The Left may be on the rise, but the Democratic Party has a Christianity problem. In taking home a landslide midterm victory on Tuesday, the Democrats elected five ministers and a seminarian. The problem: I’m not exactly sure I’d use the term “Christian” to describe them.
Sens.-elect James Talarico (D-TX) and Adam Hamilton (D-KS) and Rep.-elect Lindsay James (D-IA) are the most egregious examples, as they reject the core Christian doctrine that Jesus Christ is the only way to eternal life. This is such a central tenet of Christianity that I could not in good faith refer to them as my “brothers/sister in Christ.”
Talarico has said that all religions have the “same truth” and claims salvation is earned by feeding the hungry, helping the sick, welcoming strangers, and visiting prisoners. Hamilton has said that those who did not place their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ during their life will still go to heaven. James belongs to a denomination whose doctrinal statement says it doesn’t “restrict the grace of God to those who profess explicit faith in Christ.”
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The Bible, however, says that anyone preaching a false gospel like the ones mentioned above is “accursed” — or on their way to hell, in other words (Galatians 1:8-9). There is only one gospel by which a sinner can receive salvation, according to the very Bible which these professing Christians claim to preach.
The word “gospel” means “good news.” And paired with good news, as often is the case, is bad news. The bad news is that every one of us is a sinner (Romans 3:23), and our sin earns us an eternity in hell (Romans 6:23) that we cannot earn our way out of (Galatians 2:21). But the good news is that Jesus Christ, who is God in the flesh, came down from heaven to die on the cross and shed his blood to pay for our sins (Romans 3:25), was buried, and rose from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). Because God sees our righteousness “as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6),” we must receive Jesus’s righteousness to be saved. To do so, you must put your trust in his blood atonement and ask him to save you from your sins (Romans 10:9-10).
This isn’t some complicated or hidden idea. It’s literally the very foundation of Christianity. One does not become a Christian until they have received the above gospel. So how is it possible that two ministers and a seminarian don’t know this? Hamilton has the answer.
Less than 60 seconds before saying in a sermon that non-Christians go to heaven despite rejecting the gospel, Hamilton said that God “didn’t give us a book.” Mind you, he was standing right in front of an open Bible! One can only assume it was for decoration, because if he had ever opened it, he would have read that not only did God give us a book, but also that Psalm 138:2 says God has “magnified thy word above all thy name.” And Isaiah 34:16 says, “Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read.”
So that explains a lot. It also explains how James, as well as Reps.-elect LaKesha Womack (D-NC) and Sarah Trone Garriott (D-IA) decided to become ministers despite the Bible’s explicit prohibition on female ministers in 1 Timothy 2:11-14, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, 1 Timothy 3:1-12, and Titus 1:5-6. The latter congresswoman-elect has also defended and facilitated non-Christian public prayers (including Wiccan/pagan and Muslim) in the Iowa Capitol/Senate and officiated a wedding for a couple who literally identified as Satanists — because of course she did.
The sixth and final current-or-future clergy member heading to Capitol Hill for the Democrats is Rep.-elect Frederick Haynes III (D-TX), and he’s in a woke category of his own. While other Democrats like Talarico are woke in the sense that they apologize for being white, claim “God is non-binary,” and obsess over “trans children,” Haynes is a militant black nationalist who gushes over former Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as “a wonderful and great man.”
Farrakhan notoriously said “Hitler was a very great man,” blamed “bloodsucking” Jews for the Holocaust and 9/11, referred to Jews as “termites,” chanted “death to Israel,” said that “white people are potential humans [who] haven’t evolved yet,” and engaged in so much more vile rhetoric you could fill multiple volumes. And in pure Farrakhan fashion, on the Sunday after Charlie Kirk was killed, Haynes took to the pulpit to push the idea that Kirk was “not assassinated” and that his death shouldn’t be described in the same manner as black civil rights leaders who suffered the same fate. He also lambasted the “white Christian” as a “hate-filled” racist and white supremacist. And the very day after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack in which over 1,000 Jews were murdered, tortured, maimed, raped, and kidnapped, Haynes spent his sermon slandering the victims as members of an apartheid state. Not to mention, he rallied behind convicted murderer Karmelo Anthony, whom he referred to as “our friend,” after he stabbed a 17-year-old white child to death.
So this is the current state of so-called “Christianity” in the Democratic Party. But is the Republican Party faring much better?
While there do appear to be some Bible-believing members of the GOP, the kind of Christianity being promoted by right-wing figures is shallow at best and apostate at worst. President Donald Trump, for example, has said that he’s trying to get into heaven by negotiating peace deals on Earth. If I could show the president one verse, it would be this: “Every man at his best state is altogether vanity” (Psalm 39:5). No matter who you are, two things are true: every man will die someday, and every man will be judged (Hebrews 9:27). Your very best is not good enough to overcome your sins — only the blood of Christ, which must be received by faith, can wash them away.
So apart from the wokeness, Trump is just as bad as the Democrats on this matter. But it gets worse, because the people in Trump’s orbit, such as charismatic female pastor Paula White, are making the president out to be a messianic figure with a divine decree from God to impose his agenda on the country. War Secretary Pete Hegseth even portrayed Trump as Jesus in an analogy comparing the president’s critics to Pharisees.
We’re also seeing “Christian” celebrities flock to the Right; the Turning Point USA types. One must look no further than Kid Rock, who just released a new so-called “Christian” album last month. This is what he has to say about his faith: “I didn’t get saved. I’m still Kid Rock. I’ll drink a beer, smoke a cigar … I feel like I’ve always been right with God.”
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The Bible says that if you’re not saved, you are not right with God. Rather, “the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). And the idea that drinking a beer or smoking a cigar, which admittedly no Christian should do, precludes you from salvation is completely unbiblical. Even after you receive the gospel, you will never achieve sinless perfection while “in the body of this death” (Romans 7:24). The big takeaway: Many of these professing Christians on the Right are just as lost as the professing Christians on the Left. MAGA Christianity, as it appears, is not substantially different from the Left’s version of Christianity, apart from the wokeness.
Left-wing “Christianity” is “peace, love, inclusion” — right-wing “Christianity” is “freedom, guns, ‘merica.” But Jesus Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Political figures on both sides say they believe this, but their own words and actions betray them.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
