For over four decades, American evangelicals have embraced the special-interest paradigm of political engagement—arguing, in effect, that the interests of Christians should take priority over conflicting claims of other interest groups.

This has been a terrible mistake.

If there is objective moral truth then there is objective truth about what people deserve and what we owe to each other—which is to say, justice.

Objective moral truth entails objective truth about justice. It’s as simple as that.

And if there is objective truth about justice, then our efforts in the political sphere should conform to that truth—which is to say, achieving justice should be our only political objective.

Any other goal would be immoral.

So when we claim to believe in objective moral truth and yet we take a special-interest approach to politics, our actions contradict what we claim to believe. We have no integrity.

That’s how we arrive at a place where many Christians claim to be pro-life, while celebrating the license to engage in conduct that will absolutely, without any doubt, lead to thousands and perhaps even tens-of-thousands of avoidable human deaths.

And that’s how evangelicals have led our nation into the political abyss: instead of pointing our countrymen toward justice, they’ve spent the last 40 years whining about their rights as Christians.

The reason that our nation is disintegrating before our eyes is that we, as a society, lack a shared conception of justice—a common understanding of what people deserve and what we owe to each other.

So although Americans share a patch of earth, we do not share a horizon: we've degenerated into a collection of special interest groups whose highest political aspiration is to secure benefits for ourselves and those like us.

But Christianity isn't a special interest group at all, except insofar as Christians are commanded to identify our interests with the pursuit of justice.

What will save our republic is a political reformation that calls our attention to the truth about justice—a reformation that the Church is uniquely positioned to lead, if only Christians would stop behaving like a special interest group in the public sphere.