
Politics in the Pulpit
When and where should politics and the church intersect?
Yesterday I wrote about the woke Episcopalian pastor who used her sermon time to denounce Trump and his policies. She had decried him and his administration for daring to secure our borders and keep American citizens safe, and for daring to tell us what everyone has always known, that there are only two sexes: male and female. See my piece here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/01/25/on-ecclesiastical-vandalism/
Recently the British commentator Douglas Murray, in the first half of a 13-minute interview on Sky News, rightly denounced her in no uncertain terms. He bemoaned the fact that God and the gospel were hardly discussed, but a political rant that could have been found on “The View” was all we basically got: “She just had a set of boring Democrat talking points.”
Absolutely. He said she should have kept politics out of the sermon and stuck to more spiritual concerns. He also said this: “It is a demonstration of the church’s failing that they would have just this third-rate political hack when they could have had somebody who was talking about God and representing God on earth.” https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/completely-disgraceful-douglas-murray-rips-into-political-hack-bishop/ar-AA1xH4Q9
However, he went on to say that conservatives should also have nothing to do with bringing politics into the pulpit. He said the Left wants to politicise everything, and that “we need spaces that are not politicised.” Is he right? Should the pulpit be politics-free?
If I denounced Bubbe for her politicising of this solemn assembly, should I also call out all preachers who might discuss political matters – be they left or right? Is political discussion to be taboo in our church services and sermons? Let me make a few responses to all this.
First of all, the woke preaching I had talked about was not in a normal Sunday morning church service. It was a special, and regular, prayer and interfaith service held when a new administration comes into power. So the two things are not quite identical.
Second, this was meant to have been a service for unity! So how in the world does this hard-left woman’s denunciation of Trump and the Republicans amount to unity? It is the exact opposite of course: it was about division. It was about telling the people that we should have nothing to do with Trump and his policies. So much for uniting us.
Third, I am not sure that Murray is actually a Christian. He may be moving in that direction, as so many public intellectuals are, but I have not heard him making any claims to being a convert to Christianity. If so, then it might be preferred that we get actual Christians discussing whether or not Christian churches should enter into political discussions and the like.
Fourth, after this episode she became the darling of the woke commentariat, making the rounds of the leftist television shows such as “The View.” They absolutely drooled over her. No surprises there. But here is the deal: these same legacy media leftists have told us for decades now how evil it is for politics and religion to mix. So which is it?
Fifth, Murray is quite right to say that the Left wants to politicise everything and leave nothing that is not covered by the political. I have discussed this quite often. In one article penned five years ago I had actually quoted Murray on this very thing. I shared these two paragraphs from his important 2019 book The Madness of Crowds:
The aim of identity politics would appear to be to politicize absolutely everything. To turn every aspect of human interaction into a matter of politics. To interpret every action and relationship in our lives along lines which are alleged to have been carved out by political actions. The calls to spend our time working out our own place and the places of others in the oppression hierarchy are invitations not just to an era of navel-gazing, but to turn every human relationship into a political power calibration. The new metaphysics includes a call to find meaning in this game: to struggle, and fight and campaign and ‘ally’ ourselves with people in order to reach the promised land. In an era without purpose, and in a universe without clear meaning, this call to politicize everything and then fight for it has an undoubted attraction. It fills life with meaning, of a kind.
But of all the ways in which people can find meaning in their lives, politics–let alone politics on such a scale–is one of the unhappiest. Politics may be an important aspect of our lives, but as a source of personal meaning it is disastrous. Not just because the ambitions it strives after nearly always go unachieved, but because finding purpose in politics laces politics with a passion–including a rage–that perverts the whole enterprise. If two people are in disagreement about something important, they may disagree as amicably as they like if it is just a matter of getting to the truth or the most amenable option. But if one party finds their whole purpose in life to reside in some aspect of that disagreement, then the chances of amicability fade fast and the likelihood of reaching any truth recedes. https://billmuehlenberg.com/2020/06/17/culture-wars-identity-politics-and-the-politicisation-of-everything/
Sixth, as to whether politics should (somehow) be kept out of the pulpit is a bit more complicated, and something I have also discussed in many earlier pieces. Yes, we do not get all our meaning and sense of who we are from politics. But politics does unfortunately tend to impact all of us and every area of our lives, so we must deal with it, one way or another.
The pulpit and politics
As the famous saying of the ancient Greek general and politician Pericles goes, “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” So Christians of all people need to be aware of and involved in politics.
The question however is how this might work out in our churches, especially in the Sunday morning sermon. In broad terms, we can say that Christianity is of course not bound to one political party or platform. As I said in one article on this nearly 20 years ago:
Ultimately Christianity transcends left/right politics and cannot be contained within either. As C.S. Lewis has reminded us, there is always a problem with “Christianity and…”. Christianity and socialism. Christianity and freemasonry. Christianity and nationalism. Christianity and a certain view of science, and so on.
Christianity cannot be tied down to any one political party, to any one cultural expression, to any one social system, to any one philosophy, etc. It transcends all these. Having said all that, however, one can still ask whether certain cultural practices, certain political platforms, certain social policies, etc., happen to more closely reflect basic biblical principles than do others.
