Politics is important, but it’s not the first thing. What we call politics isn’t even the first political thing. The churches’ prayers, preaching, song, communion, charity, and discipline shape our national life far more deeply than any executive order or “Big Beautiful Bill.” For Christians, the most sacred political act isn’t voting but worship. Every Sunday, we exalt and petition the King who rules nations and summons all legislators, judges, and presidents to bow to him. Christians always stand slightly askew from the power plays of worldly politics. Even Christians who serve as political leaders should dare to be Daniel and rule to serve God’s kingdom, not, ultimately, their nation, party, or boss. As members of the holy nations of the church, Christians should have critical distance to assess politicians and political action with clarity. We aren’t beholden to a party or dominating personality. We cheer when rulers obey and enforce God’s justice; we protest when they don’t. Call balls and strikes, as they say.
Yes, of course, I’m talking about Trump 2.0. Christians shouldn’t fall prey to either a Trump Messiah Complex or a Trump Derangement Syndrome. We don’t have to tweet “This is what I voted for” every time Trump brandishes an executive order. Balls and strikes.
I’ll start. Those suffering from TDS aren’t crazy. Trump’s ubiquity isn’t healthy in a constitutional republic. Beltway drama shouldn’t dominate daily life. Some supporters blindly approve whatever Trump does, and even the very accomplished people in the cabinet are weirdly obsequious. Trump is erratic. Tariffs are on, tariffs are off. Crack down on immigrants, but not farm laborers or servers in the hospitality industry. Neutralize China, but admit 600,000 Chinese students. Trump spent his business career on the edges of the law, testing limits to see what he could get away with. Now he does the same from the Oval Office.
Trump is altering the balance of federal power. He rules by executive order, while Congress mostly looks on timidly from the sidelines. He promiscuously declares emergencies, and MAGA media dutifully stokes fear and anger. The U.S. now has a large stake in Intel, placing a gigantic thumb on the tech industry scales, a thumb the administration calls “capitalism.” Trump threatens to federalize policing in various (Democratic) cities. Clean up our cities, by all means, but Christians who believe every human bears God’s image have to ask where the homeless and drug addicts get sent after they’re removed. Trump has been the victim of vicious lawfare and government abuse for at least a decade. Back in power, he deploys the Justice Department to settle political scores. Trump is a wrecking ball. There’s a lot of rot that needs wrecking, but wrecking balls can leave behind a lot of collateral damage. Liberals are fair to charge MAGA conservatives with hypocrisy: If Biden proposed what Trump does on a daily basis, he’d be denounced as a socialist or worse.
Trump’s cabinet prominently includes a number of serious Christians. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sponsors Protestant worship services at the Pentagon, and Vice President Vance and Secretary Rubio frequently articulate their views in terms borrowed from Catholic Social Teaching. I support the MAHA agenda and suspect Secretary Kennedy has only scratched the surface of the horror show of medical research. DOGE turned off the spigot that funded global progressive activism. After years of increasingly freakish rulers, it’s bracing for Christians to be ruled by people who think and talk like us. Trump himself immediately and firmly addressed transgender insanity; he’s a major factor in the anti-woke vibe shift you’ve heard so much about. Otherwise, Trump doesn’t have much interest in the moral issues that animate many evangelical activists. He deserves praise for his role in setting up the Supreme Court that overturned Roe, but now seems to want the abortion issue to go away and supports IVF, an anti-life technology. With an administration with as many gays as Biden’s (though not as flamboyant), Trump won’t overturn the disastrous Obergefell decision.
Trump has taken a sound position on Ukraine. Ukraine’s best hope is to end the war, even at the cost of ceding territory. Trump has used tariffs and tariff threats to force negotiation on trade arrangements, which has borne some fruit. But tariffs are taxes, ultimately paid by the importer, not the exporter. Some suggest tariffs are part of a complex plan to weaken the dollar, lower the cost of the national debt, and rebalance the global economy. Perhaps, but I’m not convinced tariffs are good for the American economy. Trump’s foreign policies may hasten the relative decline of the West and the formation of a multipolar world.
U.S. immigration policy has been a mess for a long time, and immigration enforcement more so. Trump has brought a dose of sanity simply by enforcing the laws on the books. Migrant criminals should be arrested and tried or deported, and the federal government should control the pace of immigration and determine who’s allowed to enter, so we don’t get overwhelmed by strangers. But the vast majority of immigrants aren’t the “worst of the worst.” Besides, Scripture repeatedly exhorts believers to love and defend the rights of strangers, remembering our fathers were strangers in Egypt. I worry about the long-term effects of giving ICE a military-sized budget to function as a federal police force.
Nearly everything I’ve written is debatable, but that’s just the point. Some political issues are not debatable for Christians: abortion, gay marriage, transgender ideology, protection of the innocent, and just punishment of criminals. Scripture and Christian theology speak in one way or another to every political question, because every act of political judgment expresses a view of God, man, and the good of society. On a host of specific issues, though, Christians can disagree in good faith.
Trump has had a galvanizing and divisive impact on the American churches. To a significant degree, that’s been good for the church, as hidden loyalties have been exposed and sifted. Some Christians are so anti-Trump that in the last election they threw their support behind the candidate and party that stood for abortion, transgender ideology, and free access to porn. But it would be tragic if support for Trump became a test of orthodoxy or heresy. Devoted to genuine first things, the church should be a place where disagreements about second things can be hashed out charitably.
