Can A Christian Vote For A Democratic Presidential Candidate?

There’s been an awful lot of talk in the last few weeks of this 2024 election season about how a Christian could possibly vote for Kamala Harris, or any Democrat for that matter. Folks claim that the Democratic platform is utterly opposed to Christian values. I disagree, and I wanted to address that idea briefly, because I, as a follower of the Way of Jesus, voted for Harris and Walz and most of the other Democrat spots on our state and local ticket.

Most of you viewers or listeners will be finding this content after the election, but perhaps it will help you understand the thinking of your friends, family, or neighbors that confounds your sense of Christianity. For years, I was convinced it was utterly impossible to be a Christian and a Democrat. I was deeply invested in Republican thinking, and had inherited a sense that it was the only possible Christian political view. But obviously, that changed for me, so I’d like to take a few minutes to explain why.

It comes down to this: After four intensive years of rethinking my doctrines and politics, I concluded that my former right-wing positions on abortion, LGBTQ, racism, 2A, welfare, climate, immigration, Christian Nationalism, and many more things were WRONG.

So let me address each of those topics briefly. It would take far too long for a single recording to really address each of these in depth, but I’ll summarize them here.

Let’s start with abortion.

For months in 2022 I studied abortion intensively, and for my own purposes I wrote a 53-page paper on “A personal framework for the morality of abortion” and in 2024 a 33-page paper on “Studies on the best ways to reduce abortions.” I concluded that banning abortion is counterproductive; pro-choice, in all its complexity, is (perhaps paradoxically) in fact the best way to reduce abortion. Furthermore, the anti-abortion position is inherently harmful to huge numbers of women and families, and violates many things that pro-life people claim to value. You can find those two papers here on the blog.

Since I wrote exhaustively on the topic, I won’t say more here, other than this: abortion horrifies me, as it should every human – but simply being horrified about the practice isn’t sufficient to make a moral decision about it. The truth is that the Bible only incidentally touches on abortion, and in fact one of only two really clear verses about it actually gives instructions on inducing miscarriage, and the other passage makes it pretty clear that the fetus was considered the financial property of the father and husband of the pregnant woman, not a human life until it had been fully born. And that teaching is still followed today by Jews, many of whom insist that the right to abortion is a religious matter and cannot be taken away.

So it seems clear to me that we are left to make a decision about how we treat ALL people – including the women and families involved – in the wisest way possible. And I concluded in my study that there are unfortunately many instances where the net harm of not aborting is far greater. Such decisions, then, must be left to the woman and family and doctor and pastor, not the state.

For such reasons, I must reject the anti-choice position of the Republican platform.

How about LGBTQ rights?

In 2022 I studied gay rights and homosexuality and transgender issues at length, and wrote a 36-page paper about my findings. In October 2022 I published that paper under the title “Coming Out as Affirming on National Coming Out Day.” You can find that paper on my blog also. In it, I concluded that (contrary to evangelical teaching) the Bible does not teach that homosexuality or gay rights are wrong.

Furthermore, I concluded that the anti-affirming position results in vast and deep harm to many people, including far too many suicides and self-harm by people in unsupportive situations. Responses about the personal or societal harm supposedly caused by the gay or trans agenda are utterly unconvincing, and I’ve found them to be universally mistaken or outright deceptive, not to mention quite unChristian in their use of falsehoods in pursuit of an religious agenda.
Furthermore, since I’ve taken that affirming position, I’ve found that I actually had known more than a few gay, lesbian, queer, and trans folks all along, without knowing that was true of them, and I’ve met many more through my online relationships. They were invisible to me because they knew it wasn’t safe to let me know, but once I became publicly and vocally affirming, I found out about them.

And in knowing them all, I’ve found that basically NOTHING that was told to me about LGBTQ people was even close to accurate, and most that I’ve met are deeply faithful Christians who actually inspire me by their perseverance with God in the face of such ugly treatment by other Christians. In truth, they’re living the persecuted life today here and now and I’ve learned a lot from them. As such, I find the Republican hatred and fear of queer people to be entirely unacceptable.

