Dear Ray,
I want to say plainly what is on my heart.
Zoe is not of this world.
The life God has given us in Christ does not arise from a nation, a political philosophy, a party, or a movement. It carries no platform. It has no candidate. It does not seek its fulfillment through the victory of one portion of the old creation over another.
Zoe is the uncreated life of God.
And I believe any political allegiance we bring into our identity in Christ is a shame. We have received another life, yet we return to the world’s divisions to discover who we are, whom we belong with, and what we should hope for.
We possess Christ and look elsewhere for a cause.
That is the wound beneath my concern.
I am not asking Christians to become more moderate in their politics. I am questioning the allegiance itself. I am questioning our assumption that the divine life can be enlisted in the purposes of a political movement without being misrepresented.
Zoe does not advocate for a party.
Christ does not need a political affiliation to complete His identity in us.
When we mix politics with Zoe, we introduce another source, another hope, and another basis of belonging. We give the ambitions of the old creation a spiritual name and ask the saints to receive them as an expression of God.
I call that mixture antichrist in its operation.
It opposes Christ’s exclusive place while claiming to represent Him. It substitutes political judgment for dependence upon His life. It invites us to recognize a party’s advance as His advance and its defeat as His loss.
There is a dark evil in that substitution.
Its darkness lies in the deception: it persuades people that defending an earthly allegiance is faithfulness to the living Christ.
A flag can be plainly a flag. A party can be plainly a party. But when we wrap either in the name of Jesus, we claim divine authority for something born from an entirely different source.
The vocabulary becomes Christian. The life supplying it remains political.
We must face that.
A government cannot impart Zoe. A law cannot regenerate a human spirit. An election cannot bring the one new man into existence. Political success cannot add anything to the Christ we have received.
Why, then, do we speak as though His purpose were waiting upon the right people obtaining power?
What has happened to our confidence in Him?
Look at what has happened over the last thirty years, Ray.
An alliance whose roots reach further back has become deeply embedded in American Christian identity. In substantial parts of American evangelicalism, the Republican Party has come to function as the presumed Christian party. Political belonging and spiritual faithfulness have been drawn together until many people scarcely recognize the distinction.
Pew’s 2024 analysis found that 85 percent of White evangelical registered voters identified with or leaned toward the Republican Party. That does not describe all Christians, and party affiliation alone cannot reveal someone’s inward life. But it shows how concentrated this identification has become. (pewresearch.org)
My concern is what happens when political identification acquires spiritual authority.
The movement’s concerns become the church’s concerns. Its opponents become the people believers are taught to fear. Its victories are celebrated as evidence that God is advancing.
We begin with Christ as our life and end with a party as our practical hope.
Even respected ministers have participated in this confusion. Franklin Graham, for example, spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention, bringing his public standing as an evangelist onto an explicitly partisan platform. (pbs.org) I regard that joining of ministerial authority and party advocacy as a serious spiritual error.
A respected name does not make the mixture divine.
Years of preaching do not give anyone authority to attach Christ’s name to a political cause. A minister may have helped thousands and still mislead them at precisely this point. Gratitude for what we have received through him cannot require silence about what he is now encouraging.
The greater the trust, the greater the responsibility.
When people have learned to receive a man’s words as spiritual nourishment, his political advocacy carries more than the weight of a private opinion. It can become an instruction they believe faithfulness requires them to follow.
That is where the damage deepens.
A believer who questions the party may find his devotion questioned. A brother who will not endorse the candidate may be regarded with suspicion. Political agreement begins functioning as evidence of spiritual understanding.
What authority have we given the party?
Who permitted it to examine the members of Christ?
Paul tells us that Christ is our life. He does not offer Christ as a religious contribution to an identity already established by our nation and party. Our life has its source in Him.
The one new man has no need of a political supplement.
Yet we enter fellowship carrying our affiliations. Before long, the brother before us is being examined through another lens. Does he vote as I do? Does he understand the danger as I understand it? Does he support the people I believe must prevail?
We may still call him brother.
But something else has begun deciding how fully we receive him.
The party has entered the room.
Where Christ should be everything, political agreement has acquired value. Where the divine birth should establish our belonging, an opinion about government has become a test of trust.
