What’s at Stake With 10 States Voting on Abortion?

With all eyes on this November’s elections for president and Congress, voters risk losing sight of the pivotal battlegrounds where the issue of protecting — or sacrificing — innocent life is on the ballot nationwide.  Voters in 10 states will vote on 11 ballot initiatives — nearly all of which would open the door to expanding the taking of innocent life as late as the third trimester.

Voters this November will decide on abortion-related ballot initiatives in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota.

“Americans will be going to the polls to vote on the issue of life.  They’ll be voting on whether or not to protect life in their state constitutions and in their state laws,” Senator Josh Hawley (MO-R) told the 2024 Pray Vote Stand Summit (PVSS) in Washington, D.C., the other week.  “We’re so thankful that they finally have the chance to do so — that the Supreme Court has finally recognized that Roe was wrongly decided, that Roe was an abomination in the Constitution, that now the issue of life again belongs to the people and their elected representatives.”

Experts at FRC Action have compiled the facts about these post-Dobbs state abortion initiatives into a new document titled “Life on the Ballot.”  The resource briefly records the language that will appear on the ballot, as well as how each measure would impact state law, mothers, and unborn babies if they take effect.

One initiative would lay down a state marker against late-term abortion.  If adopted, Nebraska Initiative 434 would protect children from abortion in the second or third trimesters, except those conceived in rape or incest, or when required by “medical emergency.”

Nine of the 10 remaining pro-abortion initiatives would extend abortion until birth in their state constitutions, often with deceptive-sounding language. Confusingly, Nebraska voters will also decide on Initiative 439, which would establish a fundamental right to abortion until viability — but an abortionist could carry out an abortion after that point (generally considered 22 weeks) to protect the “health” of the mother.  Nevada Question 6 also creates the right to an abortion carried out by a “healthcare professional until fetal viability or when necessary to protect the health” of the mother.

As during the days when Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, were in effect, the term “health” can be interpreted broadly, to include everything from imminent death to financial harms. Nevada’s language could also allow non-doctors to carry out abortions, reducing the abortion industry’s costs — and lowering the quality of care received by mothers.

Many other initiatives strip out existing protections for mothers and their children.  Arizona’s Proposition 139 would create a fundamental “right” to abortion under the state constitution.  Under its terms, “All current laws protecting unborn children in Arizona would be removed, including the law protecting unborn children from abortion after 15 weeks.  This means dismemberment abortions during the ninth month of pregnancy would be legal,” explains the FRC document.  It could force taxpayers to fund abortion, it authorizes non-doctors to carry out abortions, and it could increase abortion trafficking (allowing abusers to take their victims to the abortionist to dispose of the evidence of rape, incest, or sexual exploitation).

The proliferation of the abortion pill, mifepristone, has already allowed men to force women into unwanted abortions for at least 24 years.  One of those victims shared her story with a PVSS panel on the right to life moderated by Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at FRC.

Catherine Herring’s husband, Mason, repeatedly deceived her into ingesting abortion pills to abort their child in April 2022.  “I continued getting sick the rest of the day, ended up in the emergency room and was bleeding heavily,” she remembered.  Thankfully, she heard of the abortion pill reversal protocol and was told to take progesterone.  “I think, it truly saved my daughter’s life,” Herring said.  “Josephine is two years old now,” and “the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.”

But after fighting for her daughter’s life, she had to fight for justice.

“One of the most shocking things about my story, is even being from the state of Texas, you might be interested to know the charges for my husband,” she told the PVSS crowd.  “He was sentenced to 180 days in jail.  That’s it for seven attempts to end our daughter’s life.”

Thanks to the state’s outdated laws, she had to lead a fight to “criminalize poisoning people,” Herring said.  “Can you imagine that we’re even having to say that?”

Some of the ballot initiatives could remove protections for women in similar positions, experts say.  And they could compromise other individuals’ rights, as well.  Colorado’s Amendment 79 allows abortion-on-demand until birth, opens the door to taxpayer-funding of abortions, and threatens the conscience rights of Christians and other pro-life religious believers.  It needs 55% support to pass this November.

Montana’s CI-128 would allow abortion until viability, with exception for the “health” of the mother.  It would also hold that the state cannot punish “patients, healthcare providers, or anyone who assists someone in exercising their right to make and carry out voluntary decisions about their pregnancy.” Florida’s controversial Amendment 4 would allow abortion until viability, with broad exceptions afterwards, in the process striking down the state’s heartbeat law and a law protecting children from abortion to prevent fetal pain, beginning at 15 weeks.  It would also erase parental consent or notification laws.

