A Kind Heretic Is Still A Heretic

A peculiar ritual has emerged on Sunday afternoons in online evangelical discourse. After the benediction, after the coffee, after lunch, some settle in to read David French at The New York Times. He is, after all, a self-proclaimed evangelical and political conservative (this, despite using his platform to repeatedly hector evangelicals for all their supposed shortcomings, namely, voting overwhelmingly for Donald Trump).

This past Sunday, French turned his column into something of a paean to James Talarico, the freshly minted Texas Democratic Senate nominee who has parlayed his Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary enrollment into a national brand. French called Talarico a “Christian X-ray” and reframed the country’s primary political divide not as Left versus Right but as decent versus indecent. The implication, apparently, is that a smiling seminarian who talks about love, who denies essential doctrines of the Christian faith, and who supports unfettered access to abortion and affirms gender ideology represents the decent side in opposition to “MAGA Christianity” that trades virtue for cruelty. In truth, Talarico is a walking caricature of the very worst elements of progressive Christianity, coupled with his Boy Scoutish looks and deep Southern folksiness.

To be fair to French, he does note his disagreements with Talarico. That caveat deserves acknowledgment. But a caveat buried in a column is not a serious engagement. It is a cover for a bait-and-switch that occurs later in the column. While espousing heresy is a grave error for Talarico, only slightly less severe is papering over doctrinal errors and legitimizing them on the pages of The New York Times, as French has done.

And French gets something else right before we can understand where he goes wrong. French has consistently and correctly argued that too many Christians have, at times, embraced a pragmatic ethic when evaluating Donald Trump. That is a real problem, and character defenses that are, in fact, indefensible can cheapen Christian witness. Paul’s instruction to Timothy is not optional: “Watch your life and doctrine closely” (1 Tim. 4:16). But in my estimate, I do not regard Donald Trump as a Christian (even while I maintain the importance of upholding good character for all politicians). The framing French relies upon is more acutely applied to Talarico than to Donald Trump. Doctrine and character go hand in glove. The Christian moral tradition has never treated them as divisible, even as we understand that on-the-ground politicians do not always neatly align with Christian desires. But what French is doing is far worse than the hypocrisy he accuses “MAGA Christians” of; he’s now embarking on a final phase of his transformation by downplaying doctrine and elevating practice, which is a historic trajectory seen in the journey toward theological progressivism.

And here is the difficulty. French is making, in his treatment of Talarico, the precise error he has spent years denouncing, an error that malforms Christianity as a packaged whole. He is accepting the appeal of a charming political figure while setting aside the doctrinal catastrophe underneath. He is doing with progressive Christianity exactly what he accuses MAGA Christians of doing with Donald Trump: trading away sound doctrine for the aesthetic satisfaction of a candidate who seems nicer, nay, “decent.” But consider: Talarico says, “God is non-binary.” He supports the dismemberment of unborn children in the name of reproductive freedom. He does all of this with the backing of Christian moralism. He publicly positions Christian faith as the engine for a progressive political program that would have been unrecognizable to any historic expression of the Christian tradition. This is not a candidate with some character flaws. This is a candidate whose stated theology repudiates the faith he claims to represent.

The Apostle Paul did not admonish his readers to focus solely on their ethics. He also admonished them to watch their doctrine, and to understand that the two cannot be disaggregated. Kindness is a genuine Christian virtue. It is not sufficient. A kind heretic is still a heretic. A man who speaks about Jesus with warmth while denying the moral order that Christ himself affirmed is not a Christian statesman. He is a wolf in a very well-pressed suit (Matt. 7:15). What French is doing in his column is making an unbiblical tradeoff—accepting the legitimacy of bankrupt doctrine under the ethics of character while accepting Talarico’s dubious, silver-tongued deceitfulness.

What is saddest about French’s column is not the argument itself, but what the argument reveals. There is a deep and corrosive bitterness driving it. His contempt for conservative Christians who have voted for Trump has mutated over time into something uglier: a reflexive and condescending derision of anyone who refuses to share his political judgments, dressed up as prophetic moral clarity. Let us all take a lesson that deep-seated rage at Donald Trump and his Christian supporters does not justify placating doctrinal error. When you begin describing a progressive politician who affirms abortion as a “Christian X-ray” that illuminates the failures of orthodox Christians, you have not elevated your commentary. You have descended into trollish editorializing with a more elite platform.

And here is the frustrating thing: none of this requires choosing between character and moral substance. Christians are perfectly capable of walking and chewing gum. We can and should refuse to excuse indefensible behavior from any politician, Republican or Democrat. We can acknowledge that character matters across the board. And we can simultaneously recognize that there are genuine, serious moral asymmetries between the two major party platforms on questions near and dear to evangelicals, namely abortion, human dignity, and religious liberty. Recognizing those asymmetries is not capitulation to MAGA Christianity. It is an honest moral assessment of less-than-ideal political realities.

Progressive Christianity is not Christianity. Any movement, and any thirty-something seminarian, that denies the core doctrines of the Christian faith has not offered a fresh reading of the tradition. It has departed from the tradition. The tradition has a word for that departure. It is called heresy. And anyone, including certain New York Times columnists, who aids and abets such departures by insisting they still count as authentic Christianity, is not offering serious commentary on the Christian faith. It is offering theological malpractice to a very large audience.

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Andrew T. Walker is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.