¶ 1. Getting a clear issue
If
all Christians consented to bear arms at the command of the magistrate, and if
all, after that, refused to obey anti-Christian orders, should we not get a
clear issue? A man is much more certain that he ought not to murder prisoners
or bomb civilians than he ever can be about the justice of a war. It is perhaps
here that “conscientious objection” ought to begin. I feel certain that one
Christian airman shot for refusing to bomb enemy civilians would be a more
effective martyr (in the etymological sense of the word) than a hundred
Christians in jail for refusing to join the army.
–– Letter to the editor, Theology, May 1939
Collected Letters, vol. II,
p. 251-2; also in God in the Dock (1970), p. 325
> The letter was published under the heading
“The Conditions for a Just War” four months before the beginning of World War
II. As the first item in this chronological sequence, this extract provides a
useful warning that the political significance of C. S. Lewis for today often
needs to be distilled and distinguished from the issues of his day. For present
purposes his point is probably best taken if questions about the ethics of
international armed conflict are put on hold; what remains is a point about “effective
martyrdom”. The etymological sense of “martyr” is a person who gives testimony of his or her
faith by undergoing torture and death rather than renouncing it. Being
“effective” is not making this or that particular sensation, but making sure
that what results is “a clear issue”.
¶ 2. Ends
and means, doves and serpents
The danger of
mistaking our merely natural, though perhaps legitimate, enthusiasms for holy
zeal, is always great. … On those who add “Thus said the Lord” to their merely
human utterances descends the doom of a conscience which seems clearer and
clearer the more it is loaded with sin.
All this comes from pretending that God
has spoken when He has not spoken. He will not settle the two brothers’
inheritance: “Who made Me a judge or a divider over you?” By the natural light
He has shown us what means are lawful: to find out which one is efficacious He
has given us brains. The rest He has left to us.
… Non-conformity1 has influenced modern English history not because there
was a Party but because there was a Nonconformist conscience which all parties
had to take into account. An interdenominational Christian Voters’ Society
might draw up a list of assurances about ends and means which every member was
expected to exact from any political party as the price of his support. Such a
society might claim to represent Christendom far more truly than any “Christian
Front”; and for that reason I should be prepared, in principle, for membership
and obedience to be obligatory on Christians. “So all it comes down to is
pestering M.P.’s2 with letters?”
Yes: just that. I think such pestering combines the dove and the serpent. I
think it means a world where parties have to take care not to alienate
Christians, instead of a world where Christians have to be “loyal” to infidel
parties. … But I had forgotten. … He who converts his neighbour has performed
the most practical Christian-political act of all.
––
“Meditation on the Third Commandment”, 1941
God in the
Dock (1971), pp. 198-199
> When Lewis
wrote that God has shown us by the natural light “what means are lawful”, he
was referring to traditional morality – the Tao, as he once called it.
Many Trump-voting Christians deplore Trump’s moral character but still think he
can and must be used as a means to a set of non-negotiable Christian ends, such
as de-legalizing abortion and safeguarding Christian education. Is Trump a
traditionally “lawful” means to these ends? The Tao includes a ban on
lying. Trump appears to have no regard for distinctions between truth and
falsehood except for purposes of propaganda; he is a serial liar.
This is relevant for comparisons made between Trump’s sins and those of the
Biblical hero King David. Should a Nathan-like prophet arise, president Trump’s
response is sure to be the opposite of King David’s. Equating Donald with David
is therefore to pull the sting from one of the Old Testament’s most powerful
stories. Safeguarding Christian education under the protection of a serial liar
whose one approach to critics is head-on scorn and insult is likely to pervert
such education: Trump would not tolerate the breeding of any Nathans, and
presidential lying would continue unchecked. Also, since promises are an
important department of truth, and Trump is often considered to be keeping his
election promises, it is to be noted that his single most solemn and important
promise – to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United
States – is one which to all appearances he has made without knowing what
it means. As could be predicted in 2016, he now questions the validity of
upcoming elections in case he will lose them. Granting this president four more
years, in exchange for whichever gain, is to bargain away one’s bargaining
power. Christian attempts to use Trump
as a means toward their own ends suggest that the “dove” and the “serpent” have
both been laid to rest: adopting this means is neither moral nor shrewd.
