Avoiding “the progressive gaze” in the voting booth

In recent months, I’ve described the need for evangelicals to break free from what I’ve called “the progressive gaze.” Can you see it? It’s the imaginary progressive in your head (or looking over one’s shoulder) who critically evaluates all that you say and do as a Christian and thereby shapes your rhetoric, orientation, and framing of various issues. Under the progressive gaze, some Christians feel they must take into account progressive sensitivities, speak to progressive concerns, fulfill progressive hopes, share progressive hostilities, and denounce progressive enemies.

For many Christians, the progressive gaze affects how we approach the stewardship of our vote, leading to various distortions of what a vote means. For example, many Christians have been taught that we should view our vote in terms of evangelistic witness. Our vote is understood fundamentally as a way of establishing credibility with unbelievers. For example, a vote for former President Donald Trump in November would allegedly hinder our Christian witness to the unbelieving world. “The world,” we’re told, “is watching.” But note the implicit assumption beneath this exhortation. “The world” is assumed to be progressive, secular, and liberal, and thus a vote for Trump will alienate our (presumed) target evangelistic audience.

But if voting is fundamentally about establishing credibility with an evangelistic audience, we might just as reasonably conclude that we should vote for Trump to enable evangelism to cultural Christians who rarely attend church but enthusiastically support him. A vote for Trump signals that we care about their concerns and want to build bridges. In fact, the case might be made that such cultural Christians more closely approximate the New Testament category of “God-fearer” and thus might be regarded as fields that are “white for the harvest” (John 4:35) since there is a lingering attraction to the culture and society that Christianity produced in this country.

Or consider another distortion of the meaning of the vote that is wielded as a tool of manipulation beneath the progressive gaze. We’re told that voting for a candidate (supposedly) entails a complete and total endorsement of every aspect of that candidate—from his entire platform to his personal behavior. Again, we’re told that a vote for Trump in November constitutes a complete endorsement of everything he has ever done or said. This principle is often attached to a not-so-subtle guilt by association, which refuses to distinguish various motives for performing the same political action.

Consider two different motives for a Trump vote: One, Trump is an American messiah who has no faults and has never done wrong. And two, Trump is better than the high-handed wickedness of the Party of Death and Sexual Insanity. Under the progressive gaze, if you adopt the latter, you will be accused of adopting the former in hopes that you will rethink your vote, or, at the very least, you will keep your intention to yourself (lest you encourage others to make the same choice).

For many Christians, the progressive gaze is reinforced, not by the world directly but by respectable Christians who desire to preserve the purity and integrity of their witness beneath the progressive gaze. Often, this mentality is accompanied by something weirdly close to the sacramentalizing of one’s vote, the need to keep it unsullied from the vagaries and corruptions of electoral politics. Voting ceases to be merely stewardship and instead becomes almost a sacrament.

Instead of viewing one’s vote as a matter of evangelistic witness or total endorsement of a candidate, it’s better to view it as a stewardship of one’s civic power in selecting the representative leaders who, once elected, seek to enact a particular agenda.

In our two-party system, this selection is frequently a binary choice. Thus, we must ask some basic questions of parties or candidates. Are they aiming at good or evil, as defined by God and His word? Are they attempting to promote and establish justice or injustice, righteousness or rebellion? If they are seeking what is good, then we can consider if the means they propose to achieve their ends are wise and fitting. Having answered such questions, we then compare the two to determine which will better secure justice, order, and the common good. And then we make our choice.

In terms of our motives, we may enthusiastically support a candidate. Or we may simply support a particular platform and administration. Or we may oppose the grave evil in the other party, candidate, and administration. Having made our choice, we enter the voting booth, not underneath the progressive gaze but under the Divine Gaze, seeking with God’s help to faithfully exercise our civic duty in confident reliance upon Him.