Some initiatives have vague and indistinct language that could legalize “reproductive” measures far exceeding abortion.  Maryland’s Question 1 would authorize a constitutional amendment codifying the right to “reproductive freedom, including but not limited to” pregnancy-related decisions.  Similarly, Missouri’s Amendment 3 would “establish a right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptives.”  Missouri’s amendment also says it allows regulation after viability, with a broad exception for the alleged “health” of the mother.

The inexact “reproductive freedom” language of these two amendments sounds similar to Ohio’s Issue 1, which passed last November.  It stated, “Every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to” abortion.  Just weeks after the election, Ohio Democrats introduced the so-called “Reproductive Care Act” (H.B. 343), which stated that “reproductive health care … means gender affirming care.”

Experts say the ballot initiatives could compromise women’s safety in another way: The Missouri amendment forces pregnancy resource centers to refer mothers to abortion facilities and eliminates ultrasound requirements, according to the new FRC resource.

Pro-life women’s centers already find themselves in the crosshairs, as vandals spraypainted or firebombed numerous such facilities after the unprecedented leak of the Dobbs decision in May 2022.

“If the right person doesn’t get into office, this is going to escalate, not just for us, but the thousands of Christian faith-based pregnancy centers across this country who do nothing more than to help a woman, whether she’s rich or poor, who is wondering about what she’s going to do,” noted Janet Durig, executive director of the Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center, which was vandalized after the leak of the decision.  Imagine a woman whose “boyfriend left her when he found out she thought she was pregnant.  Who’s going to help her?  How is she going to be?” she asked.

In light of the potential worsening of pro-life centers’ lot under measures such as this, Durig encouraged pro-life advocates to “support pregnancy centers in your community” and “stand behind them, because the battle would be great.”

Pro-life centers have come under fire in New York, where Proposal 1 would further ban “unequal treatment based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, and sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity and pregnancy.”  It also protects against “unequal treatment” based on “reproductive healthcare and autonomy.”

South Dakota’s Amendment G would reinstate something akin to the Roe v. Wade arrangement, which claimed tens of millions of babies since 1973.

Senator Hawley, who gave an impassioned plea for the Republican Party to “boldly and unashamedly” proclaim that “there is no right more important than the right to life,” said the post-Dobbs environment means Americans face opportunities to protect — or destroy — life in all 50 states.

This decade will be remembered as “a time when our most foundational beliefs — the right to life and liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the right to conscience, the right to worship the Lord as he calls us — were at stake,” Hawley contended.

 

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

A Battle Over Worldview Will Define Our Nation

Ever since Barack Obama’s vow to fundamentally transform America—a promise he kept—each Election Day has become less about politics and personalities and more of a ferocious battle over whose worldview will define a nation.  Values that used to unite us have vanished, replaced by the hard contours of two parties without much common ground.

For Christians, this year has been marked by the shock of an assassination attempt and the shake-up at the top of the Democratic ticket.  And the disappointments of a watered-down GOP platform still stings.

So how should Christians approach an election when the imperfections of both parties seem more evident than ever before?

“None is righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10).

Our political system, like the rest of our fallen world, is messy, broken and flawed.  As frustrating as it is to see our values trampled or ignored, we need to accept that the church isn’t going to find a perfect ruler until the millennial reign of Christ.  Men and women in public office are human, and they’ll continue to let us down, no matter how sincere their faith may seem.

The Republican Party recently betrayed its longtime principles.  Leaders considered stalwarts of the conservative movement—like Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who chaired the platform committee—wiped out decades of pro-life and pro-family progress.  Christians must go into this election with eyes wide open.  We must practice discernment, understanding that we will never have perfect alignment with any political party.

Does that mean we shrug our shoulders and walk away?  Absolutely not.  It means we recommit ourselves to being faithful witnesses to the truth of His Word at the moment in time that God has entrusted to us, whether it’s in vogue or not.

“But test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

If Christians are going to change the country’s trajectory, we have to begin with a basic understanding of God’s truth.

In the first 12 chapters of Genesis, Scripture spells out the fundamental values we should be looking for: God the Creator (1:1); life (1:26); male and female (1:26); marriage (2:22); and Israel (12:3).  Using these five categories as a guide, how do Kamala Harris and Donald Trump stack up?

While Donald Trump seems to have taken a disconcerting step back from some of his socially conservative views in recent months, Americans have the benefit of the 45th president’s four-year track record, which demonstrated his support for the sanctity of life, religious freedom, parental rights, biological sex, national security, legal immigration, military readiness, free speech, constitutionalist judges and justices, and Israel.

What is much less known is the record of Kamala Harris, who, like Trump, professes to be Christian but invokes her faith as a justification for policies like LGBTQ activism, same-sex marriage, and even abortion.