¶ 3. What’s worse
… Persecution is a temptation to
which all men are exposed. I had a postcard signed “M.D.” saying that anyone
who expressed and published his belief in the Virgin Birth should be stripped
and flogged. That shows you how easily persecution of Christians by the
non-Christians might come back. Of course, they wouldn’t call it Persecution:
they’d call it “Compulsory re-education of the ideologically unfit”, or
something like that. But, of course, I have to admit that Christians themselves
have been persecutors in the past. It was worse of them, because they
ought to have known better: they weren’t worse in any other way. I detest every
kind of religious compulsion: only the other day I was writing an angry letter
to The Spectator about Church Parades in the Home Guard!
— “Answers to Questions on Christianity”, 1944
God in the
Dock (1970), p. 61
> Although
Lewis died in 1963, several passages in his work may be found to give eloquent
support for this or that part of the political agenda of Trump-voting
Christians today. However, using such extracts will often be awkward since
Lewis rarely fails to add some profoundly anti-Trumpian note of
self-accusation.
¶
4. Getting further
… the New
Testament, without going into details, gives us a pretty clear hint of what a
fully Christian society would be like. … If there were such a society in
existence and you or I visited it, I think we should come away with a curious
impression. We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic and, in
that sense, “advanced,” but that its family life and its code of manners were
rather old fashioned – perhaps even ceremonious and aristocratic. Each of us
would like some bits of it, but I am afraid very few of us would like the whole
thing. That is just what one would expect if Christianity is the total plan for
the human machine. We have all departed from that total plan in different ways,
and each of us wants to make out that his own modification of the original plan
is the plan itself. You will find this again and again about anything that is
really Christian: every one is attracted by bits of it and wants to pick out
those bits and leave the rest. That is why we do not get much further: and that
is why people who are fighting for quite opposite things can both say they are
fighting for Christianity.
— Christian
Behaviour, 1943, chapter 2
Mere Christianity (1952), III.3,
“Social Morality”, pp. 66-67
> Christian
statements of support for Trump, if they go into some detail, naturally tend to
include additional considerations which have no specifically Christian grounds;
some might on a closer look go against Christian teaching. The point to take
is, not that Christians should try to reach agreement on every single issue,
but that these additional issues need to be distinguished from the
non-negotiables. In suggesting “we do not get much further” he may mean
Christians fail to get a “clear issue”.
¶ 5. Errors in pairs
I feel a strong
desire to tell you – and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me – which
of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always
sends errors into the world in pairs – pairs of opposites. And he always
encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why,
of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you
gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep
our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no
other concern than that with either of them.
— Beyond Personality, 1944, chapter 6
Mere Christianity (1952), IV.6,
“Two Notes”, p. 147
> The errors
in question need not be cited here, since Lewis certainly wished this advice to
be interpreted as broadly as possible. Abhorring one of two presidential
candidates may make the other seem less horrible even if he is, on balance,
just as bad.
¶ 6. Retracing our steps
… since we
have learned sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that “all power corrupts,
and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. The only remedy has been to take away
the powers and substitute a legal fiction of equality. …
Equality is for me in the same position as
clothes. It is a result of the Fall and the remedy for it. Any attempt to
retrace the steps by which we have arrived at egalitarianism and to
re-introduce the old authorities on the political level is for me as foolish as
it would be to take off our clothes. … [T]his egalitarian fiction … is our only
defence against one another’s cruelty. I should view with the strongest
disapproval any proposal to abolish manhood suffrage, or the Married Women’s
Property Act. But the function of equality is purely protective. It is
medicine, not food.
— “Membership”, 1945
The Weight of Glory (1980, 2001),
pp. 168-170
> Lewis is
talking of our having “found” a truth, of “retracing steps”, and of “old
authorities” which he would hate to see re-instated. It seems to evince, in
effect, a good deal of standard modern belief in human progress, though not on
modern grounds. Perhaps, if pressed, he would have pointed out that supporting
democracy and the rule of law is a matter of using our God-given “brains” so as
to find among the lawful “means” those which are efficacious.
