When Christian Decency Replaces Biblical Discernment
A candidate can be courteous, compassionate, and wrong about what the Bible says. Scripture, not political sympathy, has to settle the question.
In the October 15 episode of the Good Faith podcast, Curtis Chang asks David French what Christians should want from the November 3, 2026, midterm elections. The conversation ranges from the limits of presidential power to the state of evangelical churches, the character of candidates, and the hope of national reconciliation.
The ending is admirable. French asks Christians to pray for justice, repentance, and reconciliation. Chang points listeners to Jeremiah 29:7 and 1 Timothy 2:1–2: seek the welfare of the city, and pray for those in authority.
Christians should do both.
But the conversation exposes a problem larger than Donald Trump. Again and again, Christian political judgment is measured in the vocabulary of decency, hostility, moderation, and social harmony. Those are real concerns. They are not the standard.
Before asking whether a politician seems decent, a Christian has to ask whether what he says is true and whether what he defends is righteous. Scripture, not political sympathy, settles that.
The Candidate Who Seems Decent
French’s discussion of the Texas Senate race shows the problem plainly. He calls it the proxy election to watch, because Democrat James Talarico is running “a very faith forward campaign” while Ken Paxton and Trump have nothing to “hurl at him” but personal insults. French sums up the evangelical Talarico voters he met in his reporting this way: “I think he seems like a decent guy.” One of them told him, in French’s paraphrase, “I want to give decency a try.”
Then French says something that deserves close attention. Aiming “the insults or the theological arguments” at these voters, he says, “is totally missing the point. They don’t care about that.”
The insults are one thing. The theological arguments are another, and French sets them aside together.
He has a reason. Evangelicals who now scrutinize Talarico’s pastor, he says, spent years insisting “you’re electing a president, not a pastor” and ignoring Paula White, whom “many people would call a heretic for the prosperity gospel.” On that charge he has a point. White’s prosperity gospel is a false gospel. Chapter 20 of Confronting the World with Biblical Truth is devoted to it, and Christians who excused it because she prayed for their candidate failed the test they now want to apply to Talarico.
But inconsistency is a reason to apply the test both ways. It is not a reason to stop applying it.
There is also a legitimate distinction between the candidates’ styles. Insults are not virtues. How a candidate treats his opponents reveals his character, and Christians have no biblical permission to excuse cruelty because it comes from someone who votes the way they like.
But the examination cannot stop at demeanor, and the question is not Talarico’s pastor. A candidate who makes his faith the center of his campaign invites Christians to test it. And Talarico has not only offered a demeanor. He has offered claims about what the Bible says.
In a May interview, Talarico said, “Jesus never talks about abortion. The Bible is silent on abortion,” and he said his support for abortion rights comes “because of my faith.” He added that “we Christians have to take scripture as a whole,” and that abortion is not “a place for politicians.” His campaign platform calls for federal legislation to codify Roe v. Wade.
That is not a question of tone. It is an argument about Scripture, and it can be tested. It has two steps, and both fail.
The first step is that the Bible never addresses abortion. It is true that the Bible does not use the modern word. But the absence of a word does not settle whether an act violates God’s commands. The Bible never uses the word genocide either. The real question is whether the child in the womb is a human being, and on that question Scripture is not silent. “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you” (Jeremiah 1:5). When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, “the baby leaped in her womb” (Luke 1:41).
These passages speak of particular people—David, Jeremiah, John the Baptist. But together they share one assumption: the person in the womb is the same person who is later born, named, and called. Scripture never treats prenatal life as something less than the person it becomes. Follow the steps. God forms and knows the child before birth, so the child is a human being, not a potential one. Every human being bears the image of God (Genesis 1:27). God’s prohibition of shedding human blood rests on that image (Genesis 9:6), and among the things the Lord hates are “hands that shed innocent blood” (Proverbs 6:17). No one is more innocent than a child who has not yet drawn a breath.
The second step is that, because Christians disagree, government should stay out and leave the decision to the woman. But disagreement does not remove a duty. The question government must answer is not simply whether a woman may make decisions about her own body, but whether those decisions may lawfully include ending the life of another human being. Scripture describes the civil ruler as “God’s servant for your good” and “an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4). Government exists to protect the innocent from those who would harm them. If the unborn child is a human being, protecting him is not one disputed moral opinion imposed on others. It is the most basic thing government is for. “Rescue those who are being taken away to death” (Proverbs 24:11).