When she ran unsuccessfully for the 2020 presidential nomination, Harris insisted that the work she did as California attorney general should serve as “a model of what our nation needs to do.”  That “model” was a six-year master class in weaponizing the office of AG, in which she:

Attacked pro-lifer David Daleiden for exposing Planned Parenthood’s sale of baby body parts;

Demanded that California pregnancy centers promote abortion;

Targeted businesses with moral objections to abortifacients;

Refused to defend laws upholding Biblical marriage between one man and one woman;

And fought to overturn abortion safety standards for women.

Harris’s record in the U.S. Senate led GovTrack to call her 2019’s “most liberal senator,” an unsurprising distinction considering she:

Voted twice in favor of legal infanticide;

Vowed to force taxpayers to fund abortion;

Applied a religious test to judicial and Supreme Court nominees;

Sponsored the Equality Act to end religious freedom in America;

Promoted legal prostitution;

Supported the elimination of the Senate filibuster to pack the Supreme Court and abolish election integrity laws;

Opposed homeschooling and popular school choice legislation;

Earned 100% on Planned Parenthood’s scorecard;

Introduced the Do No Harm Act to gut religious liberty;

Cosponsored a bill that would block religious freedom for adoption providers;

Campaigned on allowing trans-identifying men and women in the U.S. military;

And lobbied for girls’ restrooms, locker rooms, showers, sports, and even women’s prisons to be opened to biological men.

White House insiders say she’s the force behind Joe Biden’s leftward lurch, even becoming the first sitting vice president to visit an abortion facility. Together with the president, she:

Rewrote Title IX to force schools to use preferred pronouns, hide gender identities from parents, and elevate transgenderism above women’s rights;

Sued pro-life states to overturn protections for the unborn;

Allowed neighborhood drugstores to dispense the abortion pill;

Granted taxpayer-funded travel to active military seeking abortions;

Forced taxpayers to cover abortions for veterans; reinstated overseas abortion funding;

Advocated for gender-mutilating surgeries and hormones for minors, while demanding taxpayers cover transgender procedures for veterans and military personnel;

Prosecuted whistleblower Eithan Haim for exposing his Texas hospital’s unlawful transgender procedures on children;

Lobbied to expose students to pornographic books;

And funded Planned Parenthood through Title X dollars.

While it’s true that we can’t save the country with a single election, the reality is: we could very well lose it.

“Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26).

Why should Christians care about politics?  Because government is appointed by God.  In Romans 13:1-7, Paul describes the governing authorities as “ministers of God,” responsible for administering civil justice.  Government is God’s idea, and Christians should think about it and engage with it in a way that’s consistent with its God-ordained purposes.

As believers, called to be agents of transformation in the broader society, we have a clear responsibility to vote—not just when we’re enthusiastic about the options or when the choices seem most obvious.  If political parties and candidates don’t align perfectly with our values, the answer is not for Christians to retreat.  If we fail to be the salt and light we’ve been called to be, we could clearly see America sink deeper into darkness.

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves …” (Proverbs 31:8).

God commanded us to love our neighbors (Mark 12:31), and one way we can do that is by engaging in the political process to meet people’s needs.  While the race for president gets the most attention, there are much broader implications for voting this November than who will occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  In our hands rest the hopes of soldiers on foreign battlefields, the persecuted church in faraway lands and the peace of God’s chosen nation Israel (Numbers 24:9).

And many would argue that there are much more important decisions than the presidency on the state and local ballot.  Control of the House and Senate hangs in the balance.  Governors, state attorneys general, local school boards, even comptrollers are amassing major victories in protecting children from radical gender ideology, pushing back on corporate America’s woke agenda, fighting the Biden Administration’s lawless overreach, and passing sweeping pro-life and pro-parent laws.  While we might not have the ideal situation at the top of the ballot, Americans have several other issues to be mindful of as we head to the polls.

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20).

Regardless of what’s happening in America, we should be grateful that we live in a country where we still have the ability to vote.  Even though the fabric of our nation is being stretched and tested as never before, each of us has the power to shape our future and our family’s future—a luxury millions of people around the world will never know.

As believers, we understand that this earth is not our ultimate home.  However, we must engage with the culture, including politics, while standing firm on the transcendent truth of God’s Word.  Paul tells the Ephesians to keep standing (6:13).

Will we turn this country around?  We pray so, and we’ll work hard toward that end.  When former president John Quincy Adams was asked a cynical question about the failure to end slavery after decades of trying, he said simply, “Duty is ours; results are God’s.”  Let us do our duty!

