Dwight McKissic and Al Mohler have disagreed on many things before — the role of women in the church, for one — but this year they are the two most prominent Southern Baptist leaders to endorse opposing candidates in the U.S. presidential election.
On Monday, Mohler, a highly influential seminary president in Kentucky, publicly endorsed Donald Trump as the only viable candidate for Christians of conservative conviction. The day before, McKissic, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, and the most visible Black pastor in the denomination, publicly endorsed Kamala Harris.
Dwight McKissic
In an op-ed published by MSNBC, McKissic says he cannot vote for Trump because the former president doesn’t bear good fruit and couldn’t even pass a background check.
“Despite all we know about Trump — his numerous adulterous affairs, his multiple felony convictions, his race-baiting, his violent rhetoric, his repeated lies, his not resembling Christ or his church in any way — there are people who warn evangelicals against abandoning the ‘party of their faith’ for a Democrat,” he says. “There’s a Scripture in the seventh chapter of Matthew that says a tree that doesn’t bear good fruit should be cut down and tossed into the fire. That’s how I think evangelicals should treat today’s Republican Party.”
In another way of looking at the ballot choice, the pastor says he has hired many people through the years for various jobs at the church and he wouldn’t hire Trump for any of them.
“I’m thinking about my vote the same way I’d think about a hiring decision,” he says. “And under no circumstances would I ever hire Donald Trump.”
McKissic describes himself as an anti-abortion, anti-same-sex marriage biblical conservative who used to see his values reflected in the Republican Party. But the GOP has abandoned those values in deference to Trump, he warns.
“I still believe in the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman and feel just as passionately about protecting life in the womb as I ever have,” he writes. “Democrats haven’t changed their stance on those two issues, either. But Republicans have changed. I don’t even recognize the Republican Party anymore. This year, for example, the GOP’s platform abandoned its long-standing call for a national abortion ban and removed the language that says marriage is ‘between one man and one woman and is the foundation for a free society.’”
Further, “The party I knew and loved would have never chosen as its nominee the adulterous, childish, habitually lying and criminally convicted Donald Trump.”
This year, McKissic says, he’ll vote “for character and competence and for the candidate who has the capacity and bandwidth to demonstrate respect and high regard for everybody made in the image of God.”
Harris has that. Trump doesn’t, he says.
“It’s sickening to see people who say they read and believe the same Bible I do not only refuse to denounce Trump but endorse his candidacy,” McKissic writes.
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