Politics or principles from the pulpit?

What do you want to hear from the pulpit this pre-election season? Surely your pastor is going to vote for one presidential candidate or the other. Should he tip his hand? Should he share his Scripture-formed conscience on the matter? Or is that outside his proper sphere?

As the UN debates criminalizing anti-Islamic speech, it is important to see that this effort is only part of a more widespread and insidious attempt to make speech against evil culturally taboo, and this has invisibly seeped into the churches like fog under the doors.

Forty years ago if your pastor had said, “Killing the baby in your womb is wrong,” people would not have objected. They might have agreed or disagreed, but they would not have said he was overstepping his bounds. Today they would say he is too political. Forty years ago if your pastor had said, “Homosexuality is sin,” people would have sat placidly in their pews. Today they would say he is too political. Forty years ago if your pastor had said that a form of government that fosters dependency weakens the inner fabric of a man, the flock would have listened politely. Today they would say he is too political.

To the Word of God, then, for the answer on what the servants of God may or may not say in their capacity as shepherds:

“They shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the common, and show them how to distinguish between the unclean and the clean” (Ezekiel 44:23).

This is what our pastors can do for us. They do not have to mention a political candidate by name, but surely they may still give us the principles of the very Word of God on any subject—may they not? Surely this is still within their proper province as God’s spokesmen—is it not? Or have we been so taken captive by the prevailing political correctness piped up from hell that we consider silence as virtue and acquiescence to the shrinkage of our roles as godliness?