The felony conviction of former President Donald Trump has created a “strange political time,” even “a constitutional crisis for the United States,” Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler said on Monday’s “Washington Watch.” But “the last thing we need right now is to give ourselves to a pattern of revenge by lawfare.”
Without glossing over the “huge moral issues” in Trump’s conduct, Mohler summarized, a local district attorney “ran for office vowing to do whatever he could do to bring action against Donald Trump,” brought a case “described by the previous district attorney as a ‘zombie case’” dating back to 2016, and presented so murky a case that “I don’t think the average American could even explain what it is that this court has now convicted Donald Trump of doing.”
The “politically-motivated prosecution” of Trump “clearly was designed, I think, from the start, to suppress voters,” agreed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “All this stuff is dredged up.”
Even worse, Trump is not the only example of politicized law enforcement under the Biden administration, Perkins added. “We have parents being targeted by the Department of Justice,” he said, the “FBI monitoring Catholic churches [and] doing so undercover,” “military-style raids of homes of non-violent pro-life protesters,” and “the federal government colluding with banking institutions to surveil the private financial data of citizens and organizations like, yes, the Family Research Council.”
There have been “calls from some conservatives to fight fire with fire: ‘If the left is lawless, we must do the same to counter them.’ … I’m hearing it, ‘Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,’” warned Perkins. “That is exactly what those who hate this country would want, because that would tear it down. … To do so would be to ensure the demise of our republic.”
“This lawfare is going to be very tempting” for conservatives, Mohler admitted. Yet, he added, “I can’t think of many things that are actually more dangerous for our [country]. But the one thing that would add danger is conservatives gaining control and trying to do the same thing. This is the destruction of the rule of law. We have to be the people who uphold the rule of law.”
“This lawfare is going to be destructive of every administration,” Mohler continued. “It’s just going to be a matter of ruthless power [where] whoever gets elected tries to put the previous president in prison. That’s ridiculous!”
“When we do not have the framework that gives people confidence that justice will prevail in the end,” Perkins predicted, “business stops, the economy tanks, we begin to experience all of these other issues.” That’s why “we as Christians have to think through these issues and understand [that] we have an absolute interest in and commitment to the rule of law,” Mohler urged. “That means we call it out when it fails.”
With so many partisans willing to entertain the idea of revenge lawfare, preventing the next Republican administration from taking that dangerous route is “going to be a fight,” Perkins forecasted.
But Perkins finds a biblical precedent for taking the high road in 1 Samuel 24:3-7. “… David is in a cave [with] his men, and Saul comes in … and his men encourage him, ‘Well, the Lord has delivered him into your hand, and you go ahead and kill him.’ … David says, ‘no.’ He said, ‘I cannot raise my hand against God’s anointed.’” Here David honored God’s law above political expediency, and it paid off in the end, Perkins noted. “David had to trust God. Now it took time. It took 15 years to see justice prevail, but … he had a kingdom then to inherit.” After the death of Saul, “all the elders of Israel … anointed David king over Israel” (2 Samuel 5:3).
Paul exhorted the church in Rome, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’” (Romans 12:19).
However, just because Christians shouldn’t engage in vengeance politics doesn’t mean they should disengage from politics entirely, Mohler insisted. “Even though we’re disgusted by many of the things that are going on there’s no excuse to just withdraw from the political process. It’s a mess. The answer to that is not to withdraw, but to help clean it up.”
“As followers of Christ, we’re to bring solutions to the table,” Perkins declared. “We’re the ones that have clear vision and we can help move the nation forward. … We need to be praying for that insight and that understanding to see what is happening here.” “Christians need to be very prayerful,” Mohler agreed, “and very concerned about discerning how the Lord would have us to act as Christians. … If we leave this to the people who want to create mayhem and want to morally transform this nation, then quite frankly the cause is lost.”
Mohler called on pastors to lead their church members in thinking well about these issues. “Pastors have to, first of all, just preach the word in season and out of season,” he said. “There are many pastors who are going to be judged because their church members don’t have a clue how to think about the challenge of the transgender revolution … the assault on parental rights, and the subversion of the family.”
He believes the pulpit’s silence is “a form of ministerial malpractice” because, as Perkins added, “every spiritual and moral issue has become a political issue in our day.” So pastors don’t have to “get up and hoist a partisan flag,” but they should recognize that “there’s no ‘safe place,’ there’s no non-political escape,” Mohler warned. “We’re citizens of a heavenly kingdom, yes. But we’ve been left for God’s purposes in an earthly kingdom. … Our job is to do what’s right and to uphold what is righteous and just.”
This civic engagement should flow out of good preaching, Mohler declared. “The preaching of the gospel gives us not only the hope and the assurance of everlasting life and the forgiveness of sins,” he said. “It also gives us the right temporal understanding for why we’re left in this world right now and what our responsibility is.”
Of course, the purpose in a Christian’s political engagement is not our own advancement, but “to make God known, to bring honor and glory to the Father,” said Perkins. “In a time of great social and cultural upheaval, where people are looking for something to tether themselves to [something] that is stable, we have the answer.”
Mohler agreed. “Everything we can pluck from disaster, every family we can keep from breaking up, every moral trend going downward that we can help to stop, that’s a good thing for the glory of God. And so, the gospel is the power of salvation, but it also creates gospel people who are supposed to make a difference in the world.”
In all of this, Christians should engage in politics with joy in the Lord, said Perkins. “Jesus, as he was talking to his disciples there toward the end,” told them, “I’ve told you all of these things so that you won’t lose your peace, and you won’t lose your hope. We can enter into this time with confidence, with peace and even joy,” he said. Jesus promised that “our joy would be preserved because our eyes are focused on him.”
Mohler double-clicked on that point as an exhortation for pastors to “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching” (1 Timothy 4:16). “Many of us who contend for the family — we better make really clear that we find such great joy in our families. Those of us who contend for marriage as a union of a man and a woman, had better make clear we find such joy in God’s plan for marriage,” he said. “We’re the people who are not to lose our joy because it’s Christ’s command that we not lose our joy.” So the Christian’s motivation to engage in politics “is not just getting angry, but being fully active and doing so in the joy of Christ,” emphasized Mohler.
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.