 

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

Walz Calls Abortion a ‘Basic Human Right’

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz suffered what critics say was a “disastrous” performance during his only face-to-face showdown with Republican J.D. Vance before the 2024 presidential election, referring to himself as a “knucklehead” who has “become friends with school shooters.”  Walz also repeatedly promoted misinformation about the impact of state pro-life protections, calling abortion a “basic human right.”

Senator J.D. Vance (OH-R) and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) squared off in their first and only debate of the 2024 election season in New York City Tuesday night, in a debate moderated by “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” hostess Margaret Brennan.

Walz, who appeared nervous throughout the debate, fumbled out of the gate, confusing Israel with Iran in his first answer.  During a discussion of gun violence, Walz explained his transformation from a pro-NRA congressman representing a rural district to a proponent of anti-gun measures.  “I’ve become friends with school shooters,” Walz said.  “That was perhaps the greatest presidential or vice presidential flop in living memory,” Senator Mike Lee (UT-R) told Tucker Carlson moments after the debate.  “It didn’t come across as the speaker intended.”  The phrase immediately went viral, with the Republican Party turning Walz’s misstatements into an online meme.

Many pro-life proponents found themselves dissatisfied with both candidates’ statements on abortion.

Vance continued the 2024 GOP orthodoxy that the federal government has no role in abortion policy. “Donald Trump has been very clear that on the abortion policy specifically, that we have a big country and it’s diverse.  And California has a different viewpoint on this than Georgia.  Georgia has a different viewpoint from Arizona.  And the proper way to handle this, as messy as democracy sometimes is, is to let voters make these decisions, let the individual states make their abortion policy.”

Vance also appeared to promote taxpayer-funded in vitro fertilization (IVF) — in which 50% and 70% of newly conceived children will die by day six and many survivors will be “selectively reduced” or frozen indefinitely — as a “pro-family” measure.  “I want us, as a Republican Party, to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word.  I want us to support fertility treatments,” he said.  “I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies.  I want to make it easier for young families to afford a home so they can afford a place to raise that family. And I think there’s so much that we can do on the public policy front just to give women more options.”

Yet pro-life advocates say the Democratic ticket’s extremism far outstrips the current GOP leadership’s skittishness on the issue.  Walz rejected the state-federal distinction, echoing Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s pledge to expand “rights as basic” as abortion to all 50 states.  “That’s not how this works.  This is a basic human right,” Walz insisted of abortion, which ends a newborn child’s unalienable right to life.  “How can we as a nation say that your life and your rights as basic as the right to control your own body is determined on geography?” Walz asked.

Tim Walz “supports abortion through the ninth month,” said SBA Pro-Life America.  “No limits.  No safeguards to protect women from abortion coercion.” Walz signed a bill eliminating all protections for unborn life until the moment of birth in Minnesota, ending the legal requirement for abortionists to provide appropriate lifesaving care for a baby born alive during a botched abortion, and lifting the mandate to provide aborted babies with a dignified burial (as opposed to disposing of their mutilated bodies at the landfill with discarded medical waste).

Perhaps the most effective pro-life statement of the debate came during the commercials, as national television carried a commercial highlighting Minnesota state data that show, during Walz’s tenure as governor, at least eight babies were born alive during botched abortions.  These newborns “died gasping for air,” the ad states, as the viewer hears the sound of babies struggling for breath. “Kamala Harris may have played dumb during the debate on her record of literally voting to allow infanticide to continue, and she may try to ignore her chosen running mate’s decision to hide cases of infanticide in his home state of Minnesota, but the Pro-Life Generation will not ignore a record of radical abortion support that includes allowing lives to be lost after a botched abortion,” said Students for Life Action President Kristan Hawkins in an email to The Washington Stand.

Walz spread misinformation about abortion without any fact-checking from the moderators.  “We have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas,” Walz claimed.  That assertion gets the data backwards, said Michael New, a professor of political science and social research at the Catholic University of America and a scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute.  “Taking the data at face value, their report indicates that the maternal-mortality rate in Texas actually declined by 35 percent between 2021 and 2022,” despite the fact that in 2022 the Texas Heartbeat Act “had already taken effect,” wrote New at National Review.  “In short, during the year with the strongest pro-life protections in place, the rate of maternal mortality in Texas actually fell by 35 percent.”

Walz further dishonestly claimed that Project 2025, which the Trump campaign has repeatedly denounced, “is going to have a registry of pregnancies” — something Brennan allowed Vance to address and which the report’s author corrected in real time.  “Walz outrageously claims the @Prjct2025 section I wrote would create a ‘pregnancy registry’” when the report “merely recommends CDC compile anonymous abortion stats for all 50 states instead of the current 46-47.  Walz’s own state collects miscarriage information every year, so it runs a ‘miscarriage registry’ according to his logic,” clarified Roger Severino, a former Trump administration official now serving as a scholar at The Heritage Foundation.  “So hypocritical.  So dishonest."