¶ 7. Christianity on the map
…The “decline of religion” so often
lamented (or welcomed) is held to be shown by empty chapels.3
Now it is quite true that chapels which were full in 1900 are empty in 1946.
But this change was not gradual. It occurred at the precise moment when chapel
ceased to be compulsory. … The new freedom first allowed accurate observations
to be made. When no man goes to church except because he seeks Christ the
number of actual believers can at last be discovered. … The decline of
“religion”, thus understood, seems to me in some ways a blessing. At the very
worst it makes the issue clear. … The decline of “religion” is no doubt a bad
thing for the “World”. … But I am not clear that it makes conversions to
Christianity rare or more difficult: rather the reverse. It makes the choice
more unescapable. …
So
much for the Decline of Religion; now for a Christian Revival … [P]erhaps no
one would deny that Christianity is now “on the map” among the younger intelligentsia
as it was not, say, in 1920. … But remember, in England the opposition will
quite likely be called Christianity (or Christo-democracy, or
British Christianity, or something of that kind).
I
think – but how should I know? – that all is going reasonably well. But it is
early days. Neither our armour nor our enemies’ is yet engaged. Combatants
always tend to imagine that the war is further on than it really is.
— “The
Decline of Religion”, 1946
God in the
Dock (1970), pp. 218-223
> For the
currently relevant point to emerge, Lewis’s essay is perhaps best read as a
whole. Talking of the prospects for Christianity in Britain, and while using
militant language, he never alludes to any political way in which he
thinks the post-war Christian revival in Great Britain could or should or does
proceed. The one exception is a short and rather slighting remark in
parentheses at the tail end of his essay, and it seems to imply a warning
rather than a recommendation. To go by Lewis, the chances of Christianity
finding a suitable embedding in politics are dim.
¶ 8. Little to fear or hope
A society which
is predominantly Christian will propagate Christianity through its schools; one
which is not, will not. All the ministries of education in the world cannot
alter this law. We have, in the long run, little either to hope or fear from
government.
— “The
Decline of Religion”, 1946
God in the
Dock (1970), pp. 116-117
¶ 9. Reasonable prudence
I am a democrat
because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with
uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power,
the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have
a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron’s cruelty
may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly
knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes
his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment
us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience
and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is
the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will
be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad
sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good
in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a
seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions
by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it
forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more
than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can
only guess the future. To attach to a party programme – whose highest real
claim is to reasonable prudence – the sort of assent which we should reserve
for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication.
— “A Reply to Professor
Haldane”, 1946
On Stories (1982),
pp. 75-76
> For
today’s American purposes, Lewis’s preference for the “robber baron” over the
“inquisitor” could perhaps be construed as a preference for Trump over
progressives. However, for some Christians the decisive reason to vote for
Trump appears to be an expectation that God, at the Last Judgment, will call
them to account if they do not now at any cost prevent non-Christians from
having abortions or same-sex marriages, or fail to side with the state of
Israel. In light of Lewis’s abhorrence of Theocracy, wherever such
considerations are actually decisive for Trump-voting Christians, they would
seem to come perilously near to combining the worst of two worlds rather than
seeking a way to “go straight through
between both errors”.
¶ 10. Never put survival first
… There is “another world”, and that is
where we come from. And that explains why we do not feel at home here. … But
what, then, is Nature, and how do we come to be imprisoned in a system so alien
to us? … Nature, like us but in her different way, is much alienated from her
Creator, though in her, as in us, gleams of the old beauty remain. But they are
there not to be worshipped but to be enjoyed. She has nothing to teach us. It
is our business to live by our own law not by hers: to follow, in private or in
public life, the law of love and temperance even when they seem to be suicidal,
and not the law of competition and grab, even when they seem to be necessary to
our survival. For it is part of our spiritual law never to put survival first:
not even the survival of our species. We must resolutely train ourselves to
feel that the survival of Man on this Earth, much more of our own nation or
culture or class, is not worth having unless it can be had by honourable and
merciful means.
