Read on Twitter
"We’re going to be learning a great deal about ourselves as evangelical Christians in America. Perhaps we had better brace ourselves for what we’re going to learn."
--Mohler in a 2016 post on the importance of maintaining moral consistency on the issue of presidential character https://twitter.com/albertmohler/status/1322706504131186689
--Mohler in a 2016 post on the importance of maintaining moral consistency on the issue of presidential character https://twitter.com/albertmohler/status/1322706504131186689
Mohler's endorsement article replaces the 2016 distinction he made betw. character & policy w/ this:
"We are tempted to separate personal character and political policies as if they can be cleanly divided, but character is policy and policy is character." https://albertmohler.com/2020/10/26/christians-conscience-and-the-looming-2020-election
"We are tempted to separate personal character and political policies as if they can be cleanly divided, but character is policy and policy is character." https://albertmohler.com/2020/10/26/christians-conscience-and-the-looming-2020-election
He describes voting for Joe Biden as "beyond my moral imagination" but then faces the uncomfortable prospect that an overwhelming majority of Black Christians will vote just that way. Mohler cites "long historical reasons" for why that is the case (& for white evangelicals, too).
What is left unaddressed is whether Mohler consider the possibility that it is also the "moral imagination" of Black Christians that shapes their perspective on the election and not just "historical reasons." (Not that those are mutually exclusive!) What would those concerns be?
From 2018: “The election itself was the single most harmful event to the whole movement of reconciliation in at least the past 30 years. It's about to completely break apart." -Michael Emerson
Q: How does that enter Mohler's rendering of moral imagination? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/us/blacks-evangelical-churches.html
Q: How does that enter Mohler's rendering of moral imagination? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/us/blacks-evangelical-churches.html
It is difficult to escape three conclusions: 1) Many white evangelical leaders accept the terms & conditions of the culture war as the preeminent mode of public engagement, this limiting and prioritizing the scope of issues they concern themselves with.
2) This also limits the scope of moral imagination and political vision by prioritizing cultural power and political access/influence over principled consistency and public witness even at the cost of that power. Exile is seemingly an untenable option.
3) There are casualties to accepting the culture war framework & becoming the interest group of one party. For example, on race, American evangelical churches often look more like the culture--just as in previous historical eras--than something more prophetic or countercultural.
Mohler is the author of the book The Gathering Storm, a book about the the threat of secularism to church and society. Perhaps the storm is already within, as the transactional pragmatism at the heart of this political exchange is itself a form of (secular) cultural conditioning.
P.S. Walker Percy's 1965 essay "The Failure and the Hope" makes for sobering reading on the damage to public witness if Black concerns/dignity are not a priority in the moral imagination of white Christians. "The fruits, by which they had every right to know us, were too meager."
P.S.S. It's worth considering counter-perspectives from white evangelical voices like @DavidAFrench. Here he is on:
1) The relation betw. a presidential vote & issues like abortion is less than we think: https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/do-pro-lifers-who-reject-trump-have
2) "Character is Destiny" https://twitter.com/DavidAFrench/status/1321470372605288448?s=20
1) The relation betw. a presidential vote & issues like abortion is less than we think: https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/do-pro-lifers-who-reject-trump-have
2) "Character is Destiny" https://twitter.com/DavidAFrench/status/1321470372605288448?s=20