Observers praised Vance’s poise during the interview in the face of one-sided interruptions from O’Donnell and Brennan.  Although the debate rules stated that CBS News would leave fact-checking to the candidates and respond only on its own website, Brennan attempted to downplay the impact of tens of thousands of Haitian migrants on the city of Springfield, Ohio, by stating they were “legal” immigrants.

“The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact check, and since you’re fact checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on,” said Vance, speaking over attempts by moderators to shut him down.  He correctly explained that the Biden-Harris administration had used the CBP One app and other means to open up “legal” pathways of temporary residence to applicants who otherwise would be illegal immigrants.  Indeed, CBS News reported last July that “[t]he Biden administration has welcomed over half a million migrants under programs designed to reduce illegal border entries or offer a safe haven to refugees, using a 1950s law to launch the largest expansion of legal immigration in modern U.S. history, unpublished government data obtained by CBS News show.”

Vance repeatedly underscored Kamala Harris’s responsibility for the deterioration of the American dream and the fraying of national security over the last four years.  “Who has been the vice president for the last three-and-a-half years?” he asked Walz early in the debate.  “The answer is your running mate, not mine.”  Vance repeatedly underscored that Kamala Harris is the sitting vice president and could enact her often-vague policy proposals today, if she wished, while contrasting the bleak Biden-Harris record with that of Donald Trump. “Donald Trump’s economic plan is not just a plan, but it’s also a record,” he said.

Vance noted that, as president, Trump held the line on expanding America’s war footprint and — aside from the COVID-19 lockdowns — presided over an administration marked by prosperity and increasing take-home pay for the middle class.  “When was the last time that an American president didn’t have a major conflict break out?  The only answer is during the four years that Donald Trump was president,” Vance said.  Walz attempted to blame Iran’s advancing nuclear program on “Donald Trump’s fickle leadership,” but Vance countered that Iran and its proxies attacked Israel “during the administration of Kamala Harris,” which has opened up billions of previous frozen dollars to Tehran.

The moderators’ choice of questions also came under fire.  Norah O’Donnell deflected a discussion on Hurricane Helene — which has claimed more than 100 lives and devastated entire communities in Appalachian North Carolina — into a discussion of “climate change.”  At one point, Vance described Green alarmism as “weird science.”  “The answer to reducing carbon emissions lies in reshoring American manufacturing, which has the highest standards of emission standards,” he pointed out. “What have Kamala Harris’s policies actually led to? More energy production in China, more manufacturing overseas, more doing business in some of the dirtiest parts of the entire world.”

The moderators have demonstrated bias in the past, noted experts at the Media Research Center. Both moderators questioned whether Donald Trump bore the blame for political violence after the Republican presidential candidate’s first near-assassination on July 13.  “It’s almost like the rhetoric’s gotten hotter since” January 6, said Norah O’Donnell one day after the first assassination attempt. “Does Donald Trump bear some responsibility for that?  Does he need to change his rhetoric?” Likewise, Brennan put the onus for the Trump assassination attempts on the victim.  “This was a traumatic event no doubt for him, but I did notice there was no call for lowering the temperature, condemning all political violence,” said Brennan.

The overwhelming majority (84%) of “CBS Evening News” coverage of Kamala Harris since Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race has been positive, while 79% of news stories featuring Donald Trump have been negative, according to analysis from the Media Research Center.

Tuesday night’s debate appears to provide voters with their final look at the two parties’ candidates before the presidential election on November 5.  After Harris and Trump faced off in their first debate (his second of the election cycle) — which Republicans have criticized due to the moderators’ heavy, one-sided fact-checking — Harris demanded a rematch, an offer Trump has steadfastly refused.  The former president announced he will not take part in a back-to-back interview for the “60 Minutes” election special Monday night alongside the incumbent Democratic vice president.  Harris has proved reticent to grant interviews since Joe Biden bowed to pressure and withdrew from the 2024 presidential election some 70+ days before the vice presidential debate.

CNN’s John King summed up the consensus by nearly all pundits of the vice presidential debate: “Republicans were happy tonight and Democrats a little bit nervous.”

 

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

Tim Walz Misuses the Bible to Justify Open Borders

To properly understand how completely Tim Walz failed in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate with J.D. Vance, it is vital to understand the full extent of the job Democrats tasked him to do.  The campaign hoped Walz would appeal to Midwesterners, “white dudes” for Harris, and — in a surprise twist — to Christian voters.  How else can one explain Walz’s misuse of the Gospel of St. Matthew in favor of the Harris-Walz campaign’s illegal immigration policy?

