Palin & McCain - Part 2

Dr. William Einwechter wrote a very helpful article "Sarah Palin and the Complementarian Compromise", linked here , dealing with common arguments that some evangelicals will use to uphold their support of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, and so I may often quote him this post and those to come on this subject. In this post, though, we will mainly take an overview of this whole situation with Palin and evangelicals, and look at the first of three common arguments used by some Christians to "uphold" their support of Palin. By the way, in case you aren't familer with it, the term complementarian refers to someone who believes that men and women have different but complentary roles according to God's revealed will. Here is a quote by Einwechter: "One would surmise that the nomination of Palin would create a dilemma for politically conservative Christians who say they believe that God has given a woman the distinct and important roles of wife, mother, and keeper at home. How so? On the one hand, Palin is a political conservative who seems to hold the right position on the issues most important to Christians; she purports to be pro-life, pro-second amendment, pro-marriage, pro-family, and she herself is a professed evangelical Christian."

"More to the point is the fact that Sarah Palin is a professing Christian, a wife, and a mother of five children, one of her children being a baby with Down Syndrome. The inescapable dilemma for these politically conservative complentarians, it would seem, is how to reconcile their support of Palin's candidacy with their professed support of Palin's biblically mandated roles of wife and mother. In addition to these considerations, the complementarian must face the question of whether or not it is biblically proper for a woman to rule over men in the civil sphere; after all, in their veiw, women are not to serve as pastors, and women are to submit to their own husbands in the home."

"But, as it turns out, there is no real dilemma here for the complementarians. Sarah Palin the vice presidential candidate and Sarah Palin the mother of five presents no necessary contradiction in their system. A wife and a mother of five children who is called by God to be a keeper at home (Titus 2:5), and who, in their view, is not qualified to be the head of her home or to be the elder of a local church (simply because she is a woman), is qualified and free, they believe, to seek the vice presidency of the United States of America. How can this be? Two recent blog entries by David Kotter and Albert Mohler reveal how this all fits together in their worldview."

Alright folks, with that under our belts and laying the foundation here, we'll move onto the first argument that evangelicals use to support their endorsment of Palin. Ready... here it is: There Are No Biblical Standards That Apply To Civil Magistrates.

According to Kotter, Christians are free to support Palin because there are no standards in the Bible that can define for us the qualifications for civil magistrates. He argues that the state is strictly a secular institution and thus God does not require those civil magistrates to be Christian or ethical. Alright, let's just pause right here for a moment. First, I'd like to say that there are defined standards in the Bible concerning civil magistrates. Duet. 1:13 and Exodus 18:21 for example. Dr. Einwechter points out that both of these passages specify that the leaders must be men. There are lots of other scripture passages as well that give the biblical standards for civil magistrates, such as 2 Sam. 23:3; Rom. 13:1-6; Prov. 29:2; 2 Chron. 19:6-7; Neh. 7:2; Duet. 16:18-20; 17:14-20. ..."in every one of these texts," Einwechter says, "men, not women, are in view." I might add that Doug Phillips, of Vision Forum, makes the case that in the passages speaking about the qualifications for being a civil magistrate, the Hebrew word used means literally male, and is not the same Hebrew word which refers to mankind.

Second, if Kotter is right, and God does not require civil magistrates to be Christian or even ethical, then we Christians can go ahead and vote for whoever we want to, be it the basest, most immoral person who's on the presidential ticket, and, if we follow Kotter's thinking, say that it's not sin! Have Christians just tossed good logic and God's Word out the window?

(And let's think about Palin for a moment: how can she justify through God's word the fact that she has attached herself to a man like McCain who, by his voting record, clearly supports abortion? Scripture says that light has no fellowship with darkness, so how can someone who claims to be an advocate for unborn children biblically back up the fact that she is joining with one whose views on the subject of abortion differ so widely from her own?! She can't. That's just it!)

Kotter also says that a president does not have to go by the same moral standards as an elder in a church. The implications of this statement are huge. That means that Christians can just disregard God's word when November 4th rolls around; that they are "let off the hook" so to speak when it comes to voting according to biblical standards. Kotter is also compartmentalizing Christianity. He's basically saying that you should act one way outside the ballot box, and then act a totally different way when you're in the ballot box. God's guidelines for righteous living do not change at all, whether you're the elder of a church or the president of the United States. God says to be holy for He is holy. He doesn't say that you can be holy here, but not there, follow His Word here, but not there - no, he says simply to be holy. No ifs, ands, or buts - simply be holy. And throughout the Bible, I think we can see that one aspect of holiness is obeying God in all matters - civil or private - and not picking and choosing where we will follow the Bible and where we won't.

Persevero,

Scribe


Recommended listening: Biblical Principals in the Ballot Box by Doug Phillips, available at www. visionforum.com