This is a shame upon our testimony.
We declare that the cross has ended the old distinctions as grounds of division, then rebuild them through political identification. We speak of one body while allowing rival movements to organize our affections.
And we imagine that adding prayer makes the mixture holy.
But prayer can be filled with the same independent life that supplies an argument. We can ask God to secure what we have already chosen, defeat those we already resent, and preserve the position we are afraid to lose.
We have not yielded our allegiance. We have asked Him to serve it.
The Republican Party is not the body of Christ. It cannot possess Zoe, supply resurrection life, or become the instrument through which a person is born of God. Neither can the Democratic Party or any other political organization.
Replacing one affiliation with another leaves the underlying confusion untouched.
My appeal is that we stop the mixing of politics with that which is divine.
Stop presenting political preference as spiritual discernment. Stop asking the saints to receive a candidate as the answer to their fears. Stop treating the fortunes of an earthly party as though they disclosed the fortunes of God’s eternal purpose.
Christ has not entrusted His future to an election.
Those who teach this mixture should stop.
Stop placing the name of Jesus upon ambitions He has not authorized you to identify with His life. Stop making the saints’ fears useful to a political cause. Stop suggesting that the body of Christ needs an earthly champion to secure its future.
You may gain influence. You may assemble a powerful coalition. You may persuade people that they are defending Christianity.
But none of these accomplishments demonstrates that Christ is supplying the living.
The old creation can become intensely devoted to its own preservation. It can learn religious language. It can speak about righteousness while protecting its appetite for power.
The cross must reach that appetite too.
And I must bring this word to myself.
I can condemn another person’s politics while secretly enjoying my own certainty. I can expose a movement’s dishonesty while protecting the anger through which I oppose it. I can make my rejection of politics another identity from which to feel superior.
That, too, must come under the cross.
My argument is no exemption from the need to abide.
If Zoe is the issue, then even these words must come from dependence upon Christ. Otherwise, I have merely constructed another position and demanded that others occupy it with me.
I do not want to gather people around my indignation. I want us released from every allegiance that competes with the life already ours in Him.
This does not make the mixture less serious. It makes my responsibility more searching.
I cannot condemn someone else for substituting politics for Christ while substituting my opposition to politics for Christ.
He must remain the source.
The church cannot adopt a candidate as its hope. It cannot make political affiliation an expression of its identity. It cannot assign spiritual virtue to one party and then ask the saints to rally around it.
He is alive.
His life is within His people.
Our calling is to abide in Him and allow that life unrestricted expression.
This does not make us indifferent to suffering. The hungry person still needs food. The person treated unjustly still needs someone willing to stand beside them. Our neighbors’ needs remain before us.
But none of this requires a party to become our belonging.
We can care without recruiting. We can tell the truth without protecting a political camp. We can recognize wrongdoing without asking whether acknowledging it will help our side.
Love does not need partisan permission.
The suffering of a stranger must not become less significant because a political movement has taught us to regard that person with suspicion. Truth must not become expendable because admitting it would embarrass people we support.
If allegiance requires these compromises, its source has been exposed.
Nor does the person who holds a political allegiance become someone we may despise. My condemnation concerns the mixture. To hate the person would reproduce the very division I am grieving.
I want that person free.
I want myself free.
Free from needing the world’s victories to reassure us that Christ is sufficient. Free from the fear that His purpose will collapse unless our preferred rulers prevail. Free to receive one another through the life we actually share.
The darkness of this mixture is that it makes another allegiance appear holy. It teaches us to defend the substitution while believing we are defending Him.
That is why I call it antichrist in its operation: something else occupies His place and borrows His name.
Zoe belongs to another order.
It does not become more effective when joined to political power. It does not need our affiliations, our national pride, or our calculations about which earthly cause deserves His name.
Let the mixture end.
Let the respected minister surrender it. Let the congregation surrender it. Let me surrender every trace of it in myself.
Let every political allegiance we have carried into our life in Christ be brought under the cross without exception.
Zoe needs no party.
Christ must have His people wholly.
And let us ask a question deeper than who should govern our country:
Who is supplying our living?
Are we abiding in Christ—or asking Him to sanctify an allegiance that has already taken His place?
