Justin Taylor, dear, please listen to Alison Siefert speaking on 1A Across America: the1a.org/segments/voter. She's a Bible-believing Christian voting for #BidenHarris2020. But you claim that "it’s ordinarily a sin to vote for a pro-choice candidate" Not a sin to vote for Trump?
Pro-lifers are one group who may decide the election either for Trump or for Biden.
Above is my tweet to Justin Taylor, a pro-life, women-in-submission-to-men Christian who is part of The Gospel Coalition (founded 2005) and in fact a member of its all-male Council.
Justin has taken upon himself the task of 'splaining to Christian women (and men?) why we should not vote for Joe Biden for president.
In 2016 he and his friends held many of us to voting for Trump because we thought we had to support an anti-abortion president to get more anti-abortion justices on the Supreme Court. No matter how much Trump boasted of sexual abuse or paid off women to be silent, we had to vote "pro-life" if we were genuine Christians.
Well, now that the Court is set in a conservative direction, maybe we can express our disgust for this fake president and vote for the Biden/Harris ticket. Right?
No. Justin mansplains to us that "it’s ordinarily a sin to vote for a pro-choice candidate" in his Oct. 6 blog post on the Gospel Coalition website. He wants us to vote for Trump, not Biden, even though the Supreme Court is safely locked up as ready to overturn Roe v. Wade.
It boggles my mind how a sincere Christian can vote for a president who so openly defies God's word. Alison Siefert explained it, however, when she was interviewed for 1A Across America produced by WAMU for National Public Radio. She has long been a single-issue voter (pro-life) and a Republican.
But this year it got too hard for her to overlook all of Trump's mean, self-centered, race-baiting, covid-ignoring behavior--"contrary to everything I've learned about being a Christian." She studied her Bible and decided she needed to vote for Biden in this national emergency.
Voting for Trump "just didn't line up with what I believed about my Lord," she said.
Justin has thought about Alison's predicament, and he concludes (after struggling through 9 principles and a weird metaphor involving gear shifts) that when she votes for Biden, she is "probably sinning for her support of that candidate... But I would still affirm my willingness to come to the Lord’s Table with her."
"Oh, thank you, Justin! Thank you, thank you, for being willing to admit me to the common table," he imagines us Alisons saying. After all, he has decided that anyone who is "voting for the pro-choice candidate because of his or her support for abortion" deserves excommunication.
Forgive me, Justin, for in your view I have probably sinned. I edited a pro-choice book in 1994 called Abortion--My Choice, God's Grace: Christian Women Tell Their Stories (Pasadena, CA: Hope Publishing House). Perhaps that was before you were born.
Is my book a bigger sin than voting for Biden? I did that too.
Justin, my dear, could you please research whether it's a sin to vote for a racist?
Or to vote for a man who flaunts his adultery, fornication, pride, greed, wrath, envy, gluttony and sloth? (Remember the 7 deadly sins?)
Is it a sin to vote for a man who tells lies habitually?
We'd be so grateful if you could write a blog post on the consequences of voting for a person who boasts of these kinds of sin. Would you still break bread with us if we voted for a man like this?
By the way, I'd like to ask you one more question. How can you have a Gospel Coalition with no women on its Council? Jesus didn't operate that way. He walked through cities and villages "bringing the good news" with a crowd of men and women in leadership. Read Luke 8:2-3.
I'm concerned that your not viewing women and men as equals before God might be a sin. Have you ever read Galatians 3:28? "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." The all-male Council of your Gospel Coalition may be sinning in excluding women.
To learn more about whether excluding women might be a sin, read All We're Meant To Be by Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty. Or visit the websites of CBE International and EEWC-Christian Feminism Today.
No comments:
Post a Comment