Thus all worldviews, political systems, social policies, legislative proposals, and cultural norms, need to be judged in the light of biblical Christianity. And some may well come closer to the biblical ideals than others. (But all will fall short of being a perfect reflection of these ideals, since we live in a fallen world.) https://billmuehlenberg.com/2006/06/01/christianity-and-partisan-politics/
However, more must be said. People like Chuck Colson and others have said (rightly, I think) that the preacher in his sermon should not be fully engaged in partisan politics. That is, at the very least, he perhaps should abstain from telling his members that they MUST vote Republican or Democrat, Trump or Harris, etc.
But that does NOT mean that the preacher cannot use biblical principles and truths as he comments on the issues of the day. For example, he might say that the Bible is fully committed to the sanctity of life, and God’s people should be as well. Therefore, some parties and politicians are much more pro-life than others, and we should consider all this as we think about who to vote for.
The truth is, so many moral issues happen to be political issues as well. Therefore the Christian MUST think about them carefully, and the pastor or church leaders must help guide the congregation to think seriously and biblically about all the tough issues of the day, be they culture war matters or what have you.
Thus for pastors to have kept completely silent on things like the homosexual marriage debate that raged not all that long ago in America, Australia and elsewhere would have been quite wrong, and a dereliction of duty. At the very least, sermons should have been preached reminding Christians of God’s view of marriage and family, the sin of homosexuality, and so on.
When the Voice referendum was being debated here in Australia a few years ago, the pastor could at least speak on general principles of race, love of neighbour, and so on. And perhaps more detail could have gone into questions of whether this measure would have actually helped race relations or perhaps made them worse.
The current cultural and moral battles of today such as transgenderism and illegal immigration also have a place in what is heard from the pulpit. So does that mean Budde was right to do what she did, to say what she did? Well, not quite. As I said in my previous piece, the Tuesday morning church service was about prayer and unity and welcoming in the new administration.
It was not meant to be a place where a clearly hard-left and politically partisan minister takes time to attack Trump and Co over their positions on matters of national importance. She can just refer her listeners to the Guardian and the New York Times if that is the heart of her message.
But yes, a minister can use a Sunday morning sermon to speak about the biblical view of human sexuality, how it affirms two genders, its concern for the wellbeing of children and the like. In the same way it can explore at least more broadly what the Bible has to say about refugees, the nations, borders, and how we might think about current events through those theological lenses.
To repeat, the normal church service includes a sermon or homily in which the pastor instructs, teaches and disciples his flock in biblical truth. Regular and sustained teaching, which cannot help but touch on some of the issues of the day, will be a part of this. But this is different from what the special prayer service was meant to be in which the leftist pastor let loose.
So Budde was wrong to do what she did, but there is a place for bringing biblical truth to bear on contentious social and politic issues. Thus Murray was right to condemn Budde and warn against the politicisation of everything. But he was incorrect to suggest that all political matters must stay outside of the pulpit – as if that were even possible.
Recall this fact: when the Christian Parliamentarian William Wilberforce worked so hard to abolish slavery via the political process, he also made use of pulpits where there were found sympathetic pastors. For church leaders back then NOT to have spoken out on this highly political, yet very moral and spiritual issue, would have been a great sin.
And we need to do similar things today – but in the right way and at the right time.
[1885 words]
Thanks Bill.
For a long time it was said—with tongue in cheek—that the Church of England was “the Tory party at prayer”. I think it can fairly be said that the Episcopal Church of the United States can be called “the Democrat party at prayer”. Liberal and leftist in political philosophy; liberal and leftist in churchmanship (if indeed they have any of the latter).
Yes you got that right Murray.
The sly and devious Episcopalian Church of America’ s first female Archbishop Katherine Jefferts Schori [1] was the presiding bishop at the consecration of Bishop Marianne Budde [2]
It was Katherine Jefferts Schori who took the controls of a church in turmoil over the ordination of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire [3] —and over the consecration of two lesbian bishops [4].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUCx6JszsRc&t=6s
[2] https://episcopalnewsservice.org/2011/11/14/mariann-budde-consecrated-as-washingtons-ninth-bishop/
[3] https://parabola.org/2019/04/02/a-wing-and-a-prayer/
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wi7tA8xgIc&t=75s
David Skinner UK
Thanks for that David.
Hi Bill,
Douglas Murray (my name too) used to call himself a Christian, but has said he “lost his faith”, while recognizing the indisputable benefits that Christianity has brought to society and calling himself a ‘cultural’ Christian. He has said it was looking into Islam and the Qu’ran that caused him to lose his faith and thinks that all religious texts, including the Bible, have the marks of human, not divine, origin. As to whether there is a God, the last evocative statement I heard from him is that he is “living in the question”, after penning an article for The Spectator in 2009: “Studying Islam has made me an atheist”.
Douglas Murray is one of those, like Jordan Peterson”, for whom I pray regularly. I am in the process of writing him a letter outlining the “reasons for the hope that is within me”. I am praying that this will open up a correspondence.
God bless.
Well done Douglas. Yes I pray for those 2 and others daily.