–– “On Living
in an Atomic Age”, 1948
Present
Concerns (1982), pp. 78-79
¶ 11. Knaves who say and fools who
believe
I feel greatly obliged to the Prime Minister,4
and so far as my personal feelings are concerned this honour would be highly
agreeable. There are always however knaves who say, and fools who believe, that
my religious writings are all covert anti-Leftist propaganda, and my appearance
in the Honours List would of course strengthen their hands. It is therefore
better that I should not appear there. I am sure the Prime Minister will
understand my reason, and that my gratitude is and will be none the less
cordial.
–– Letter to
the Prime Minister’s secretary, 4 December 1951
Collected
Letters, vol. III, p. 147
> Lewis’s
religious writings, along with the rest, don’t make it altogether easy to
believe that he would have ever voted for Trump. But whichever hypothesis we
like to entertain, it would be an error to align his supposed choice with any
specifically left-wing or right-wing priorities and sympathies.
¶ 12. Revolution
Revolutions seldom cure the evil
against which they are directed; they always beget a hundred others. Often they
perpetuate the old evil under a new name. We may be sure that, if [in Britain]
a Ku Klux Klan arose, its ranks would soon be chiefly filled by the same sort
of hooligans who provoked it. A Right or Central revolution would be as
hypocritical, filthy and ferocious as any other. My fear is lest we should be
making it more probable.
––
“Delinquents in the Snow”, 1957
God in the
Dock (1970), p. 309
> In a bitterly anti-“progressive”
column in Time and Tide, Lewis was sounding an alarm which, half a
century on, Americans both on the left and the right may heed with profit. As a
conservative in the authentic sense, he opposed Revolution as such. In so far
as Trump’s inauguration as president was a “Right revolution”, it comes close
to what Lewis was fearing along with any “Left” or other revolution and the way
one provokes the other.
¶ 13. The
black man and the red man
We know what our race does to
strangers. Man destroys or enslaves every species he can. Civilized man
murders, enslaves, cheats, and corrupts savage man. Even inanimate nature he
turns into dust bowls and slag-heaps. There are individuals who don’t. But they
are not the sort who are likely to be our pioneers in space. Our ambassador to
new worlds will be the needy and greedy adventurer or the ruthless technical
expert. They will do as their kind has always done. What that will be if they
meet things weaker than themselves, the black man and the red man can tell. If
they meet things stronger, they will be, very properly, destroyed.
–– “Religion
and Rocketry”, 1958
Fern-seed and
Elephants (1975), p. 91-92; also in The World Last Night
(1960)
> Some
passages in Lewis’s writings provide eloquent support for broadly
“conservative” political aims; others would seem no less supportive of
“progressive” ones. If C. S. Lewis is to inspire political discourse today,
wholesale assimilation to any preconceived political agenda is to be avoided if
his true significance for any party is to come out.
¶ 14. Power
and corruption
… I do not like the pretensions of Government
– the grounds on which it demands my obedience – to be pitched too high. I
don’t like the medicine-man’s magical pretensions nor the Bourbon’s Divine
Right. … I believe in God, but I detest
theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a
makeshift; if it adds to its commands “Thus saith the Lord”, it lies, and lies
dangerously.
… In every age
the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward
the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most
potent. They “cash in”. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it
will certainly be science. …
… Have we discovered some new
reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?
— “Is
Progress Possible? Willing Slaves of the Welfare State”, 1958
God in the
Dock (1970), 315-316
> The final question concludes Lewis’s “Willing
Slaves” essay. In spite of changing conditions and shifting objects of hope and
fear, the question appears to be as relevant for Americans as it has ever been
in the history of the United States. If power has not corrupted president
Trump, it is because he was corrupt from the outset. During the 2016 campaign
he departed from custom by refusing to reveal his tax returns, in spite of promises
to do so. Having secured the nomination for a second term, he still hasn’t. If
only for this reason, for Christians to vote for Trump requires a flouting of
the instruction contained in Matthew 10:16 for sheep sent out among wolves – to
be “wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”5
¶ 15. Unprotesting
participation
… I am
inclined to think a Christian would be wise to avoid, where he decently can,
any meeting with people who are bullies, lascivious, cruel, dishonest, spiteful
and so forth.
