The road Christians have chosen to travel in their political opposition to abortion has not merely hit a dead end, but it has unexpectedly (to some) taken a sudden left turn.
With the Presidential election quickly emerging and the two candidates at last settled, Christians are obligated, as always, to prayerfully consider how we utilize the authority God has given to us as American citizens. As I have personally considered this election, I have somewhat unexpectedly become torn in my own conscience. I have voted Republican in every election in which I have been allowed to participate, and in both 2016 and 2020, I pulled the lever for Donald Trump without any of the hesitation experienced by many Christians. This year, however, I do not find that to be the case. This is not due to Trump’s personal immorality, his crude manner of speaking, his four sham indictments, or his rhetoric and behavior following the 2020 election. My hesitation this time around is due to the brazen and, I believe, fatal compromises with abortion, both on the part of Trump and the Republican party over which he exercises such massive influence.
For generations, the Republican Party has been the sole home for those who oppose abortion. While the actual victories of Republicans over the abortion regime have been limited, to say the least, there was always the clearly stated goal of ultimately bringing abortion to an end. That reality has fundamentally changed. The same man who once stated that were abortion to be outlawed, the women who procure them should be “punished,” and who has been characterized by both himself and others as the most pro-life president of all time, has in the past two years opposed a heartbeat bill passed in Florida, pressured Arizona judges to reverse their decision to uphold a law criminalizing abortion doctors, has promised that his administration will be “great for women and their reproductive rights,” and has succeeded in essentially removing abortion from the platform of the party for which he bears the standard. He has also nudged the party toward official support of IVF as well as the abortion pill.
It has been evident since the overturning of Roe V. Wade by the Dobbs decision in 2022 that the Republican Party has become noticeably less pro-life and much more comfortable with allowing some regulated abortion. Their current position seems to align essentially with the “safe, legal, and rare” line of the Democrats in the 1990s. All of these revelations have led me to seriously consider whether I, as a Christian, can, in good conscience, cast a ballot for Donald Trump, knowing what I know. I staunchly reject the position that either a vote for Trump or a refusal to vote for him is itself sinful. I know very faithful Christians who stand firmly in both camps; this is a matter of Christian liberty. That does not mean, however, that it is unimportant. My purpose is to make the strongest biblical argument I can for both positions: supporting and opposing Trump. In so doing, I hope that I may help those who, like myself, are deeply torn by the present, sorry state of our national politics.
The Binding Standard
In preparation for bringing His chosen people into the land He had promised them, equipping them to go from being an ethnic people group to a nation, God proclaims this emphatic word:
Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. And if the people of that land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech (Lev. 20:2-5).
It is true that Old Testament Israel was a unique nation, a typological kingdom of God foreshadowing, however dimly, the dominion that Christ would establish. It is also true that, despite receiving from God a perfectly righteous law to produce a just civil order (Deut. 4:5-8), the Israelites failed to produce the flourishing society of peace and obedience they were called to. It is also the case, however, that God’s revealed law is the binding standard for all peoples at all times and that this is the only solid standard on which to devise and enforce civil law.
It is clear in Scripture that although all sin is rebellion deserving of God’s eternal wrath, some sins are more heinous than others, and this is true both on the personal and corporate levels. There are certain sins that provoke the temporal wrath and judgment of God to a greater degree than others. One of these sins is child sacrifice. As Leviticus 20 makes clear, a nation that promotes or even tolerates child sacrifice will experience punishment from God: He will “set His face against” such a nation. It is worth pointing out as well that biblically, this is not only the case for the covenant nation of Israel—listed among the sins for which the Canaanite nations were being judicially exiled from the land was giving their children to Molech (Lev. 18:21). God raises up and brings down all sorts of nations according to His own purposes. In the long run, blatant disregard for His commands, particularly when it comes to sexual sin and sins of blood guilt, will result in God’s devastation of that nation. In God’s world, a flourishing nation cannot be built on injustice, immorality, or the blood of innocents.
