In 2016, I wrote a blog post about why, as a Christian, I would not be voting for Donald Trump. It went kinda low-key viral and gave me a lot of opportunities to engage in dialogue with a variety of people.

In the years since, I’ve been asked quite a few times to help people understand how I can be opposing Trump, loving the Bible, and voting pro-choice all at the same time. Today, on my personal Facebook page, I was asked how I could not support Trump’s abortion policies and still be a Bible teacher. Someone (who I believe was very sincere and well-intentioned) shared that it was “confusing” for her. And honestly, I get that.

I know that a lot of Christians whose views may align with mine are often challenged with similar questions. I share this in hopes that it will help you to understand me and those like me better OR to express yourself to someone else who might be asking. What follows is minimally adapted from my original response:

Yes, I am a Christian. And yes, I love and teach the Bible. My identity as a Christian forms who I am, and is, in fact, the core basis for my political positions, as well as my motivation for posts urging people not to vote for him.

I was specifically asked about being “aligned with the Bible.” The thing is, the Bible is a complex series of books with a lot of layers and nuance. Except for some very big, broad ideas (like loving God and loving others), there aren’t a lot of things that are fully aligned within all parts of the Bible itself. And even those two examples I gave could be challenged reasonably (and often are), depending on how you understand the idea of what the the Bible communicates. Because, truly, most of the time, it communicates a lot more than one thing. And, often, when we try to come away with what we think it says, we’re getting some, but not all of it, right. 

NT Wright is arguably the greatest New Testament scholar of our time. When he lectures, he frequently and famously says something like, “About a third of what I’m going to tell you is probably wrong; the problem is, I don’t know which third.” The disciplines of Biblical studies and Christian Theology have been evolving for 2,000+ years, and will continue to do so. It simply doesn’t make sense to think that today, in 2024, any one of us has finally figured out all the details perfectly and gotten all of our theological ideas “right.” 

That’s why there are so many different denominational expressions of Christianity. That’s also why the Bible is structured the way it is. 

Even within the four gospels, there are different expressions of what the most important ideas are when it comes to understanding Jesus and his messages. That’s not because John is right and Mark is wrong. That’s not even a relevant question. It’s because if you ask 4 different people to tell you about someone they all know, they’ll tell you different things – because they know and understand that person in different ways. 

If we were to ask your mom, your co-worker, your partner, and one of your friends to each write a short book describing your life and expressing your values and who you are, you’d no doubt end up with four rather different books. None of them would be fully right; none of them would be wrong. They’d  just be four different ways of understanding and experiencing the same person. I’d also guess that if you tried to write one yourself, it would be quite different from those other four.

Those four views of Jesus are all included intentionally, just as many varying and sometimes flatly opposing views of God, God’s kingdom, and the ideal way to live as a person of God are also all expressed within the Bible. Consider the creation poem in Genesis 1…which is immediately followed by Genesis 2… a different, and contradictory description of creation. The seemingly competing narratives are there to help us understand and engage with the complexity of what we’re trying to study and learn about as we read. Our triune God is too dimensional to capture in a single perspective…or book for that matter. I’d add that the same holds true for any single tradition as well.

One thing I often encounter in my work is that some people aren’t fully aware of just how many different traditions there are – and how much they can differ. In America, for example, White Evangelicalism is certainly the loudest and most publicly prominent voice. But it’s certainly not the only expression of Christianity in the United States. In fact, depending on how you define the term, the best data-driven research estimates tell us that only 6-35% of Christians in the United States are Evangelicals. I’d argue that number should probably expand to include Evangelical-adjacent ideologies, but regardless, it’s still probably less than 50%. Perhaps a lot less. I don’t know anything about your own current religious practices and faith tradition, but I mention Evangelicalism because, in my experience, that’s the tradition that usually has this type of question. If I’ve misread you, please forgive me. I’m not trying to put you in a box; just trying to engage in the space that you might be coming from.

And when it comes to the world church, White American Evangelicalism lays claim to an even smaller percentage of believers. I certainly grew up (in Evangelical spaces) thinking that the only people out there who called themselves Christians but didn’t understand Christianity the way my church did were Catholics. Turns out, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. 