Not
because we are “too good” for them. In a sense because we are not good enough.
We are not good enough to cope with all the temptations, nor clever enough to
cope with all the problems, which an evening spent in such society produces.
The temptation is to condone, to connive at; by our words, looks and laughter,
to “consent.” …
What
is one to do? For on the one hand, quite certainly, there is a degree of
unprotesting participation in such talk which is very bad. … By implication we
are denying our Master; behaving as if we “knew not the Man”. … Disagreement can, I think, sometimes be
expressed without the appearance of priggery, if it is done argumentatively not
dictatorially … There comes of course a degree of evil against which a protest
will have to be made, however little chance it has of success. There are cheery
agreements in cynicism or brutality which one must contract out of
unambiguously. If it can’t be done without seeming priggish, then priggish we
must seem. … [T]here are circles in which only a man indifferent to all
accuracy will escape being called a pedant, and others where manners are so
coarse, flashy and shameless that a man (whatever his social position) of any
natural good taste will be called a snob.
— Reflections on the Psalms, 1958,
chapter 7, “Connivance”, p. 71-74
> As examples
of evil, Lewis mentions “cynicism or brutality”, but he doesn’t specify the
“degrees” of them which would require protest. He is only reminding his readers
that such degrees exist. However, he mentions “cheery agreement” as a possible
sign of things going wrong. Among Christian and other Trump-voters, perhaps
many keep their distance from the man, pointing out that they are not voting
for him – far from it – but for a set of policies that can be advanced
only by voting for him. The implication must be that they have weighed what
they consider the upside against the downside of such a vote. Quite often,
though, self-deception about the downside appears to be at work among Trump
voters, including Christians among them. Along with the policies, an unprecedented
regime of lies, callousness, divisiveness, self-aggrandizement, incompetence
and routine undermining of the Constitution started the moment Trump was sworn
in as president. After four years, his Christian electoral flank still appears
to be effectively covered by his vice president, Mike Pence. On August 26th
2020, in Baltimore, Pence accepted the candidacy for a second term as Trump’s
vice-president with a speech containing the following passages:
Now we came by very different routes to this
partnership, and some people think we are a little bit different. But, you
know, I have learned a few things watching him, watching him deal with all that
we have been through over the past four years. He does things in his own way,
on his own terms. Not much gets past him. And when he has an opinion, he is
liable to share it. He certainly has kept things interesting, but more
importantly, President Donald Trump has kept his word to the American people. …
… From these hallowed grounds, American patriots
in generations gone by did their part to defend freedom. Now, it is our turn.
So let’s run the race marked out for us. Let’s fix our eyes
on Old Glory and all she represents. Let’s fix our eyes on this land of heroes
and let their courage inspire. And let’s fix our eyes on the author and
perfecter of our faith and our freedom and never forget that where the spirit
of the Lord is, there is freedom. That means freedom always wins.
Religion News Service soon offered an analysis of the way Pence, in the
second fragment, was using words from 2 Corinthians 3:17 and Hebrews 12:1-2. To
compare Donald Trump with King David is to cast Mike Pence as the prophet
Nathan’s perfect opposite. If Pence broadly represents the American Christian
approach to Trump, Lewis’s chapter on Connivance deserves another reading.
¶ 16. The
lesser evil
When the
prevalent morality of a nation comes to differ unduly from that presupposed in its
laws, the laws must sooner or later change and conform to it. And the sooner
they do so the better. For till they do we inevitably have humbug, perjury, and
confusion.
This applies equally whether prevalent
morality is departing from that embodied in the laws for the better or for the
worse. The law must rise to our standards when we improve and sink to them when
we decay. It is a lesser evil that the laws should sink than that all judicial
procedure should become a travesty.
If we ceased to disapprove of murder, we
should, no doubt, be fools and villains. But it would be better to admit the
fact and alter the law accordingly than to go on acquitting of murder those who
had certainly committed it. …
The lesser of the evils now before us is
to abandon all moral censorship. We have either sunk beneath or risen above it.