Taking Scripture “as a whole” leads to that conclusion, not away from it.
Fairness requires noting what has changed. In September, Talarico reversed his position on girls’ sports, saying he would oppose trans athletes in girls’ sports “if it risks safety or fairness,” and he has said there are two sexes, not six. A serious critic should acknowledge those statements rather than pretend nothing moved. But a change on sports does not answer the deeper claim. A candidate who tells Christian voters the Bible is silent on abortion has told them something false about what the Bible teaches.
Volume 1 of What Scripture Says takes up these questions directly in its chapters on truth, natural law, the body, sexuality, and the sanctity of life. The point is not that every Republican policy is biblical. It is that no party, and no candidate, gets to revise the moral order Scripture reveals.
Gentle Is Not the Same as True
French’s case for Talarico is not careless, and it deserves a real answer. In a March column for The New York Times, he argued that if “the primary American divide is between decent and indecent,” then “Talarico shines,” and that Talarico “acts like a Christian” in a way much of the MAGA Christian movement does not. He has also been clear that he will not question Talarico’s faith: “I’m just not writing these people out of Christianity,” he told Allie Beth Stuckey in April.
The strength of that argument is that it is partly right. Many Christians have judged politicians by policy agreement alone and excused conduct Scripture plainly condemns. Character is not a secondary concern. The Spirit’s fruit is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23), and a Christian who treats cruelty as strength has stopped measuring by Scripture.
But the answer is not to trade one standard for the other. Biblical truth and biblical character are both required, and neither can be exchanged for the other. A Christian cannot excuse Trump’s cruelty because he appointed justices who overturned Roe. Neither can a Christian excuse Talarico’s position on abortion because he is kind. The first error excuses sin because the politics are right. The second excuses falsehood because the manner is right.
No one needs to pronounce a verdict on any man’s soul to ask the question that matters for a Christian voter: is what this candidate says about Scripture true?
The temptation here is an old one. Chapter 4 of Confronting the World with Biblical Truth traces how American evangelicalism keeps renaming the same instinct—”seeker-friendly” a generation ago, “winsome” and “nuanced” today. Gentleness and wisdom are real biblical virtues. But when those words come to mean that the right tone can substitute for the right content, the labels have changed while the assumption stays the same.
Truth does not become false because it is spoken harshly, and falsehood does not become true because it is spoken gently. Scripture requires both: “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). Neither obligation cancels the other, and a kind voice does not make a false claim about the Bible partly true.
Christian Fellowship Is Not a Party Membership
French also describes political pressure inside evangelical churches. The white evangelical church, he says, has become “so intolerant to any dissent from the GOP line” that members assume a Southern Baptist or PCA member must vote Republican. He pictures it as a “seven, two, one problem”: in every ten churchgoers, two are hardcore MAGA, seven are Republican voters for whom MAGA is not their identity, and one is a dissenter. When any of the seven step out of line, the two “make their lives miserable,” and the one learns to keep quiet. French adds that when he says something “rooted in scripture, but it’s not MAGA,” he is called “a heretic, a wolf.”
His concern deserves a hearing. A church that treats loyalty to Trump as evidence of faithfulness has confused the church with a campaign. A pastor who shields a politician from legitimate criticism has failed his calling. A Christian who mistreats a brother for disagreeing about an election has not defended the gospel.
But French’s argument leaves a second danger unexamined: the habit of treating doctrinal disagreement as political intimidation.
Whether “heretic” or “wolf” is a slander or a fair warning depends on what was said, measured against Scripture, and those words should be used with care. Not every error is heresy. A brother can misread a passage, reach a wrong conclusion about a political question, or hold a mistaken view on a secondary matter and still be a faithful Christian who needs correction, not condemnation. “Heretic” belongs to denials of the faith itself. “Wolf” belongs to the kind of teacher Paul warned the Ephesian elders about: men “speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29–30). That judgment requires examining both the teaching and the teacher.
