The decision we face

At last, Election Day arrives and we will soon (we sincerely hope) know the results of the 2024 presidential election. I’ll start by putting my cards on the table, so to speak. I am a Christian and a conservative, and the two are closely related. I do my best to understand all issues and make all decisions on the authority of Christian truth and the guidance of conservative principles. At best, conservatism seeks to conserve the good, the beautiful, and the true and to advocate for the preservation of what Russell Kirk called “the permanent things”—meaning eternal truths necessary for human flourishing. The Christian worldview offers a structure for determining what is good and prioritizing what is most foundational.

My first vote was for Ronald Reagan, for whom I had worked as a teenage campaign volunteer. The decision was easy. Once President Gerald Ford won the Republican nomination in 1976, I supported him over Gov. Jimmy Carter. I argued in high school debates for his election, but my heart wasn’t in it.

It is a fact of history that over the last 40 years, the vast majority of American evangelicals migrated to the support of Republican candidates in presidential elections, and they did so for reasons that are easily traced. In the decade after Roe v. Wade and the scourge of legalized abortion, conservative evangelicals shifted into alignment with the Republican Party. Election by election, the decision was easy but not always totally comfortable. At the same time, the Democratic Party shifted farther and farther to the left, especially on social and moral issues and in support of the vast expansion of the administrative state.

The major issues that divided the two major parties fell into a consistent pattern, to no one’s surprise. We have now reached the point that the two parties represent polarized choices that align predictably on everything from religious liberty to LGBTQ policies to abortion and an entire range of issues, right down to whether a boy should be allowed to play on girls sports teams and whether Christian schools should have the right to operate on Christian principles. Sadly enough, one of the permanent things we must insist upon is the reality of male and female as determined by the Creator.

The 2024 election presents Christians who think (and vote) like me with an awkward if not excruciating predicament. There is no easy way to go, even if the electoral choice is clear. Former President Donald Trump is not what I want a candidate to be in terms of character, temperament, or consistent policy. The 2024 Republican Party platform is a step backward from the convictional clarity of earlier GOP platforms, especially on the issue of abortion. At the start of the race for the 2024 Republican nomination, I called for some other candidate to seize the hour. That did not happen. Donald Trump is not the nominee I would have chosen. But Donald Trump is the nominee of the Republican Party.

On the other hand, Vice President Kamala Harris is the most ideologically extreme Democrat to gain the nomination of that party to date. She is so pro-abortion that she told NBC News that she would make absolutely no concessions for religious liberty in the federal abortion rights legislation for which she has so eagerly advocated. Her abortion rights position is truly extreme, even as she demands federal laws supporting abortion, making the American taxpayer pay for abortions, and offers not even a single restriction on abortion she would accept—right up to the moment of birth. On the transgender question and the entire array of LGBTQ issues, she starts with fervent and unbending advocacy and proceeds from there, policy by policy. She has tried to present herself in a less ideologically progressivist manner than before, but her ideology is clear. Equally clear is the threat of a Kamala Harris presidency.

The Wall Street Journal rightly observed that Trump “has instincts but no clear philosophy of government.” That’s a problem. But the greater problem is that Harris has a clear philosophy of government, and, to me at least, it is clearly wrong—and downright deadly.

Christian conservatives face big challenges ahead as we try to influence the course of government and the future of our society. There is so much ground that must be gained for the cause of unborn life and the right ordering of society. The election of Kamala Harris as president would almost surely lead to a colossal leftward shift in the laws, in appointments to office, in nominations to the Supreme Court, in LGBTQ activism, and in a flurry of executive orders. I am not sure that such a leftward shift can be undone or corrected in my lifetime, if ever. Both sides recognize how much is on the line in this election, and that’s the simple truth.

I began by saying that facing the presidential ballot in 2024 would not be easy, but I also argue that, for me, the choice is clear. Easy and clear are not synonyms. Even with recent and regrettable confusions, the two parties represent vastly different positions on abortion and a host of first-rank issues. At the very least, the Republican ticket pledges to slow down the transgender revolution and protect religious liberty.

Keep in mind that the president will make more than 4,000 direct appointments to high government office, will serve as commander in chief, and will exercise the sole power of nominations to the federal courts, all the way to the Supreme Court. That president will be either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. That’s just the way it is.

Voters in no less than 10 states will face whether to defend human dignity and the sanctity of human life or to support the Culture of Death. We will elect a new House of Representatives and about a third of the Senate, and voters will determine which party is in power in both chambers. State legislatures and several governorships are also at stake, as is a range of other issues. We desperately need Christian voters who will vote their conscience and convince their neighbors to do the same. If God allows, we have to come right back next time and do it again.

We must do the best we can, seeking to be most faithful in a set of limited choices that are also urgently important choices. And we must stay in the fight, which will be long. We must vote by our Christian conscience and pray that God will direct the consequences. That’s true for every election, but it sure seems right to say so as Election Day arrives this time.