So, all of that is background for what I’m going to say next. Forgive me for the lengthy build up; the groundwork is important.

In 2016, when Trump first ran, I found myself wrestling with the incongruence between Evangelical support for Trump and my own understanding of Jesus and the values he expressed with the Gospels. That wrestling led me into a many-years long intensive study of the book of Matthew and the rest of the New Testament which continues today. (That Matthew study is the core content for the Read the Bible Better Member’s Study… check it out!). I knew enough about the Bible to know that there are LOTS of interpretations and understandings of its contents, priorities, and messages. And those are a variety born out of 2000 years of diligent, well educated, thoughtful, and informed study by people of great and sincere faith. (This goes back to those many denominations and doctrinal variations in the world-wide Christian church.) There’s a lot that isn’t that clear or straight-forward in the Bible. And when there are things that aren’t clear or straight-forward, there are a lot of opinions and views about which things should be the highest priorities and how to read between the lines or resolve the ambiguities. 

(At the risk of being totally cringe, I’m going to post links to a recent sermon I had the opportunity to preach on this very subject. For anyone who is interested in understanding what I mean about ambiguity and uncertainty in the Bible, I hope it might be helpful. The YouTube version includes some helpful visuals (esp. in the beginning, sermon starts about 58 minutes in), but had some audio challenges. A high-quality audio only version is also available.)

So, way back then, I decided that, for my own integrity and peace of mind, I needed to be VERY clear within myself about exactly what Jesus communicated in his time on earth. I wanted to know to the very best of my ability what his priorities were. Because my goal isn’t actually to align with the Bible…because, which parts? The part where God tells the Israelites to decimate entire cultures? Killing women and children and other innocents? The part where God instructs his people to go into war and claim land that other people have lived in for generations? The part where Isaiah bemoans his life as a prophet, griping about how he was tricked into his holy role? The part where Paul writes letters to specific individuals, by name, continuing ongoing conversations they were clearly in the middle of, about specific individual communities? Let’s not forget the Biblical passages that seem to permit polygamy, slavery, patriarchy, and more.

No, for me, my aim is to live a life that is cruciform… that is, shaped by the cross. My aim is to live a life that patterns itself after Christ’s values, Jesus’ teachings and example. This, I must remind us all, is a Christ who chose to DIE rather than participate in violence or partner with the political systems around him. 

The Sermon on the Mount is regarded by many as the quintessential teaching of Jesus. And as I’ve spent the last however many years hungrily learning from the world’s top scholars and theologians in every way possible for me (which, as it absolutely must, includes learning as much as possible about the society, culture, politics, ideologies, and nuances of the worldviews of Jesus’ time and place), this is what is clear to me from the Sermon on the Mount (and Jesus’ teachings and example in general):

The job of those who are following after Christ is to love those that society pushes into its margins. We are to partner with the outcast. We are to welcome the stranger, embrace the people our culture holds its nose at, and care for the wounded, suffering, and oppressed. Where there is pain and injustice, we are to go in further, offering sincere friendship, hospitality, and love. We are to fight to change and challenge injustice wherever we encounter it.

Jesus speaks many times about caring for those who are foreigners, widows, orphans, and more. He says specifically that whatever we do for the “least of these” is what we do to him. Today’s “least of these” include the LGBTQ community, people of color affected by systemic and long standing racism and racist practices, people in poverty, people suffering with addiction, people living unhoused, and so so so many more. 

When Jesus tells the story of The Good Samaritan to his Jewish audience, he tells the story of someone that they viewed as a social pariah and religious reprobate (the Samaritan) stepping outside of what was considered religiously and socially appropriate to sacrificially care for someone who was in need….a Jewish someone who, like the other Jews around him, would have been taught to think of Samaritans as lower than dogs and outsiders to the people of God. What’s more, the Samaritan offers this help after two members of the revered religious elite (and priest and a Levite) notice the wounded man and just keep going. The message in that story is clear: be like the Samaritan. 

My world looks a lot different than Jesus’ did 2000 years ago in Palestine. But people who are (metaphorically) laying by the side of the road wounded and in need of help abound. So I am deeply committed to stopping by the side of the road, getting uncomfortable, and working to care for my neighbors. All of them. Doing so is one of the highest priorities in my life of faith.