Tragically, in 21st-century America, we find ourselves in just such a nation. Sometime over the course of the past hundred years, and plainly evident for the past sixty-plus, the United States traded its cultural heritage of responsible, lawful liberty rooted in the Protestant faith for cultural license, particularly license in the realm of sexual activity. From out-of-wedlock births to no-fault divorce, from the gay rights movement to our modern transgender madness, the sacred cow, the untouchable idol of the United States, is clearly sexual hedonism: the “freedom” to engage in virtually any sexual activity one can imagine, uninhibited by the state and undeterred by cultural pressures. However, because sex is what God made it to be, it is creationally impossible for it to be unburdened from responsibilities and obligations, nor can it be free from consequences when these are ignored. Thus, the unquestionable and absolute right to exterminate the most obvious consequence of allegedly free sex: children.
Complicit In The Blood Guilt
America has sacrificed children in service of their idol at a prolific rate. Presently, the body count is upwards of 65 million, and it is, in reality, likely over 70 million children sacrificed to false gods in our land. Anybody who takes the Bible seriously must conclude that this innocent bloodshed will not go unavenged, that our just God will bring His wrath to bear on a nation that practices such barbarism. This is a frightening thought, and it is made more so by the fact that under our system of government, there is not a man or woman alive who is not implicated in this holocaust.
Americans have voted time and again for representatives who have pledged to establish and strengthen the so-called “right” to abortion. Even those who have not done so are generally content to look the other way on the issue. They certainly have not pressured their elected officials to perform the most basic duty of government, namely, to punish the murder of the most innocent and defenseless victims. Coupled with the church’s general failure to address abortion from a consistently biblical worldview, America’s institutions and all individuals involved in them are complicit in the blood guilt that cries out to God for vengeance.
Increasingly, for those who would seek to rationalize their inaction toward abortion and our national failure to repudiate it entirely, there is little cover behind which to hide. Largely due to the influence of Donald Trump, opposition to abortion is no longer a standard plank of the Republican party platform, and the trend seems to be heading in the direction of agreeing on a federal truce over abortion (as Trump has suggested legality up to 16 weeks). It is true that not every Republican is prepared to compromise on abortion publicly, and it is also true that even if they were, there is no reason to expect that Democrats would welcome such an agreement. The Democrats are becoming ever more radical on abortion, positively supporting a platform that places absolutely no limits on the murder of the preborn, and this is often the rationale for continuing to support Republicans, even as they tacitly endorse abortion under what they deem to be the proper regulations and arbitrary restrictions.
All of this is a prelude to the question at hand: ought Christians support Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, given his apparent public compromise on the issue of abortion? The typical reason behind answering in the affirmative is that, while Trump is no hardcore pro-lifer, he is not only marginally better than Kamala Harris on abortion, but more importantly, he is far superior to her on other hugely important issues such as immigration, the economy, and foreign policy. This is inarguably true, and it is also true that these three issues ought to seriously concern Christians. Our nation is in dire straights on nearly every front, and Christians should be committed to righting the ship in the most effective and God-honoring way possible.
Perhaps We Have It Backward?
What many fail to realize, however, is that repenting and ridding ourselves of abortion is a prerequisite for dealing with the other significant issues facing us. In Deuteronomy 28, God lays out the covenant blessings and curses promised to the Israelites based on their national covenant faithfulness or lack thereof. Let it be said once more that while Israel was uniquely in covenant with God, all nations are nevertheless judged by God with curses according to the standard of His law. Blessings and curses may fall on any nation inasmuch as they conform to God’s creational ordinances, and all nations are judged in terms of these. When Sodom and Gomorrah, Egypt, Canaan, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab were visited with the judgment of destruction, this was done by the standard of God’s righteous law.
Among the curses threatened in Deuteronomy 28, several stand out as applicable to our American situation:
A nation that you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your ground and all of your labors, and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually…The sojourner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower (Deut. 28:33, 43).
You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall ravish her. You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but you shall not enjoy its fruit…You shall carry much seed into the field and shall gather in little, for the locust shall consume it. You shall plant vineyards and dress them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm shall eat them. You shall have olive trees throughout your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with oil, for your olives shall drop off (Deut. 28:30, 38-41).
The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like an eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand, a hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young (Deut. 28:49-50).
These mentioned, though not the extent of the threatened curses, indicate that some areas in which God will judge a nation concern foreign invasion (migration), economic disaster, and military conquest.
In the United States in 2024, this trifecta of issues is of clear and present concern. Record numbers of illegal aliens continue to pour across our southern border, and not only do these put a strain on resources and take away jobs from blue-collar citizens, but with the crime at the border comes lethal drug trafficking, not to mention unchecked human trafficking. Economically, the United States continues to be a country and a culture mired in debt and struggling against inflation, with the promise of prolonged economic disaster were Harris to be elected. On the international front, a major war in Europe, one building up in the Middle East, and the possibility of conflict in Asia threaten massive loss of American lives in a potential third world war. The typical response of Republicans (and Americans at large) is to consider all these issues in a vacuum and to shine a spotlight on them while ignoring the spiritual root leading to the poisonous fruit we now see.
These genuine national disasters are judgment; these are the curses God heaps upon wicked nations who continually ignore His law and revel in their debauchery. And of all the evil to be found in the United States, it is the state-sanctioned and legally approved practice of child sacrifice that is the sin of which we will not repent and for which we are experiencing wrath. The reality is that the Republican party has been built on the sandy foundation of pragmatism and a simple strategy of delaying the perceived inevitable. While the radical left of the Democrat base has succeeded in pushing the entire party steadily toward its once fringe positions, the Republicans have been far too eager to be the compromise candidates, following the Democrat descent into madness, albeit at a slower pace.
While typical conservative voters may complain about this obvious truth, every four years, the new threat from the left is more dire than the last. The country is teetering more closely to disaster than ever, so we reliably vote for the candidate who promises to apply a fresh bandage to the collapsing foundations of our republic. And this means that the abortion issue, which is just too divisive and too unpopular among independents, will have to wait until next time, once all the other fires have been put out. But have we ever considered that perhaps we have the order backward?
An Exhortation To Repent
According to Scripture, our efforts to “self-help” our way to flourishing, to turn over a new leaf, and to work hard to fix our problems on the surface without addressing the sin at the root of them are futile.
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found; surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him (Ps. 32:4-6).
The exhortation is to repent, experience relief from God’s chastening hand, and do so quickly “at a time where He may be found.” Similarly, before the monarchy was established in Israel, it was not until the people turned away from serving other gods and came back to the Lord that He would send a deliverer to rescue them from their trouble (Judg. 2:17-20). As long as we love our sin and refuse to put it away, or as long as we fear the consequences of turning from it, we will not experience deliverance.
This does not make repentance a “get out of jail free” card. America could abolish abortion today, and God could still justly condemn this nation to destruction. He owes us nothing. However, if we continue to refuse repentance, our destruction is inevitable. If Christians would think as Christians rather than as pragmatists, then we would realize that our capitulation to compromise on child sacrifice for the sake of national security and economics—weighty issues as these are—cannot, in the long run, succeed. Our only hope to turn away the wrath of God from our nation is to throw ourselves on His mercy through repentance in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Too Comfortable With Compromise
It is duly noted that the Republican party is by no means a Christian organization, and so cannot be expected to operate as one. Yet many who make it up are professing Christians, and they must be expected to behave accordingly. The political reality is that Republicans cannot win elections without a significant amount of Christian support, particularly from evangelicals. If Christians had a fraction of the courage found in radical leftists to stand on principle over pragmatism on this foundational issue if believers in the sovereign God would utterly refuse to compromise on the wrath-inducing atrocity of child sacrifice, then the Republican party would have no choice but to capitulate or else somehow find a new base of support. As it stands, however, Christians have become so comfortable with compromise that our current preferred candidate would support more than 95% of abortions committed in this country. And if Christians continue to use our votes for these policies, then there is no rational or theological reason to believe that the trend will reverse. Eventually, “pro-life Republican” will be as much an oxymoron as “pro-life Democrat.”
Suppose we believe repentance is the only possible way out from under the national judgment we are suffering. In that case, this must begin with individual Christians and churches and then spread through our political institutions. It is unfortunate that we find ourselves at the ground level of this work, but this is no excuse for maintaining the status quo; further delay will only make the work that much more difficult for subsequent generations. Abortion is the great evil at the base of all our societal ills, and so long as it is willfully left intact, there is no reason to expect the other disasters we are experiencing to subside, no matter how sound of a policy platform is set forth.
The road Christians have chosen to travel in their political opposition to abortion has not merely hit a dead end, but it has unexpectedly (to some) taken a sudden left turn. A refusal to vote for Donald Trump in 2024 is not a “purity” vote; it is not a virtue signal of one’s own personal piety or a pretentious attitude of being above partisan politics. It is an acknowledgment that, to date, our strategy to end abortion has abysmally failed, and it is the first step in a new, God-honoring direction.