“I don’t talk about my faith a lot,” said Walz as he spat out a series of disconnected sentences in staccato during the immigration section of the CBS News debate.  “But Matthew 25:40 talks about, ‘To the least amongst us, you do unto Me.’ ”  Walz makes no attempt to tie the Bible to his policy except by brief assertion.  The disembodied proof-text remained unconnected with the rest of Scripture, and the rest of his argument, which ranged from falsely accusing Vance of “blaming migrants for everything” to falsely claiming that most Americans support mass amnesty; they “simply want order to it.”  Only granting the gift of U.S. citizenship to untold millions of lawbreakers from across the globe, Walz said, would allow Americans to “keep our dignity about how we treat other people.”

Walz did not explain how the Left’s open border policies treat anyone with dignity, foreign or native-born.  No immigration policy that loses 32,000 unaccompanied minors and facilitates the sexual trafficking of young children can be said to serve “the least of these.”  The Biden-Harris administration’s intentional illegal immigration crisis more closely resembles a biblical curse rather than a blessing.  Nothing quite so literally illustrates the curse of Deuteronomy 28:43 — “The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower” — than seeing New York City spend $77 million to house illegal immigrants in high-rise hotels, while senior (American) citizens had to cling to their grandchild atop their hurricane-ravaged North Carolina home waiting in vain for help from their government until their roof collapsed and they all drowned.  Yet despite his failed political eisegesis, the Harris-Walz campaign felt the moment significant enough to post the video clip on social media.

Neither a chaotic border nor welfare state spending can be justified from any traditional reading of Matthew 25 — specifically Matthew 25:40, which reads: “And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, in as much as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’ ” Unfortunately, the Left — which prides itself on diversity — has increasingly centered its entire faith outreach on misuse of this verse alone, and its alleged fidelity to this verse rings hollow through repetition.

Most recently, Evangelicals for Harris rested the Democratic Party’s entire command-economics program on a shallow interpretation of Matthew 25:40 – “The Bible calls us to care for the ‘least of these,’ and this expanded Child Tax Credit is a tangible way to support new parents,” calling her entire agenda “biblically inspired, pro-family policies,” proclaims the group’s website.  In reality, Kamala Harris’s $6,000 “Child Tax Credit” amounts to a welfare state payment that would discourage marriage and family formation, according to Heritage Foundation welfare reform expert Robert Rector.

The Left has repurposed Matthew 25 over and over to fit its current agenda. During the 2019 primaries, candidate Joe Biden cited this verse to support “a higher minimum wage” and “collective bargaining rights.”  Of course, when the minimum wage rises, and businesses pare down the payroll, the first to get fired are the least experienced, the least skilled, the least connected workers — the least of these.

Additionally, experts forecast that Biden’s vision of “collective bargaining rights” may see the longshoremen’s strike shut down American ports and inflict potentially devastating long-term effects, “including rising prices, product shortages becoming more severe, job losses in key industries increasing significantly and an acceleration in global trade patterns with Chinese-owned ports in Mexico,” since manufacturers will begin “diverting more goods through Mexican ports instead of U.S. ones.”  Helping union bosses and the Chinese Communist Party hardly benefits the least powerful elements of society.

Somehow, over the years, Matthew 25 became an all-purpose citation for the Democratic Party’s agenda.  In a 2017 extended editorial in Christianity Today, former vice presidential candidate Senator Tim Kaine (VA-D) proof-texted his government-focused health care policy with Matthew 25.  Kaine also referenced 1 Corinthians 12, “strangely redirecting Paul’s teaching about the church and applying it to Congress,” as John Stonestreet of the Colson Center noted in a Breakpoint commentary.

Democrats are not alone in their attempts to smuggle statist economics into Jesus’s words about the final judgment.  During the Obamacare debate, then-Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) invoked Matthew 25 to justify expanding Medicaid coverage.  “Now, if you ever read Matthew 25, I think, ‘I wanna feed the hungry and clothe the naked,’” Kasich said at one time.  He later stated, “When you die and get to the meeting with St. Peter, he’s probably not gonna ask you much about what you did about keeping government small, but he’s going to ask you what you did for the poor.”  The expansion helped ransack the state budget, costing nearly $1.5 billion more than estimated.