There’s so much more I could say, but I was asked specifically about abortion, and I want to address that directly.

The data on abortion is very clear. Abortion rates go down when governmental structures are in place that better support mothers, sexual education is provided that reduces unwanted pregnancy, access to birth control is widespread, and compassionate reproductive care is affordably and easily available without strings attached. (Anyone can go Google these things from unbiased news sources and find out more for yourself; to anyone reading this who is bristling, please do.) 

Since the defeat of Roe v. Wade and the implementation of various abortion bans around the country, the rates of abortions have GONE UP. The rates of infant mortality have also gone up, and so have the rates of maternal deaths- because abortion services are actually legitimate parts of healthcare in many instances… perhaps in all instances for those willing to consider the long term mental health of mothers and children. Many many many procedures that are legally prohibited by anti-abortion laws are procedures that aim to do nothing beyond preserving the lives of mothers after miscarriage and/or protecting the long term fertility of mothers whose in utero children either have not survived or will not survive outside the womb. 

I understand that many are vehemently opposed to all termination of viable pregnancies. I understand that opposition. However, the political policies and laws that claim to try to reduce abortions have a long term historical record of actually INCREASING the number of abortions in this country. And quite honestly, I wish someone would explain to me how *that* politicking is dismissed or rationalized. 

Furthermore, I am not a fan of abortions in general. But I am a fan of offering women and their healthcare providers the respect that believes that they – and they alone – are best equipped to make some of the hardest decisions they will surely ever make without the interference of legal systems and process that, quite often, do not take into account the realities of childbirth, fertility, health, and life in a comprehensive and compassionate way. The stories of women dying because they can’t get proper care when they are miscarrying – a genuine TRAGEDY in their lives – are heartbreaking in my view. And unconscionable. (And so are the many like them.)

And all of that doesn’t even address the many thousands of victims of rape and incest who are now being forced to carry the pregnancies that resulted from the violent assaults against their own physical autonomy. The claim of those advocating for restrictive abortion legislation is to be “pro-life.” Yet the legal policies are not consistent with valuing lives of those same mothers – and their children beyond the womb. If you want people (whose health provides an option) to chose to carry their children to full term, the things that are shown to encourage that decision are social support structures like government supported childcare, welfare support, early childhood education, and more. Yet the same voters who feel abortion is their number one issue, don’t seem to extend that very pro-life perspective beyond that one facet of life by virtue of their willingness to vote against abortion AND against widespread social support for those mothers and their babies.

And so that is how I am where I am on abortion legislation. I am not taking a stand on the morality of abortion. I am taking a stand on the rightful autonomy of women, and nuanced thoughtful legislation with a proven track record of reducing abortion, infant mortality, and maternal mortality. The larger anti-abortion politicized narratives fail to adequately advocate for a comprehensive and, frankly, honest and humane engagement in the entire picture. The human picture. 

The short sighted laws simply banning specific procedures do nothing to address the underlying issues and are doing harm to real, precious, valuable people who are deeply loved by the God in whose image they are formed.

I’ve taken the time to write this in order to help contextualize my own positions, and hoping to clarify how and why they are deeply formed by my life as a Christian. But please, don’t just go with what I tell you or what anyone else tells you. If your own life aims to be cruciform and Christ-following, I encourage you to dig deeply into the places where other views provoke tension and resistance within you. You may land exactly where you are today, but without engaging fully and with honesty that is willing to risk your own comfort, you can’t know for sure.

Some have argued that the single defining characteristic of Christianity as a religion is the re-defining of love as self-sacrifice. When political powers and empires push us to clamor for power, influence, and prestige, we should be consciously and thoughtfully and repeatedly holding those orientations toward our faith up against the teaching of the Christ himself. 

I am 100% certain I don’t have it all right or figured out. I know that. But I know that, to the best of my ability, I have done the work to sincerely and authentically delve deeply into the life of God and pattern my life after the self-sacrifice Jesus taught us to use to define ourselves in faith.

To anyone reading, peace to you. And thank you.