Grace is not optional—even in politics

Spend enough time on social media, and you will encounter a growing phenomenon of mostly male conservative pot stirrers, defined by their online pot-stirring personas, insisting on being as nasty as they perceive the Left to be. Niceness is anathema, and grace is weakness. Welcome to the post-Christian right.

The reason some on the right reject niceness is because they think left-wing behavior has been successful. Social media conservatives see the success of left-wing mobs ruining careers for errant, decades-old tweets. They see corporate America leaning left, becoming vocal about Texas’s pro-life legislation and Georgia’s election law. They see the embrace of cultural progressivism and the earnest and angry agitation for it nationwide. They are interested in winning the here and now with no focus on eternity.

James Lindsay, an atheist and cultural critic of wokeism and left-wing excess, has given voice to some of the anti-niceness enthusiasm circulating among the post-Christian right. Recently, he tweeted, “Beating Wokeness requires being mean to weak people, which most decent people find intolerable.” Regardless of his intent or explanation for the tweet, it circulated among the angry set of conservatives who think fighting back like the left is necessary. Right-wing cancel culture, in other words, is imperative. Scalp collection is a goal.

The Left has ruined people’s careers—and bragged about it. In 2014, gay-rights activists successfully pressured the City of Atlanta into firing the city’s fire chief, Kelvin Cochran, for writing a book for his Sunday school class that quoted scripture to show God considers homosexual relations sinful. The same year, Brandon Eich lost his job as CEO of Mozilla Corporation for supporting the traditional-marriage ballot initiative in California, though it was 2008 when he supported it. Since then, left-wing cancel culture has only escalated nationally.

Concurrently, progressives have rushed to impose critical race theory in public education. They have embraced the historically farcical 1619 Project. They have been aided by the media in doing so. But contrary to the views of those who see the left-wing advance as successful and worthy of duplicating, the left has suffered electoral and judicial setbacks.

Kelvin Cochran won his legal battle against the City of Atlanta, but he did not win reinstatement. Parents have risen up against critical race theory so much so that some school systems are abandoning it. In 2020, Democrats expected a wave of Democrat takeovers at the state and federal levels. Instead, Republicans made state-level gains and came within less than a half dozen seats of taking back the House of Representatives—a feat no one, including the GOP, expected. The GOP’s major losses were the presidency and two Senate seats in Georgia.

Being mean to weak people or reciprocating nastiness with more nastiness may scratch a particular itch for some on the right. Still, it suggests that nastiness is a viable solution for electoral gains. The evidence at the ballot box suggests voters reject nastiness. Voters want an alternative to the nastiness, not more of it.

Additionally, Christians must work hard to avoid nastiness. Behaving like the secular left is ultimately an embrace of worldliness. Worldliness is the rejection of godliness. Worldliness may play well at the time, but Christians have eternity as our focus. Ultimately, if people who claim Christ behave without grace in politics, they harm their witness and reject the commandment to love their neighbor as themselves. A post-Christian right winds up in perpetual pursuit of a right-wing dystopia with all the charm of an Antifa rally.

Christians must not abandon politics, even as American politics gets nasty. We must not abandon courage, conviction, or shrewdness. But in pursuit of political advances and policy advances, we have to maintain a level of grace for others in the public square even when that grace is not reciprocated. Unfortunately, the secular Left and post-Christian Right are playing the short game. Christians play an eternal game and must be mindful not to inherit the earth and lose our souls.