Al Mohler is a lifelong Republican who sees the choice in this year’s presidential election as “clear” in compelling him to vote for Donald Trump.
Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a leading voice of theological interpretation in the Southern Baptist Convention, wrote an article in World magazine published the day before the election titled “The Decision We Face: Voting to Preserve the Permanent Things.”
His argument to vote for Trump begins with his assertion that being Christian and conservative are related.
“I am a Christian and a conservative, and the two are closely related,” he wrote. “I do my best to understand all issues and make all decisions on the authority of Christian truth and the guidance of conservative principles. At best, conservatism seeks to conserve the good, the beautiful and the true and to advocate for the preservation of what Russell Kirk called ‘the permanent things’ — meaning eternal truths necessary for human flourishing. The Christian worldview offers a structure for determining what is good and prioritizing what is most foundational.”
“I am a Christian and a conservative, and the two are closely related.”
Mohler, who is 65 years old, details how his first vote was for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and how even as a Southern Baptist teenager he opposed Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Over the past 40 years, evangelical Christians have “migrated to the support of Republican candidates in presidential elections, and they did so for reasons that are easily traced,” he writes. “Election by election, the decision was easy but not always totally comfortable. At the same time, the Democratic Party shifted farther and farther to the left, especially on social and moral issues and in support of the vast expansion of the administrative state.”
The divide between Republicans and Democrats has only grown wider, he observes, and has been driven by disagreements “on everything from religious liberty to LGBTQ policies to abortion and an entire range of issues, right down to whether a boy should be allowed to play on girls sports teams and whether Christian schools should have the right to operate on Christian principles.”
Some of these, such as a strict definition of male and female, are “the permanent things we must insist upon.”
However, this year’s election with Donald Trump as the Republican candidate “presents Christians who think (and vote) like me with an awkward if not excruciating predicament. There is no easy way to go, even if the electoral choice is clear,” he explains.
“Former President Donald Trump is not what I want a candidate to be in terms of character, temperament or consistent policy. The 2024 Republican Party platform is a step backward from the convictional clarity of earlier GOP platforms, especially on the issue of abortion. At the start of the race for the 2024 Republican nomination, I called for some other candidate to seize the hour. That did not happen. Donald Trump is not the nominee I would have chosen. But Donald Trump is the nominee of the Republican Party.”
“Former President Donald Trump is not what I want a candidate to be in terms of character, temperament or consistent policy.”
And, Mohler says, he must support the nominee of the party he has identified with from youth.
He calls Democratic nominee Kamala Harris “the most ideologically extreme Democrat to gain the nomination of that party to date.”
Mohler says Harris has “truly extreme” views on abortion and advocates for transgender people and the entire LGBTQ community: “On the transgender question and the entire array of LGBTQ issues, she starts with fervent and unbending advocacy and proceeds from there, policy by policy.”
Trump is less than an ideal candidate but Harris supports abortion rights and the LGBTQ community, so the choice on how to vote is clear, he asserts.
“There is so much ground that must be gained for the cause of unborn life and the right ordering of society. The election of Kamala Harris as president would almost surely lead to a colossal leftward shift in the laws, in appointments to office, in nominations to the Supreme Court, in LGBTQ activism and in a flurry of executive orders. I am not sure that such a leftward shift can be undone or corrected in my lifetime, if ever.”
Therefore, the choice to vote for Trump is clear, he says. “At the very least, the Republican ticket pledges to slow down the transgender revolution and protect religious liberty.
“We must do the best we can, seeking to be most faithful in a set of limited choices that are also urgently important choices,” he says. “And we must stay in the fight, which will be long. We must vote by our Christian conscience and pray that God will direct the consequences. That’s true for every election, but it sure seems right to say so as Election Day arrives this time.”
Related articles:
Mohler endorses Trump while Piper disses Trump and feels the backlash
How low will they go? | Opinion by Susan Shaw
The moral hypocrisy of Albert Mohler (and evangelicals of his ilk) | Opinion by Marv Knox