The next platform topic was racism.

In 2021 I spent months studying racism, as a white man raised conservative Republican, and realized that most of the anti-BLM, anti-CRT, anti-social-justice positions I had taken were actually opposed to the Gospel of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount. Truly, a vast majority of those positions are based on easily-demonstrated falsehoods, and in fact quite a bit of clear and acknowledged direct lies by people like Christopher Rufo. Furthermore, I was completely shocked to discover how much American history had been deliberately twisted by evangelicals and white southerners to provide backstop for continued racist policies through the years like Jim Crow and redlining and many other toxic and government-backed ways used to re-enslave Black people. The amount of harm done to people of color in America is stunning and is not well understood by most Republicans, who honestly would rather not know about it, lest they become culpable for the harm. Far from being solved or settled by the Civil Rights movement, the harm and the toxic policies continue today, and Christians of all people should be deeply involved in righting the situation. On my blog, early in my writings, I published many different articles about racism, and if you search my site you’ll be able to read my thinking at length.

Gun rights are of course a big deal for many Republicans.

In 2023 I spent significant time reading and studying on gun rights. I have not yet written what I consider a definitive paper on the topic, because I still believe I need to dig even deeper. But here is a summary of my thinking so far: while I conclude that the 2nd Amendment is valuable, the right wing and MAGA worship gun rights more than trusting God for their protection, and opposing Jesus’ consistent teaching on self-sacrifice (including not being willing to trust God with our possessions and the health and safety of our families). As a long-time gun owner, both handgun and “scary gun,” and as one who enjoys target shooting, it’s difficult to acknowledge that the best thing for my nation might well be an assault weapon ban, but I could not reach any other conclusion when I was humble about what I was learning. Incidentally, I also concluded that arming school resource officers actually increased gun violence in schools. Overall, the fact that the single largest cause of child and teen deaths is gun violence should really rock the pro-life view, but it seems to be considered an acceptable cost of the 2nd Amendment; I find this view appalling as a Christian.

Social matters are also a major plank for conservatives.

When I study welfare and “universal basic income” and socialized medicine, I have a very hard time concluding that my former Republican beliefs about their horrible effects on society are correct. If I’m willing to sacrifice some personal comfort and income, and stop clinging so damnably tightly to what’s “mine mine mine,” then the tangible benefits across society are clear; when my neighbor prospers, I prosper too. My understanding of Jesus’ teaching compels me to admit that taking care of “the least of these” is of paramount importance to the Kingdom – just read Matthew 25:31-46 – and Jesus spends a fair amount of time criticizing those who cling to wealth and riches. By any objective standard, I’m wealthy beyond compare even as a simple middle-class American. And lest anyone respond “but the government cannot force me to be generous,” you’re right. If you disagree with our democratically-chosen national policies on this matter, you’re entirely free to move to a different nation that doesn’t do this. That’s part of freedom, thankfully.

Immigration is next.

Immigration has gotten a massive surge of attention in this 2024 campaign, so it’s important to consider.

When I think about immigration, I cannot help but conclude that the Bible is completely unambiguous about welcoming the alien and foreigner and sojourner, and quite a bit of judgement on Israel in the Old Testament was a result of their injustice against such people. If I’m not mistaken, the topic that appears more than any other in the Bible is justice and righteousness (and these two words are almost ALWAYS paired together). We cannot be righteous without being just, and justice does NOT mean “putting criminals in jail.” It means treating people justly, and ensuring that they are not oppressed. The current Republican invective against immigrants and foreigners is in absolute and direct opposition to everything the Bible says about such matters. And far too much of the rhetoric is about keeping what’s ours – either our culture, or our stuff, or our money – at the expense of those who have literally NOTHING. In particular, I find the “Great Replacement” language from the far right, which asserts that we have to protect white people’s superiority in America, to be utterly loathsome, and entirely antiChrist. If I find myself in the minority in America, so what? If God is in charge anyway, why would I fight that? So I can take no part in this hatred of immigrants.

