When Pastors Speak Up: Challenging Evangelical Loyalty to Trump and Reclaiming Christian Witness

Voxology

Religion & Spirituality, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2016

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What happens when a pastor dares to publicly challenge the evangelical embrace of Donald Trump? Mike Erre and Andy dive deep into the storm of controversy that erupted after Mike posted a viral message criticizing Trump's appeal to fear—sparking major backlash from within the Christian community. This episode explores the hypocrisy of political alignment in the church, the myth of apolitical preaching, and what it means to resist false dichotomies in presidential elections. Through personal reflection, theology, and a slew of social media reactions, Mike and Andy question the church's witness in an era when Christianity is too often equated with a political identity.

This is a highly charged but necessary conversation about pastors, political rhetoric, and the moral cost of public allegiance to power.

Key Takeaways: • Preaching Is Political – Why sermons and public witness can't be divorced from the political implications of professing that "Jesus is Lord." • Christianity and Double Standards – Dissecting how evangelicals selectively dismiss moral failure, depending on political affiliation. • Voting as Worship and Witness – A theology of voting that values conscience, rejects fear-fueled binaries, and embraces non-participation as prophetic resistance. • The "Stick to Preaching" Fallacy – Why speaking out against injustice—even when it's unpopular in evangelical circles—is not abandoning the pulpit, but fulfilling it. • Countering Fear-Based Politics – A call for Christians to resist campaigns that manipulate fear, scarcity, and tribalism in exchange for power.

Notable Quotes: • "You would think that following a rabbi who conquered death would make us the least afraid people on the planet." • "Our witness to the world is compromised when character matters for one party, but not the other." • "A vote is not just about outcome—it's about identity, integrity, and discipleship."

Resources Mentioned: • Voxology's Jesus and Politics Series – VoxologyPodcast.com • Wayne Grudem's Politically Controversial Article – [Link TBD] • Pew Research on Evangelicals and 2016 Election – pewresearch.org

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Music by Timothy John Stafford | Instagram & Twitter: @GoneTimothy

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Music in this episode by Timothy John Stafford

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Transcript

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0:00.0	All right, hello everybody.
0:04.0	Mike and Andy here. So glad that you're with us. And Andy and I spent a week together at Forest Home Family Camp with our families. And Andy was kind of exalting in his rock star status up there. It was very, very annoying.
0:39.3	Yeah, among the, among Christians. So all the non-Christians out there are like
0:43.6	Forest Home family camp. Yeah, it was, it's, it's beautiful. It's in the mountains and your kids do
0:49.0	stuff and there's some free babysitting and our family's been doing it like 13 years. But it was, it was fun.
0:57.4	But before I left, Andy, I caused a small, like a tiny, tiny kerfuffle.
1:07.7	A ripple in the social sphere.
1:09.6	A bit of a controversy. A ripple in the social sphere. A bit of a controversy. There was a bit of a dust-up,
1:18.3	if you will, on social media. And in being in at Forced Home last week, we didn't have solid internet access. So so it was
1:31.1	interesting to to kind of sit in the responses for 24 hours and then go for a week and then
1:36.8	come back and see how how the commentary had devolved. So this is a Lord willing unless
1:43.7	well who knows,
1:46.1	we want to take this episode and we want to talk about pastors and politics.
1:52.0	And I want to talk about what I wrote,
1:55.4	but I'm more interested in talking about the response to what I wrote.
1:59.8	And I think there's some really interesting things
2:04.6	that were said in the midst of this discussion.
2:07.6	So I kind of cranked out on Friday, two Fridays ago,
2:13.6	we're recording this on a Monday.
2:16.6	A Dear World, and World is the operative term there, not dear church, but we'll get to that.
2:22.9	I said myself and many of my fellow Christians are adamantly opposed to Donald Trump and what he stands for.
2:30.0	He does not speak for us, all caps.
	...

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