Is it conservatives who are guilty of political idolatry?

For the past several years there have been constant debates about Christian nationalism. This is because a small number of right-wing pundits with pulpits have used the inflammatory rhetoric that is so effective in garnering attention on the internet to shout their message from the housetops. They get attention by being extreme. These folks figure out where the boundary of acceptable discourse is, defiantly take one step across the boundary, and then anxiously look around to see if anyone is paying attention (otherwise known as counting their clicks).

It is hard to decide if even these controversialists believe the wild-eyed pronouncements they make. (Hitler was the good guy, inter-racial marriage is wrong, liberal democracy is the worst possible form of government, and so forth.) They seem angry, but anger gets attention these days. They are disciples of the great showman P. T. Barnum, who famously said, “There is no such thing as bad publicity.” Their high profile on the internet proves that giving people an emotional rush draws them in.

Even more ridiculous than these iconoclasts of the far right, however, are the white progressives who are in a perpetual state of panic about the issue de jour. Free speech and the clash of ideas are less frequently encountered in contemporary, Marxist-inspired education, so fewer and fewer people are used to being disagreed with without having a panic attack. There is a growing mob of people who think they have the right and the duty to shut down anyone who disagrees with socialism, queer ideology, or the urgency of addressing climate change.

One of the ways the left tries to shut down debate and silence all conservatives, however, is by resorting to the old accusation, “If you are energetically participating in politics as a Christian, you are committing political idolatry” or “You are one of those Christian nationalists.” This is, of course, absurd. But today’s left likes their arguments to be as absurd as possible. After all, it is difficult to refute a shouted absurdity with calm reason.

Conservatives should not allow themselves to be intimidated into being silent on issues of public morality. I realize that facts and reason have no effect on the far left. But I’m not talking to them. I’m talking to conservative, church-going Christians who might not quite see the flaw in the leftist panic over Christian nationalism. These leftists are just using a tactic designed to shut you down. We should not be deterred from speaking into the public square by a fear of being identified with far-right extremists or called idolaters. Remember: It is a tactic, and they use it because it works.

Ryan Burge, that indefatigable purveyor of statistics about American religion, had a post on X the other day about which religious groups are most politically active in America. The study asked respondents about their political activity during the past year. It asked if they had attended a political meeting, put up a political sign, attended a protest, etc. So, which groups were spending the most time on political activism? Was it conservative Protestants?

Burge’s post shows that the most politically active groups were the mainline Protestants (Episcopalians, United Church of Christ, PCUSA, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) and the atheists and agnostics. In the middle of the pack were the Presbyterian Church in America, Southern Baptists, and the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Pentecostals, non-white Catholics, and Hindus were near the bottom. The media and the left wildly over-estimate the amount of political activism from evangelicals. The point is not that they want less of it; the point is that they want none at all. They want all evangelical conservatives to be silenced and marginalized.

Most conservatives who vote Republican do so because they see it as the least bad option. That isn’t idolatry; that is responsible citizenship. Politics is part of life and every Christian citizen needs to try to be informed and vote responsibly. To vote for conservative causes and candidates is not to make an idol out of anything. Real conservatives are too pessimistic about fallen human nature to be idolaters. If anything, they are tempted not even to vote out of despair about the way things are going.

The socialist utopians are the ones who deserve to have the charge of political idolatry hung around their necks. It is no coincidence that the groups with the highest political involvement are those whose entire hope for the future is limited to this world. If they are ever going to see heaven, they think, we had better hurry up and elect candidates who promise the socialist utopia.

Now that is political idolatry.