Albert Mohler and Russell Moore on Why Christians Should Not Vote for Trump

From Shane Vander Hart:

Last month Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, was part of a panel discussion during a Baptist21 event and he was asked about the election, what were first, second and third tier issues, and if evangelicals have always voted for the candidate that says they are pro-life and appoint conservative Supreme Court justices.

No, no, that is not what we have always done. What we have always done is vote in a fallen world for fallen candidates in a fallen political construct and done the best we could….

…. Yes I think the life issue is paramount, not stand alone, but is paramount. It is single issue dispositive to use the language of political science. I could not vote for someone that I believe would do any action that would expand the murder of the unborn or the assault upon the human dignity and sanctity of a single human life – period. So I go into the voting booth saying I can not vote for a candidate. That’s not enough. There is a difference between being single-issue dispositive and single-issue sufficient. Those are two separate things. Character is an indispensable issue.

The first time I met Bill Clinton was hours after I had been on the O’Reilly Factor calling on him to resign, and that was a quintessential awkward moment, but I was right in terms of the issues. But I could not possibly be consistent and somehow vote for someone whose character I believe eclipses Bill Clinton on so many of those very same concerns. Someone who has bragged about his adulterous affairs, someone who has given himself to the pornographic industry, basically to a form of the sex trade, and let’s just go on. In other words, I can’t being single-issue dispositive does not give an adequate political grid for when you go out. Because character is pretty much and also how prolife someone supposedly is after being so pro-abortion that they actually supported partial birth abortion.

So I find myself in a situation I never envisioned in my life as a Christian or as an American, but I am going to have to be Christian in order to be a faithful American. So I am going to find myself unable to vote for either of those two choices of our two major political parties. (emphasis added)

Dr. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, concurred.

Yes, I will be writing in a candidate this year and the reason for that is simple. The life issue can not flourish in a culture of misogyny and sexual degradation. The life issue can not flourish when you have people calling for the torture and murder of innocent non-combatants. The life issue can not flourish when you have people who have given up on the idea that character matters. If you lose an election you can live to fight another day and move on, but if you lose an election while giving up your very soul then you have really lost it all, and so I think the stakes are really high.

And I think the issue, particularly, when you have people who have said, and we have said, and I have said for twenty years the life issue matters, and the life issue is important… When you have someone who is standing up race baiting, racist speech, using immigrants and others in our communities in the most horrific ways and we say ‘that doesn’t matter’ and we are part of the global body of Christ simply for the sake of American politics, and we expect that we are going to be able to reach the nations for Christ? I don’t think so, and so I think we need to let our yes be yes and our no be no and our never be never. (emphasis added)