Politicians should stop dressing their politics in biblical authority, and Christians should call them out when they do, regardless of which party they represent.
“When someone wants to start justifying their behavior based on scripture, that’s dangerous,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said at a campaign event earlier this month.
It’s a fair point. At first glance, you may wonder if he was calling out his fellow cabinet official, Secretary of Defense (or War) Pete Hegseth, who is fond of quoting Isaiah 6:8, “Here am I; send me,” in reference to military action. This verse was even the theme of his recruitment tour, billed the “Send Me Tour.” Or Mullin could have been criticizing his predecessor, Kristi Noem, whose DHS used the same Bible verse for a promotional video. Or maybe Mullin’s remarks were a mea culpa for the time he quoted Philippians 4:13 in a speech to ICE agents? Then again, he could’ve had in mind President Donald Trump, who was handed a Bible verse before going on stage at Liberty University in 2016 and then recited a bit from “Two Corinthians.” Of course, Mullin wasn’t referring to any of these. Instead, his comment was about James Talarico, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate in Texas1.
This is a classic case of right message, flawed messenger. Talarico does misuse scripture for partisan purposes. Not to justify his “behavior,” as Mullin claimed, but to justify his policy preferences.
At last night’s CNN Town Hall, Talarico repeated his claim that “the Bible is silent on abortion.” As the questioner, a Catholic theologian, pointed out, the Bible does address ethical principles that can inform abortion policy. Yet when it suits him, Talarico is all too willing to make great leaps from Bible stories to specific policies. The Bible doesn’t specifically mention health care deductibles or price controls either, yet Talarico said this:
“When Jesus healed the sick, he didn’t ask for a deductible. So when I fight for universal health care, I’m doing it on biblical grounds,” Talarico said. “When Jesus fed the hungry, he didn’t price gouge to turn a profit, so when I say that no child in the state of Texas should go to bed hungry, I’m doing it on biblical grounds.”
Deductibles are bad because Jesus didn’t ask for one? Most of those on Medicaid already don’t have a deductible. In the private market, some of us can choose to have no deductible in exchange for higher premiums. Is that option more Jesus-like? Jesus didn’t price gouge, so should we should support price controls or something else? Devout Christians can come to different policy conclusions based on these stories.
We should seek to have our views and actions formed by scripture. I appreciate it when politicians seek the counsel of scripture for principles and ethics to guide their policy preferences. If politicians want to explain their thought processes on that, that would be fine. And quoting scripture for analogies and allegories can be acceptable as well.
It’s problematic, however, when politicians dress up a specific policy with an out-of-context Bible reference and argue they hold the “biblical” position. In that respect, Hegseth and Talarico are making the same mistake. They assert biblical authority simply because they’ve quoted scripture.
Christians should be consistent in calling out this mistake. If you’re thinking, “Well, I support the Trump administration so I’ll just stay quiet on Hegseth’s misuse of scripture,” or, “Well, Talarico is better than his opponent so I’ll let his misuse of scripture slide,” then you won’t have a prophetic voice. Your reluctance to speak out suggests a faith informed by partisanship rather than political views informed by faith.
Be consistent. Politicians get away with abusing scripture because faith voters rarely call them out, or worse, cheer them on. So call them out, even, and especially, when they are your preferred candidates.
Read this …
National Review: “The Trump Administration’s Outlook Toward Ukraine Is a Moral and Strategic Atrocity”
Americans and the Trump administration deserve to be confronted with the moral atrocity in which they are increasingly complicit.
The Ukrainian people are the victims of this war, not its perpetrators. That simple historical fact eludes some in this administration, so it must be restated again and again. Posterity’s record must also reflect our understanding that Ukraine’s aggressive neighbor is attempting to swallow it up because it sought to join the community of liberal Western nations. It looked to the United States and Europe when it sought greater integration with the European Union. And that, not some illusory promise of future NATO expansion, was the reason why Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine for the second time.
Throughout its war of conquest, Russia has been responsible for atrocities the likes of which the world had not seen for over 70 years. Russian forces indiscriminately bomb Ukraine’s cities, not because of Moscow’s lack of precision munitions but as a tactic. Its soldiers have massacred Ukrainian civilians. They deploy rape as a weapon of war. They separate children from their families with the aim of brainwashing them into fighting against the country of their birth. Moscow engages in ethnic cleansing both in Ukraine’s captive territories and inside the Russian Federation (Russia’s minorities are disproportionately represented among the dead on Ukraine’s battlefields), and it has set out to eradicate Ukraine’s culture and language.
ProPublica: “506 U.S. Citizens Detained”
The Trump administration says none of this is happening.
“DHS is NOT arresting U.S. citizens by mistake.” “There are no ‘indiscriminate’ stops.” Allegations of “racial profiling are disgusting, reckless and categorically FALSE.” “The pattern is NOT of law enforcement using force.” “ICE does not zip tie or restrain children.”
But that is precisely what is happening, and at a far larger scale than previously reported.
The Bulwark: “MAGA’s Talarico Mental Breakdown Conspiracy Implodes—Instantly”
ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, a pair of young MAGA influencers brought the movement to a state of orgiastic euphoria when they claimed to have uncovered evidence that James Talarico had suffered a mental break and sought treatment in Ohio.
Within hours, their tale had fallen apart, leaving those same conservatives scrambling for new angles to ding the upstart Texas Democrat and fair-minded observers wondering what kind of lawsuit would await the bungling duo.
The episode was just the latest in a long line of MAGA provocateurs flinging dirt under the guise of doing investigative journalism—only for their assertions to run into reality. The main difference this time was that the stakes were a bit higher and the bliss a bit more fleeting.
NYT: “America’s Elected Officials Are Living in Fear”
An investigation by The New York Times examining hundreds of records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, court documents and law enforcement logs has found that, over a two-year period from 2024 to August of this year, thousands of violent threats inundated the lives of elected officials in unprecedented ways.
Some threats were vague; some were frighteningly specific. They promised torture, stabbing, rape and murder. They aimed at Republicans and Democrats alike, and at a range of officeholders from county clerks to United States senators. They targeted spouses, parents, siblings and children.
At least 44 governors, as well as their staff and families, have been subjected to violent threats over the past two years, The Times’s investigation found. That’s also true of at least 70 of the nation’s 100 senators, and at least 185 members of the House of Representatives — nearly half the body. More than half of the country’s secretaries of state, most of whom serve as their states’ chief election officers, have received threats of violence.
This is neither an endorsement of nor opposition to Talarico or his opponent, Ken Paxton.