None of these ill effects can be laid at Jesus’s feet.  Wisdom begins by placing the words of the Gospel into context.  Jesus never encouraged His followers to institute a single government program to combat poverty, homelessness, or hunger.  Instead, when Jesus encountered the hungry, He told His disciples, “You give them something to eat” (Matthew 14:16; Mark 6:37; Luke 9:13). Christian charity is administered through the church, not the government.  As the late Dr. D. James Kennedy noted, when the early Christians sold all they had, they “brought the money and they laid it at the feet of — Caesar?  Pontius Pilate?  No, they laid it at the feet of the apostles.”  Jesus commands each of us, individually and as part of the Christian church, to help our suffering brethren in His Name and on His behalf.  If any need arises that the church cannot solve, that speaks either to our stinginess, disunity, or inner focus.

Further, the Bible makes clear the welfare state cannot fulfill Matthew 25’s charitable mandate. Christian charity is funded by voluntary tithes, not compulsory taxation.  Even in the short-lived and singular communalism of the early church, the Apostle Peter upbraided Sapphira, who sold her land, held back part of the proceeds, and lied about it.  “Was it not your own?  And after it was sold, was [the money derived from the sale] not in your own control?” he asked (Acts 5:4).  The Apostle Paul makes clear that, even in church, each Christian must give “as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion” (2 Corinthians 9:6-7).  The IRS takes a significantly less lenient position.

Most critically, Christians must understand that government programs are not meant to fulfill or supplement Christian charity — they are meant to replace it. The Messianic State has no intention of preaching the gospel; it has its own religion to spread at our expense.  Secular progressivism is a jealous god seeking to cast all other faiths into the void, as it has everywhere the State began to encroach on the prerogatives of the church.

If Matthew 25 does not, and cannot, endorse secular-progressive welfare state policies, why do statist politicians repeat it so much?  A faith adviser to numerous Democratic candidates (including Ted Kennedy), Eric Sapp, explained to the Associated Press that quoting Matthew 25 is an “exceptionally effective” way for left-wing candidates to “convey a deep truth and faith positioning.”  In other words, it is a cheap way for secularist (and secularizing) candidates to position their rhetoric as more friendly to evangelical voters without embracing the substance of the Bible.

In truth, anyone seeking to lift up “the least of these” would begin by protecting defenseless, unborn children from the horrors of abortion.  Yet Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s rhetoric and policy treat them as non-persons, undeserving of lifesaving treatment or even a dignified burial.

The good news is, the tactic appears to have failed this time, more due to execution than anything else.  And unlike Harris, apparently Walz will not be repeating his speech.  When a reporter asked Walz on the day after the debate if he would speak more about his faith, Walz replied, “We’re Lutherans.  We don’t talk about religion much.”

Apparently, only in election years.  And only to serve his political interests, not the interests of the Gospel.

 

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

The 2024 Election is a Spiritual Battle

As campaign officials in the closing stretch of the 2024 presidential election focus on fundraising, concentrating advertising dollars, and hosting mass campaign rallies, former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee warns that Christians may lose sight of the most important election year fact: “The battle is spiritual.”

Huckabee, a Baptist pastor who served as governor of Arkansas for nine years, called on the nation’s Christian voters to rededicate the nation to its godly purpose this past weekend during the 2024 Pray Vote Stand Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C.

“What we’re facing today is not the traditional historical political spectrum that is horizontal: Left versus Right, Liberal versus Conservative, Democrat versus Republican,” said Huckabee.  “Our issues today are vertical: Heaven and Hell, Righteous and Unrighteous, Good and Evil.  And we have to understand that the battle is spiritual.  The consequences will be political, but the underpinning is spiritual.”  The spiritual groundwork underlying America’s present-day political strife explains the “irrational” level of hatred pervading society, he said.

“We’re living in a day where people think that it’s perfectly okay for folks to burn down a city, trash a police car, and burn down a police station, and the news media will say it’s a ‘mostly peaceful protest’ as the fire rages behind them,” said Huckabee, referring to an infamous CNN chyron.  “That’s not a difference of opinion.  This is insanity.”

Huckabee said he felt a deep “burden” for his seven grandchildren, who now live in a post-Christian society.  “I don’t want them to grow up in a culture where a 12-year-old can’t get a tattoo, buy liquor, buy tobacco, can’t enter into a contract, get married, can’t drive a car, but can make the decision to have his or her body chemically castrated or surgically mutilated,” he said.  “I do not want her to be in the girl’s locker room and have a biological boy undressing in front of her, and her being expected to undress in front of a biological boy — and if she says anything about it, that it makes her uncomfortable, she’s the one who gets into trouble.”

“Without any sense of hyperbole, this really is the most important election” in the history of the United States,” Huckabee told the crowd.  “God is calling every one of us to engage in the civic responsibility.  It’s not just our right.  It is our responsibility to be engaged in the process,” Huckabee encouraged a receptive audience.  “If we don’t like the government we have and don’t vote, we end up getting the government we deserve and not the one we wanted.”

