According to The Guardian, more that 1,600 faith leaders in the United States have publicly backed Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate in next month’s presidential election.  Though the endorsements include Catholics and mainline Protestants, there are a surprising number of evangelical leaders who are turning away from Donald Trump.

            In the 2016 election, more than 80% of evangelicals voted for Trump, with many taking the view that his pledge to make conservative and pro-life appointments to the supreme court outweighed unease about his personal behavior.

            Times are changing, however.  A poll conducted in September found an eleven-point swing among evangelical and Catholic voters toward Biden.  A July survey found a seven-point drop in white Christian support for Trump.  And a Fox News survey in August showed 28% of white evangelicals support Biden, compared with 16% who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016.

            Seeing how Trump has honored his commitment to recommend conversative, pro-life judges to the supreme court with the appointments of Gorsuch, Cavanaugh, and Barrett, why has the evangelical support for Trump dipped?  Apparently, abortion is not the litmus test that it was in 2016.  Indeed, there is now a group called Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden.  Their argument is that though they disagree with his stance on abortion, they “believe on [the] balance, Joe Biden’s policies are more consistent with the biblically shaped ethic of life than those of Donald Trump.” Similarly, Ronald Sider, president emeritus of Evangelicals for Social Action, said, “Poverty, racism, lack of healthcare and climate change are all ‘pro-life’ issues.”

            In response, let me begin by saying that I emphatically do not endorse everything about Donald Trump.  I am often offended by his profanity and crassness.  I believe that it is always right to be a gentleman, and I have to admit that our president has not always behaved as such.  I believe that our vice president has marvelously demonstrated that a person can contend for truth without being contentious. My regrets go even deeper.  I am disturbed by some skeletons in our president’s not-too-distant past.  His marital track record, his bankruptcies, and his egotism are certainly not the character traits I would like to see in my children and their children.  

That all having been said, however, a vote for Joe Biden is not a step toward high moral ground.  After serving with several crisis pregnancy centers and motivating various churches to invest thousands of dollars into pro-life causes, there is no way I can in good conscience pull the lever for a pro-choice candidate.  Here are three reasons why.

The Priority of Ethics

            When Justice Blackmun wrote the Roe v. Wade decision, he found in the prohibition against the forced quartering of troops a veiled “right to privacy.”  The government did not have the right to step into the private decisions of its citizens.  Thus, a woman has a fundamental right to choose.  The problem, of course, is that this “right to choose” is exercised against someone else’s “right to life.”  There may indeed be a right to privacy, but this right must be subordinated to a more fundamental right to live.  My zeal for privacy cannot be exercised at the expense of someone else’s right to exist.  Without a right to life, there is no right to privacy.

            It appears to me that these evangelicals who have abandoned Trump have not properly prioritized their ethics.  When we label “poverty, racism, healthcare, and climate change” as pro-life issues, our priorities are skewed.  Issues that affect the quality of life can never be given precedent over the fact of life.  These quality of life issues have no meaning if life can be arbitrarily snuffed out by the choice of another.  Our ethics must be prioritized.  And the right to live is more fundamental than the issues that these socially conscious evangelicals are raising.

The Personhood of the Embryo

            Justice Blackmun obviously understood that his discovered right to privacy could only be used to support abortion on demand if he somehow argued that an embryo was not fully human.  We would hope that no one would take seriously that a right to choose supersedes a right to live.  Therefore, he had to argue that whatever exists in the mother’s womb is not fully “life.”  Blackmun argued that the fetus could not be fully human because it had not yet reached a stage of viability.

            This is both scientifically and Biblically false.  We declare a person to have died when there is no detectable heartbeat or no measurable brain wave.  The aborted child has both.  All of the DNA structure of personhood is in an unborn child from the moment of conception.  Numerous abortionists, both former and present, will attest that they can see the unborn child recoil from the extermination procedures being inflicted.  To argue that the fetus is not a real person is to fly in the face of scientific evidence.

            Moreover, the Bible never even uses the words fetus, embryo, or even pregnancy.  The Bible speaks of a woman being “with child.”  The characteristics of the unborn child in Psalm 139, the call of Jeremiah in the womb in Jeremiah 1, and the cheering of John the Baptist in the womb in Luke 1 all reveal that the Bible places no dichotomy between personhood inside the womb and out.  To argue that a woman has a right to have an abortion is to argue that she has the right to take the life of her own child.

The Purpose of Elections

            The Bible is clear that the purpose of government is to praise those who do well and punish evildoers (I Peter 2:14).  It would seem reasonable, then, that government officials know the difference between the two.  And when those who live within republics are afforded the opportunity to elect their own government officials, they should elect those who are committed to Biblical values.

            It seems reasonable that if one is elected to help create a better quality of life (I Timothy 2:2), it might be helpful if he could properly define life.  Unfortunately, abortion has been tolerated in our land for so long, the church is losing its nerve with regard to this most fundamental issue.  Apparently, some evangelicals are not bothered that Joe Biden is committed to protect legislation that allows for the extermination of unborn children.  I, for one, say that such a candidate does not receive my vote or endorsement. 

            Abortion is still a litmus test for me, and despite all of his flaws, Donald Trump has remained true to his commitment to protect unborn innocent life.  Therefore, he gets my vote in November.