Eric Metaxas Is Wrong


 By Dr. R. Scott Clark - Posted at The Heidelblog:

Published October 21, 2024

Americans are already voting. Election day, November 5, 2024, is 15 days away. Temperatures are rising. The television, podcast, and radio commercials are non-stop. Rhetoric is reaching a fever pitch. To be sure, the country is facing serious economic, social, and political problems. In the most visible political race, that for the presidency, Americans will choose between two improbable candidates. It is an election about which historians will write for years to come. In the heat of the season there are some prominent Christians who are seeking to turn the visible church into a political action committee.

Church And Christians

Eric Metaxas is one such prominent Christian. He is a broadly evangelical, culturally conservative media figure known for his many children’s books, his much-criticized biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and his advocacy for Donald Trump.1

In recent weeks he has been advocating on social media and in speeches that the visible church (as an organization) and her ministers must take a partisan political position in the pulpit. He has written,

American pastors have a duty before God to warn their flocks that we are on the verge of losing ALL our liberties. If YOUR pastor is silent in the face of evil, take your tithe and leave tomorrow. Or be complicit in that evil yourselves. God is a judge.” (Eric Metaxas, Oct 19, 2024)

It’s baffling why so many believers insist Christians should not be political. It’s as silly as saying Christians shouldn’t be athletic. I mean, scripture is silent on whether Jesus ever played Little League, so we should let unbelievers dominate baseball, right?” (Eric Metaxas, Oct 12, 2014).

If your pastor doesn’t INSIST you vote in his next sermon, he may as well preach on the blessings of abortion. It’s the same thing. And if you attend a church like that, you share in the guilt. It’s almost past time that the American church repent & turn from its wicked ways.” (Eric Metaxas, October 10. 2024)


In two of these quotations, which are organized chronologically, I understand him to be speaking not to individual Christians or even to Christians organized into groups for cultural-political activism. Rather, it seems that he is intentionally speaking to the visible, institutional church and to her ministers. Most of what follows largely depends on this premise. In the second of the three quotations he seems to be speaking more to individual Christians than to the visible church.




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