Too many evangelicals have decided to sit out the process, he said.  “There are 40 million self-described evangelical Christians who do not vote in a presidential election.  Let me explain what that means: If half of those people who sit in church … would pray, stand, and vote, we would change every election in this country from the school board all the way to the White House.”

Evangelical Christians are twice as likely to support former President Donald Trump than Kamala Harris, according to a poll from Lifeway Research.  Nearly two-thirds of evangelicals (61%) favor the Republican candidate over the incumbent Democratic vice president (31%), found the survey, which was taken in August and released last week.

“I would never ask a pastor or want a pastor to endorse candidates from the pulpit, even when I was a candidate,” said Huckabee.  “But part of preaching [the whole counsel of God] is to encourage people to do something that is a privilege in this country, and that is the privilege of voting and helping to select the government.”  Huckabee declared, “Any pastor who does not encourage his people to be a part of civic engagement and voting is being derelict in the duty of being a shepherd to the sheep.”

On the other hand, America’s cultural and political landscape will continue to deteriorate if Christians refuse to vote.  “The putrification of our culture degenerates into something that is unrecognizable and unlivable,” said Huckabee.

Democrats have attempted to appeal to believers through such organizations as Evangelicals for Harris.  These efforts, too, have seen some success.  For instance, Ray Ortlund — an emeritus council member of The Gospel Coalition and founder of Nashville’s Immanuel Church in Nashville, which lists former Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore as a “Minister in Residence” — endorsed Kamala Harris, but soon deleted the message, saying it had been misinterpreted.

The spiritual strength of the nation may depend on Christians voting according to biblical morality, nor historic affiliation.  “How do we get to a place where we celebrate the castration of our children and call it affirming?  How do we get to a place where right is wrong, wrong is right, and to even say that is antithetical because there’s no such thing as right and wrong to many people who are teaching in our schools.  How do we get to the place where we have oppression of the defenseless, where there’s human trafficking from low levels to high levels in our society?” asked Bishop Vincent Mathews, missions president of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), an historically black Pentecostal denomination.  “Because we’re in a time of rebellion,” the bishop answered. “This is not partisan rebellion.  It’s not geographical rebellion.  It’s rebellion against a living God.  And until we grapple with what we’re really facing, we’ll never find true solutions.”

“There are even people who say that a nuclear family is racist, that black people shouldn’t have a family.  It is something that’s patriarchal and white in society,” Mathews noted.  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels proposed the “abolition of the family” in “The Communist Manifesto” and replacing it with “an openly legalized community of women.”  But the modern anti-family onslaught “is not even from a communist perspective.  It is the demonic insertion into God’s creation. Because if you can destroy God’s institutions, then you can destroy the ones that Jesus died for,” he contended.  Culture has sidelined “biblical values that we used to call common sense,” such as hard work, diligence, and accountability.  Modern America faces “a time of strong delusion, strong confusion,” Mathews said. “Demonic misinformation is destroying the world.”

While overwhelming majorities of white (80%), Asian (64%), and Hispanic (57%) evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump in 2016, only 8% of black evangelicals voted for the pro-life presidential candidate in that race.

Experts agree that biblically-engaged Christian political activism transforms political participation. “Hispanic practicing Christians are 38% more likely to have voted for Donald Trump than the general population of Hispanic voters,” wrote Michael O. Emerson in a study published by the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.  “The pattern for Asian and white voters is even stronger.  Only one-fourth of general Asian voters voted for Trump, but over half of Asian practicing Christians did (57%).”

Spiritual confusion led Family Research Council (FRC) to develop a different kind of Pray Vote Stand Summit in 2024, one less marked by candidates’ speeches and more directed toward spiritual renewal. “The Family Research Council team had a sense from the Lord that this year’s focus needs to be different, and they set about and prayed for 36 hours and waited on the Lord,” said former 2012 Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann before offering the event’s opening prayer on Thursday evening.  “This is the year to return to the Lord.  And that’s what we’re here to do.”

Bachmann, who serves as FRC board chairman, prayed that the Lord would “reset the city of Washington, D.C. to be in alignment with Your Word” through a “supernatural override of Your Holy Spirit.”  Noting that the first day of the conference commenced at the end of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, she urged believers to “say goodbye to the old, welcome to the new.”

The speakers held out optimism for the future, which they emphasized is held by the Victor in history’s pivotal battles.  God is “bringing us together, mobilizing his church to not only pray, but to vote” and no longer be complacent, said Mathews.  “The true Christians are awakened.”

 

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel