Why our editor in chief spoke out against Trump, and why the conversation must continue.
Reader responses to Mark Galli’s recent editorial have spanned the spectrum. We have received countless notes of encouragement from readers who were profoundly moved. They no longer feel alone. They have hope again. Many have told us of reading the editorial with tears in their eyes, sharing it with children who have wandered from the faith, rejoicing that at last someone was articulating what they felt in their hearts. They felt this was a watershed moment in the history of the American church—or they hoped it would prove to be. Stay strong, they told us, knowing we were about to reap the whirlwind.
On the other hand, we have heard from many readers who felt incensed and insulted. These readers felt the editorial engaged in character assassination, or maligned a broad swath of our fellow evangelicals, or revealed that we prefer the Democrats to a President who has done a lot of good for causes we all care about.
Of course, we appreciate the support and listen humbly to the criticisms. But at the end of the day, we write for a readership of One. God is our Tower. Let the whirlwind come.
President Donald Trump would have you believe we are “far left.” Others have said we are not Bible-believing Christians. Neither is true. Christianity Today is theologically conservative. We are pro-life and pro-family. We are firm supporters of religious liberties and economic opportunity for men and women to exercise their gifts and create value in the world. We believe in the authority of Scripture.
We are also a global ministry. We travel the world and see the breadth and depth of what God is doing through his people all around the planet. It is beautiful, and breathtaking, and immense. The global Body of Christ—and the community of evangelicals—is vastly larger than our domestic political squabbles. But partly on behalf of that global body, we can no longer stay silent.
American evangelicals have always been a loose coalition of tribes. We have fought one another as often as we have fought together. We at Christianity Today believe we need to relearn the art of balancing two things: having a firm opinion and inviting free discussion. We need, in other words, both a flag and a table. Read More
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Evangelical Elites Are Out of Touch
The division in the evangelical community in the United States over the presidency of Donald Trump is far more complicated than a division between conservative and progressive evangelicals as some portray it or between out-of-touch evangelical elites and their fellow evangelicals as Carl Truman and others suggest. What concerns me most is the tendency in some quarters to see the president as the sole agent of God, to credit him with everything positive that happens during his presidency while discounting or minimizing his contribution to anything negative that is happening.
God works through a wide variety of agents and not just those in positions of authority. He works through ordinary people like ourselves - people who come from all walks of life. For an example of this one has only to look at the twelve disciples whom Jesus gathered to himself during his earthly ministry. Much of the positive developments for which the president receives credit or claims credit has not been his doing. On the other hand, most of the negative developments to which the president has contributed directly or indirectly are explained away or ignored completely.
A related tendency is the proclivity to make an idol of the president. I happened to hear a sermon in which the preacher equated the president with Jesus and those who did not support him with the Pharisees. The president, however, is not Christ or a Christ figure. God has only one Anointed and that is Jesus.
I am not suggesting that all evangelicals think this way but enough of them think this way to cause me concern. As Christians, evangelical or otherwise, our first loyalty is to Jesus. All other loyalties must take second place. Jesus has not commissioned us to make the evangelical community a political power in the United States but with making disciples of all people groups. That is the task with which he has entrusted us.
There is a very real danger of politics displacing mission in American churches, not just evangelical churches but other churches as well. This could not come at a worse time in the United States when church attendance is on the decline and many young people are abandoning organized religion. When one looks at the total picture, it appears to be both an upshot and a cause of church decline in the United States.
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