American support for Israel is a huge deal for many evangelical Christians.

I’ve spent the last six months studying (and leading an intensive 12-week book study on) a 336-page fifth-edition textbook on the history of conflict between Israel and Palestine, and concluded that the United States and Britain are largely responsible for most of the mess over in the mid-East, starting with interference in the 1800s and attempts by evangelical Christians to create a religious state while displacing indigenous Palestinians, even more than the Jews at the time really cared to do. And since then, current US funding and weapons for Israel continue to enable great human harm in the region, and allow human rights abuses on a massive scale. The security of Israel cannot be allowed to completely override the right of an entire group to exist or have a home; that’s a poverty of justice. At this point, Israel’s leadership in the last few months held a vote and determined that they were utterly unwilling to allow a Palestinian state, and that is key to understanding their actions to completely wipe out every trace of Palestine in their borders.

I cannot write off Palestinian lives and rights simply because I hold a different religion – my Christianity tells me that the Good Samaritan was willing to overlook theological differences to save his neighbor’s life, and Jesus commended him as the better man in that parable than the religious leaders who avoided the wounded man.

Furthermore, my theology no longer agrees with the evangelical conclusion that the state of Israel is essential to the return of Jesus. Israel today is actually a completely secular state, with no relation to the people of Israel, which is what is meant by “nation” in the Bible, so any evangelical arguments about “those who bless Israel” are functionally meaningless in the debate of US support for the secular political entity known as Israel, no matter how many ethnic Jews live there. There’s much more that could be said here about Israel, including acknowledging the harm done to that people group by numerous nations, and their own need for a place to call their own. But this isn’t the place or time for that longer discussion.

Let’s consider climate change.

I find myself opposed to the Republican position on climate, simply because the Bible is clear (to me) that man was given responsibility for the planet. A ruler should rule for the benefit of what they rule, not for their own benefit. My theology denies a soon-coming Rapture and end of the world; that viewpoint allows evangelicals to ignore the state of the earth since it would all end soon anyway. Instead, I conclude that the Bible actually teaches that humans will be around for a long time, and we’re expected to righteously rule and maintain the planet and its people and resources, to give it back to God in at least as good a condition as God gave it to us. As such, I cannot accept the studied right-wing opposition to reducing harm to our planet.

Finally, let’s consider Christian nationalism.

There’s hours of things I could say about that topic, and perhaps in some ways it’s the most important. I’ll limit it to this, for now:

I strongly oppose the right-wing evangelical effort to make America an explicitly Christian nation – and I say this as a Christ-follower. The reason is that EVERY time it has been tried, it has resulted in despotic, authoritarian, dictatorial rule and hideous religious oppression. That’s why people came to America, and why the Founders structured our system to deliberately avoid religious control of the government. They were VERY well acquainted with the problem and didn’t want it to be repeated here.

Some people keep thinking they can ride the tiger, but it never works. One look at 1930s Germany, and a careful review of that history, should be enough to scare off any Christian attempt at repeating that same experiment, but sadly, most Christians simply don’t know their history all that well.

I think the key is that the church shouldn’t be attempting to rule any nation or political system. Christians are dual-citizens by definition, and our heavenly Kingdom citizenship is where we rule and reign. I don’t think our focus should be on making any earthly political entity Godly – rather, we should be an example of God’s subjects even as we’re within an often fallible and sometimes ungodly and even Christian-persecuting earthly political system. Jesus typified this, never once attempting to gain political power, and actively resisting such attempts, despite most of His followers fully expecting Him to take over rule.

Does that mean Christians will be oppressed in America? Probably, yes. But oppression is where our light truly shines. The fastest growing Christian groups in the world are in oppressive cultures. And difficulty and persecution are often how God refines the Church. We should not shy away from such challenges.