If we do, there will be reams of filth. But we need not read it. Nor. probably,
will the fashion last for ever.
— “Sex in
Literature”, The Sunday Telegraph, September 30, 1962
Present
Concerns (1982), 105-108
> Lewis was
here talking as one British citizen to others about the Obscene Publications
Act. This law, dating from 1857, had recently been revised but still turned out
to be impracticable and lacking support in “prevalent morality”. He did not
mention his general objections to Theocracy (see extracts #9 and #14, above).
What makes the case relevant for present purposes is Lewis’s remarkable
suggestion that the law should permit murder if the population at large
permits murder. As for abortion, that word is practically absent from Lewis’s
writings. Had he lived now, there is no telling if he would have equated
abortion with murder. In any case, though, it is very likely that he would have
condemned today’s abortion industry as he condemned vivisection in his day, and
he might have drawn similar grim conclusions regarding modern Western
culture. At the same time, he
upheld the separation of Church and State as scrupulously as any secularist,
and would hardly recommend other ways to Christianize a nation than by
increasing the number of Christian citizens. On balance, it seems pretty
certain that he would not have put the political order of a modern democracy
and the rule of law at risk for the chance to impose Christian laws on a
non-Christian majority of the population. Indeed, he would have resisted the
latter attempt anyway.
ANALYSIS
AND PRACTICAL CONCLUSION
As Dyer and Watson suggested in their 2016 study, C. S.
Lewis’s influence on American evangelicals is “politically significant”.
Whichever shapes this significance has been taking in practice, it seems
altogether hard to bring the true political meaning of Lewis’s work for
Americans today into line with a vote for Donald Trump in the upcoming
presidential elections.
This true
meaning, on the basis of the above anthology, might be summarized as an advice
for Christians, in their pursuit of political ends,
–
to choose means in accordance with basic traditional morality and common sense,
combining the dove and the serpent (#2),
–
to avoid strong commitments to whichever corner of the political arena (##4-5,
##11-13),
–
to speak up against blatant evil regardless of consequences (#1, #15),
–
to distrust revolutions of all stripes (#12),
–
to cherish the modern western achievements of democracy and the rule of law
(#6, #9),
–
to take a modest view of what the state can and should do, first and foremost
with regard to religious objectives (#3, #8, #16),
–
to suppress any tendency towards theocracy (#9, #14).
If the above comments and analysis make
sense, it may still be asked if Lewis, had he still been available, would have
advised American Christians to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. There is
no telling whether he would. What seems certain is that he would not have
advised anyone to vote in defiance of his or her own conscience. Whoever
considers Biden worse than Trump should not vote for Biden.
But
then, to go by Lewis, if Biden were actually worse than Trump, the fact must be
faced that the choice is between two very great evils indeed. Regardless of the
evils expected from a Biden administration, Trump’s demeanor not just as a man,
but as president, remains beyond “connivance”. Lewis’s true significance here
appears to consist in his warnings for situations representing “the devil
getting at us” and his exhortation “to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight
through between both errors”.
Democracy
is a precious achievement, but the American two-party system is not. Nor is
there a sacred duty for Christians always to vote. In certain circumstances a
refusal to vote for either candidate might be the best option. A predicament of
this type seems to have actually arrived for those who honestly consider Biden
for president worse than Trump. A massive Christian abstinence from voting in
the 2020 presidential elections is in the short term likely to mean victory for
Biden. If the wisdom of C. S. Lewis is to count for anything, though, a
strongly argued and well-publicized refusal to vote is not to be equated with
an endorsement of the outcome. For one thing, it could in the longer term prove
to be the best conceivable kick-off for a reform of the Republican Party,
supposing such a thing is still possible. But perhaps more importantly, like
the hypothetical Christian’s refusal to murder prisoners or bomb civilians
regardless of the cost of disobedience (#1), a Christian refusal to vote for
either Biden or Trump might offer the only morally sound and sensible hope of
ever attaining “a clear issue” about Christianity in the public square – the
only way to follow “our spiritual law”, part of which is “never to put survival first” (#10).
Impractical
as it may seem, the instruction for sheep sent out among wolves is to be as
shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.
Notes