So if a man is called a wolf for doubting a candidate, his accusers have sinned against him. If he teaches something Scripture contradicts, he should be corrected from Scripture, and the seriousness of the correction should match the seriousness of the error. Neither case can be decided by asking which party he supports.
Suppose a Christian objects to a candidate’s claim that the Bible is silent on abortion. Is the objection partisan or biblical? It cannot be settled by noting that it overlaps with Republican policy. It can only be settled by examining the argument against the text.
The Bereans received the word eagerly, “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). Paul told Timothy to be “rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). Neither passage exempts influential Christian commentators whose views are described as thoughtful or compassionate.
Nor do they exempt the critic. Volume 2, Submitting the Church to Biblical Authority, turns the same question on convictions held inside the church. A tradition, a theological system, or a familiar conclusion does not become biblical because its defenders are sincere. The standard can correct me as readily as it can correct David French.
A Christian is free to disagree with Trump. A Christian is also free—and sometimes obligated—to challenge the theology of someone who opposes Trump. Neither act, by itself, is intolerance.
The Pro-Life Result That Cannot Be Ignored
Character and consequences are separate moral questions. I do not consider Trump a model of Christian virtue, and I do not excuse his speech or conduct because he has done things I favor.
He also appointed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, all three of whom joined the majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), which overturned Roe v. Wade.
Dobbs did not end abortion. It removed a federal constitutional rule invented in 1973 and returned the question to elected legislatures. A 2025 study published in JAMA estimated about 22,180 additional births through 2023 across fourteen states with complete or six-week abortion bans. Behind that number are children who were born. That deserves recognition even from Christians who strongly dislike Trump.
Acknowledging it is not worship. It is honesty about what government did and whom it affected.
The Christian’s task is to judge each policy by its substance, each official by his conduct, and each law by what God requires of civil government. None of those judgments requires declaring a candidate wholly righteous or wholly wicked.
Repentance Is Not Something the Other Side Does
French closes by praying for justice, repentance, and reconciliation. Justice, for him, means an end to corruption, lies, “unlawful and illegal wars,” the mistreatment of immigrants, and violations of the First Amendment. Repentance means “the people in MAGA” coming “to see what they’ve done” and asking “not just God, but all of us for forgiveness.”
Every item on French’s list is worth praying about. But in fifty-four minutes on what Christians should want from an election, the unborn are never mentioned. Not once. A Christian account of justice that can list immigrants and the First Amendment but not the child in the womb has left out the most defenseless neighbor government has the power to protect or to abandon (Proverbs 31:8–9).
No Christian should object to genuine repentance. But repentance is not one political faction’s surrender to another, and it is not first a matter of asking forgiveness from “all of us.” It is turning from real sin before God.
That call reaches every politician who lies, abuses power, or mistreats his neighbor. It reaches Christian leaders who excuse cruelty. It also reaches churches and Christian voices that have made peace with abortion, redefined sexual morality, or let the culture’s judgments govern how they read Scripture.
And it reaches the man writing this article. The hard test is not spotting someone else’s compromise. It is letting Scripture expose my own.
James warns against partiality (James 2:1–9). The prophets demand justice for the vulnerable, and they pronounce woe on “those who call evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20), however sympathetic the person doing it.
Reconciliation requires truth. It cannot be bought by renaming disobedience as kindness or by treating sincere disagreement as hatred.
The Question Christians Should Ask
I agree with French and Chang that Christians should want more than a partisan win. They should want justice, lawful government, repentance, and peace.
But a Christian cannot begin with Which movement feels more decent to me? The real question is What has God said?
That question is the reason What Scripture Says exists. Volume 1 brings it to the world’s conflict with biblical truth. Volume 2, forthcoming, brings it to the convictions held inside the church. The authority is the same in both.
Test the polished speaker and the angry one. Test the candidate you admire and the candidate you despise. Test the argument you have repeated for years. Test this article.
A claim does not become more biblical because it is spoken gently, or less biblical because it is unpopular. The task is to say what Scripture says—and then submit to it.
In response to Curtis Chang and David French’s October 15, 2026, Good Faith episode, “What Christians Should Want on Election Night”. For the biblical arguments in full, see Confronting the World with Biblical Truth.