Mike Horton Offers Some Wise Counsel About Voting Tomorrow

As Horton notes, "the media frequently asks, 'Should Americans keep their religious views out of politics?'"

But what does the question actually mean, and how do we answer it?  Horton points out that there are two options:

Option One: Religious convictions are deeply personal and private; they shouldn’t shape a voter’s public policy perspectives

Option Two: Public arguments have to persuade. The properly coercive arm of civil government shouldn’t give preference to one religion or church in public policy decisions.

As for option one, Horton concludes,"it’s impossible for a Christian to separate his or her most deeply-held religious convictions from judgments about the common good."

As for option two, "Christians should make explicit their religious grounding for public policies, while offering arguments that prick the conscience of unbelievers to reconsider the nihilistic path to which their presuppositions lead.  However, politics is the realm of negotiation and compromise.  Our clashing worldviews lead to clashing political policies, and often even those with the same worldview differ on how exactly to apply it to specific policies. Instead of focusing on all out `wins,' we should focus on making arguments that are at least good enough to persuade enough folks to mitigate the damage that their ungodly worldviews could and would accomplish if consistently worked out.  It’s only Christ-honoring and neighbor-loving for us to make those convictions explicit—and more honest than most secularists.

To read the whole essay, Click Here