If you’ve been watching evangelicals debate the topic of Christian Nationalism over the last several weeks, you’d probably notice that there is no shortage of hypocrisy in the arena, especially in the ever-evolving landscape of Christian wokeism. While the same political moderates who’ve made it their mission in life to decry Christian nationalism—something that interestingly enough, at this point, is ill-defined at best—have no problem turning their pet political issues into matters of gospel primacy.
The same voices that regularly lecture us that Christian nationalism would ultimately fail because we don’t live in a nation of Christians have no problem lecturing us about the urgency of Christians supporting every woke cultural cause from anti-racism to climate change—and now Michael Horton, in an article at 9Marks, has joined the fray.
Horton, who went off the deep end several years ago when he began quoting Beth Moore to advance his anti-Trump views—not as a defense of Trump, but couldn’t he find someone better than a raging, anti-conservative feminist? And couldn’t he at least attempt to make a better argument against the conservative movement than by parroting left-wing talking points that Beth Moore had already regurgitated from CNN?
Apparently not, and apparently still not. In a recent article written at 9Marks titled Culture Warriors: The Good and the Bad, Horton now argues that Reformed Christians who take up the cause of environmentalism, making it a “pro-life” issue, can have legitimate, biblical reasons to do so. And after this was pointed out publicly on Twitter, the statement making that absurd case was stealthily removed. As of the time of this writing, the original paragraph can be read in Google cache, but since it will probably change too soon, we’ve provided a screenshot below:
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To clarify, Horton’s argument is not that he personally believes this is true, as he probably doesn’t. However, what he is attempting to do is obscure an act of idolatry in order to accommodate left-wing activists and integrate them into Christian circles. Similar to David Platt’s recent sermon placing far-left activist issues in what he referred to as a “third bucket” that Christians shouldn’t divide over, Horton is justifying the act of voting for Democrats, unjustifiable for a genuine believer, by trying to validate specific issues and elevate them to matters of biblical justice, such as abortion. By categorizing all these leftist pet causes, such as racism, financial disparities, and now climate change, as “gospel issues” and equating them with pro-life causes, they hope to provide a rationale for left-leaning people who identify as Christians but vote for politicians who support abortion rights and the LGBTQ community.