What bothers me the most about Christian nationalism is the amount of raw falsehood employed in its defense. I readily admit to believing all those falsehoods until very, very recently, but having undertaken a fairly aggressive study of the well-documented and factual history of America and evangelicalism and overall Christianity, I’m suddenly able to see a shocking multitude of errors in the claims. But many Christians simply don’t know history (despite thinking they do). They routinely say “that’s the way X has always worked or been understood or been doctrinal.” But it’s just not true. In fact it’s shockingly easy to disprove every such assertion, with just minutes of study.

Also, there are a lot of Christian Nationalist assertions about the way the world works that are, in my opinion, unsupportable. Those assertions are deeply attractive to the evangelical mindset. But “attractive” does not mean “true.” In fact, I believe they’re tailored directly to that mindset, perhaps demonically so.

As a result, I’m perhaps less interested in crying “heresy” than I am in pointing out that the underpinnings of Christian nationalism are deeply flawed.

But with that said, my final significant problem with Christian nationalism is its pursuit of power and control over a set of worldly (“kosmos”) systems. I DO think the “seven mountains” or “seven dominions” are absolutely real – but they’re demonic, not Godly. And Christian nationalism seeks to co-opt something designed explicitly by Satan himself, and wrest control of it into Christian hands. But the roots are evil, and it cannot be made holy. So I see that as inherently in conflict with much of Jesus’ teachings. Very importantly, I also see it as a direct surrender to the Third Temptation of Christ – “I’ll give you all the kingdoms of the world.” And finally, a Christian must merely look at Revelation 17:1-18 to see God’s idea about the church becoming a whore, a prostitute, to the pursuit of empire and political control. It doesn’t end well.

So I cannot in any shape support Christian nationalism.

Time to summarize.

So there you have it: a fairly short explanation of why I cannot vote Republican as a committed follower of the Way of Jesus.

All of this study and the resulting conclusions have been deeply costly: shunned by my former church, at odds with most of my family, upending nearly all my faith and my politics. I knew this would be difficult, which is why I spent so much time and was so careful to document my journey. I have not come to these conclusions lightly. And yet, despite the cost, I would not go back.

If you’re wavering on these matters, I’ll offer this advice: Give God your unconditional “yes” to change your mind about anything. Repentance is supposed to be a way of life for the Christian. There may be great pain in the process, but the end result is so, so worth it.

So, to wrap up:

When you put all these things together, I cannot find any way to vote for a Republican platform, and I absolutely cannot find any good reason to support a candidate who routinely and gleefully violates nearly every commandment and teaching of Jesus.

I recognize that most Republicans will have answers against every point I have raised here. I don’t care; we’re each responsible before God for what we’ve been given, and this is what God has shown me.

But I reject the idea that I’m “unChristian” because I voted Democrat, just as thoroughly as I would reject any claim that a Republican is unChristian because they have arrived at different conclusions than me. None of us is qualified to judge another’s relationship with God. Let’s consider what the Bible actually says about judging:

Matthew 7:1-5 says “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For the judgment you give will be the judgment you get, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”

James 4:12 says “There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. So who, then, are you to judge your neighbor?”

Romans 2:1-3 says “Therefore you are without excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others, for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things. We know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is in accordance with truth. Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? “

Lest anyone quote 1 Corinthians 2:15 at me, “Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny” it would be hypocritical to assert that this gives any of us permission to assess another’s spirituality. This verse says the opposite: we are qualified to discern all things, but we cannot apply that discernment to anyone else.

And lest anyone quote John 7:24 at me, “judge with right judgement,” please stop taking it out of context.

So let’s stop with the judgementalism, please.

I hope you’ll find this useful – if for no other reason than to understand ME. But perhaps it will also help you understand others in your life who vote in a way you cannot reconcile with your own views.

Thanks for spending a few minutes with me. Be blessed. We’ll talk again soon.