believe that I understand how he would have felt about the political Sturm und Drang around choosing his successor.
I think Scalia would have wanted Obama to nominate his replacement and for the Senate to vet, debate, and vote on that candidate.
Continue reading
Yeah but who *could* you vote for?
Being an opinionated, type-A personality, I end up in a lot of political discussions. I spend a lot of time reading and thinking about politics and usually find in these discussions that none of that preparation matters – my unpopular views are dismissed as irrelevant.
Recently, the common accusation is: “You’re looking for the perfect candidate. S/He doesn’t exist. No one can measure up to your standards.” Wondering if that was true, my friend Steven and I took the time to identify the issues that seem most important to us and to read everything we could find from what the five Republican candidates (who have a chance) believe about each.
One important note here is about the “Foreign Policy” category. We believe that foreign policy is inextricably linked to fiscal policy. One of the biggest problems with our military strategy is that we never consider the cost of it. If we were to rank these candidates on foreign policy with that principle in mind, they’d all fail. Instead, we agreed to consider foreign policy as if we lived in a world where these decisions had no economic impact. Our scoring system is simple: every issue is either a net positive (+1), neutral (0), or negative (-1).
How I Can Still Admire Robert E. Lee
While there were many shootings in the city of Charleston, SC in 2015, only one will be forever known as the “Charleston Massacre.1” An event this horrific, an act this vile, leaves most of us feeling helpless to respond in any meaningful way. That urge to do something -anything- is understandable after national tragedies. It also often leads us to overreact and do things that satisfy this urge but have negative long-term consequences2.
One of the voices leading the charge for the “we must do something” movement is Comedy Central’s daily news anchor, Jon Stewart. The “something” he suggests is the nationwide removal of all Confederate flags, streets named for Confederate soldiers, and Civil War memorials honoring the Confederate dead. Several segments of his nightly broadcasts have gone viral as viewers excitedly favorite and retweet his monologues. His central thesis seems to be:
Continue readingI. Every supporter of the Confederate States was, directly or indirectly, supporting treason and slavery.
II. The evils of treason and slavery outweigh any good in or done by those people.
III. People who supported the Confederate States should not be honored in any public way.
IV. People who support or honor those who supported the Confederate States are morally bankrupt, sadly ignorant, or themselves racists.
“Culture of Death” Isn’t Quite Accurate
My news feed the last several mornings has chronicled the ups-and-downs of the “Arkansas Human Heartbeat Protection Act.” Passed by the state’s senate and house, the bill was promptly vetoed by governor Mike Beebe. He explains his decision to veto this way:
“Because it would impose a ban on a woman’s right to choose an elective, nontherapeutic abortion well before viability, Senate Bill 134 blatantly contradicts the United States Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court. When I was sworn in as governor I took an oath to preserve, protect and defend both the Arkansas Constitution and the Constitution of the United States. I take that oath seriously.”
Brothers, Please Just Preach the Gospel
I’ve been meaning for several weeks, since I first heard about “pulpit freedom Sunday,” to write something about it. I procrastinated, and now it’s the day before it happens and I need to spend the time on my own sermon rather than lamenting what other folks might do with theirs. Nonetheless, I want to give a few brief thoughts about why this is a monumentally bad idea. Continue reading
What can we learn from “cheering” for abortion?
Using his Twitter account and the Lifeway Research Blog, Ed Stetzer recently lamented the claps and cheers of affirmation that occurred at the Democratic National Convention whenever the subject of abortion was mentioned. In the blog post he makes a point I also heard recently in an interview conducted by WORLD News Group:
In 1992, President Clinton talked about making abortion “safe, legal, and rare.” Now the DNC cheers its mention– dozens of times– and never mentions the “rare.” Perhaps the cheering points shows us that the “rare” part was just a talking point from another era.
It is no secret that I am pro-life. However, there are obviously people who disagree with me. But, if you are going to be pro-choice, at least don’t cheer the idea– at least long to make abortion “rare.”
(Incidentally, the number of times Bill Clinton has been positively referenced by republicans in the past two weeks is a disturbing and ironic point for another day.) Continue reading
Rick Santorum and My Daily News Feed
It’s never a surprise to open my RSS reader and find stories about the GOP presidential contenders. I do, after all, subscribe to the feeds of several news websites. I also subscribe to the blogs of some prominent evangelicals, so some of the articles I see are not from CNN or the Wall Street Journal, but Douglas Wilson, Al Mohler, or other evangelical leaders with large web followings.
I think religious leaders, especially those who have to stand in a pulpit on Sunday morning, ought to be very careful about publicly endorsing a candidate. I don’t think it’s wrong to do so, but I do think our priority ought to be to teach our people how to think about voting more than stumping for any one politician. At this point in the political season however, I think Wilson, Mohler, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and many others have dropped the ball.
Let me be very clear – though I do not support Rick Santorum, I believe Christians and Christian leaders have the freedom of conscience to do so. I’m not trying to take these men to task for throwing their support behind the former Pennsylvania senator. I’m trying to take them to task because the arguments they use in his favor are often illogical or false and thus fail to assist in teaching us how to think about candidates and elections.
What I Think 