Why Were Pro-Lifers Noticeably Absent at the Polls in Ohio?
Last week, Tuesday, Nov. 7, Ohio became the seventh state since the landmark Dobbs v. Jackson decision (overturn of Roe v. Wade and sent back to the states) where voters have decided to protect abortion access.
The Associated Press reported that voter turnout for Ohio’s amendment, including early voting, was robust for an off-year election.
Christian voter turnout, by contrast, was once more the opposite of “robust,” with the majority staying home in Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
The largest denominations of political currency are: 1) How many votes can you bring to the table, 2) How much money can you bring that brings votes to the table? For many Evangelical leaders, mobilizing means creating an opportunity to speak, which is not a denomination of political currency.
In 2022, Kansas effortlessly passed a pro-abortion referendum with 59% of the vote, with the majority of Evangelical and Pro-Life Catholic Christians staying home, again. Exhilarated by last week’s victories in Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, The New York Times jubilated: “How abortion lifted Democrats … President Biden is unpopular, but his party and its policies are on a winning streak.”
Let’s pause for a moment to declare as delusional the notion that President Biden’s party and policies are on a winning streak. Barack Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod cautioned last week, “Only @JoeBiden can make this decision [to run in 2024 or drop out]. If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in his best interest or the country’s.”
James Carville, the lead strategist for Bill Clinton’s winning 1992 Presidential campaign, was a little more forceful. Often referred to as the ‘Ragin Cajun’, the 79-yr-old Carville fumed on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast: “Let’s say the election was November the third of this year. And they said the candidates are Joe Biden the Democrat, Donald Trump the Republican, Joe Manchin and Larry Hogan No Labels and Cornel West. Trump would be a betting favorite. If I told you I would give you even money, you would not take that bet.”
As to the plight of Republicans, nationally syndicated columnist Todd Starnes offered last Wednesday his diagnosis for the pitiful showing by Christians: “Many Millennial and Gen Z pastors have disengaged their churches from the culture war battles. They have taken great strides to make sure their pulpits don’t offend. The influence of the church has been neutralized. That’s why an overwhelming majority of Ohioans just enshrined birth date abortions in their state constitution. Silence in the face of evil is evil itself.”
The stark reality of 75% of Christian voters staying home on Election Day is that those favoring abortion and homosexual marriage will get a free pass to elect their representatives, draft and pass legislation, and so codify into law their secular profane values.
Contemporary culture is nothing but the public manifestation of the paganistic religion lording over the nation. Politics is downstream from the headwaters of culture, as study of secularized public education theories will show.
With the physical and low earthly passions given the upper hand over the spiritual, the Canaanitization of America could happen because woke pastors, educated in woke universities and seminaries, became the outposts for the worship of the golden calves of multiculturalism, political correctness and human secularism. As to Millennial and Gen Z pastors, intermarrying with worldly celebrities has become the latest passion, although it is Scripturally false and idolatrous.
Even so, the church sleeps on, unwilling to engage in obedience to Christ’s ecclesia Kingdom assignment from Matthew 16:18: “Upon this rock, I will build my ecclesia, and the gates of hell won’t stand against it.”
Contemporary American Christendom keeps on pushing the sterile model of attendance, holdings and portfolios as a measurement of successful cultural involvement, and in addition can’t seem to make its workforce of born-again believers understand that although Canaan was a free gift to Israel, which they entered by grace alone, they still had to fight for every inch of it.
We raised a red flag on May 10, 2022—one month prior to SCOTUS overturning Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs vs. Jackson case. We wrote:
“Evangelicals ought to think through what’s coming soon to their own surroundings and prospects. Specifically, with the U.S. Supreme Court looking as if it may overturn Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson case, tremendous pressure will now be applied to state legislators and courts. The battle over snuffing out the lives of children in utero will move from the Judiciary to the Legislative Branch of government, hence to a place where success or failure is determined by grassroots, precinct-level organizing.
“Christians will have to take their Civics game therefore to a whole new level. Somebody’s values are going to reign supreme in the public square. If Evangelical and Pro-Life Catholic Christians stay home from the voting booth – in a presidential year no less than half of all Christians unfortunately refrain from being registered and voting – then those ‘who speak perverse things, who leave the paths of uprightness’ … will elect their candidates, create and pass legislation, bringing about anarchy as its ‘natural consequence and fitting punishment’ to a spiritually apathetic nation.”
A similar state of indifference to idolatry has befallen American Christendom that once overtook ancient Israel. We can no longer maintain, much less regain, the territory that Jehovah God handed to the American Founders. Peter J. Leithart has the details: “There are unbeatable giants in the land, as the 10 spies said (Numbers 13), and the walls of the cities of Canaan are impenetrable—not because they are powerful, but because Israel’s idolatry leaves it impotent. Idols are nothing, powerless, incapable of action, and ‘those who worship them shall be like them’ – deaf, dumb, weak, lame, blind (Psalm 115).”
Impotence, perhaps, is a good way to describe contemporary Christendom. In 1 Kings chapter 16, we find King Ahab thinking it not worth mentioning for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, as “he did evil in the sight of Yahweh more than all who were before him.” “Idolatry,” writes Dr. Leithart, “is uncreative and produces the death of identical repetition. Insofar as it moves at all, it degenerates. Idolatry tolerated and indulged breeds more flagrant idolatry.”
Until the sons and daughters of Issachar enter America’s public square, where every church all across the nation has a pastor, elder, deacon, or congregant running in 2024, 2026, 2028, and thereafter, flagrant idolatry will continue.
Thankfully, with praise to Jehovah, Gideon’s and Rahab’s have begun entering the public arena in America. {eoa}
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David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.
