Former President Trump conceded last week that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion, was likely to blame for the GOP’s lackluster performance in the 2022 elections when an anticipated ‘red wave’ didn’t come to fruition.4 Simply put, Evangelical and Pro-Life Catholic Christians stayed home on Election Day.
This was easily predictable since attendance, multiple buildings, sprawling campuses, and massive budgets are the contemporary measure for success in America’s churches.
Last year’s constitutional amendment in Ohio reinforces the point. Issue 1: the Right to Make Reproductive Decisions, Including the Abortion Initiative, was on the ballot on November 7, 2023, where 57% of Ohioans approved the amendment to classify abortion as a state constitutional right.
When asked where the pro-life organizations and campaign consultants were, in light of the anemic turnout for life, one could have heard a pin drop. It underlines John F. Kennedy’s observation that victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
Inside the Beltway and across the nation, family policy leaders are particularly proficient in public relations: boosting their reputation, improving their image, increasing their awareness, self-promotion, and raising money. However, winning elections and serving as a thermostat to regulate the moral climate in America turns out to be beyond their capabilities.
In modern culture, Christ’s Light is hidden under the bushel inside the church building [Matthew 5:15]. Having been sequestered there for the last 75 years, the Church exerts little cultural influence. Present-day American Christianity poorly understands how to muster and marshal the troops to the ballot box. Consequently, it leaves secularists unopposed to elect their representatives, to draft and pass legislation, and to codify into law their profane values.
The political ineptness of conservatives is mind-boggling. Wrapping an organization’s logo around a bus and running it across a state the week before an election - when 50% of the vote is already in from early voting - is political ignorance and self-destruction.
The good news on the other hand is that secularists have their problems as well. California, New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan will continue to lose congressional seats over the next decades as people flee self-righteous and heavy-handed leftism. Each of these states lost one congressional seat in the 2020 census.
California lost a congressional seat for the first time in its 171-year history. Had the 2020 census occurred not right before but after the despotic COVID edicts of Governor Gavin ‘Newsomlini’, the Golden State would have likely lost two more congressional seats. Unless, of course, California can figure out how to include foreign visitors and assorted aliens in the CA census count.
The difference between the early American Founders’ approach and contemporary American Christendom in regulating the moral temperature of culture is as different as darkness is from light. One ends in talk, while the other is expressed in deeds. One breaks down when put to the test, while the other survives every trial it is exposed to. One is inoperative and ineffectual, while the other is active and powerful.5
In speaking to those whom Jehovah is raising in the first quarter of the 21st century, we like you to remember that, as you hone your skills and walk in His stride, “Joseph didn’t have to tell Potiphar that the Lord was with him; Potiphar could see it for himself.”6
While God generally doesn’t announce His appointments in advance, it is still clear that Gideons and Rahabs meanwhile are beginning to stand. You may want to join them.
