DeMar’s Political Rhetoric Contradicts His Professed Theology

The lesser of two evils franchise will say that they will be “sending a message.” Yeah, that they’re idiots.

Gary DeMar has escalated his rhetoric against those of us who disagree with his neocon rhetoric and his blind commitment to the Republican Party. In previous articles he only implied that we were idiots. He now says it directly.

I am, of course, one of those idiots. But I am not important. There are others before me.

Gary North is an idiot too, according to DeMar. It was Gary North who most eloquently laid out the arguments against which DeMar reacted in the above article. (See here and here.)

R.J. Rushdoony was an idiot too, for he commented that if we vote for the same people and we get conned over and over again, then something is radically wrong with us. (See here.) Yet DeMar insists that we should ignore the fact that we’ve been conned by the Republicans over and over again and keep voting for them.

Mark Rushdoony, R.J.’s son and heir, and President of Chalcedon Foundation, is a member of our club of idiots. Not to mention those who work for Chalcedon, paid staff and volunteers.

Joel McDurmon, Director of Research at DeMar’s American Vision, must be an idiot too, for he makes it very clear in his articles he is not buying into voting for the lesser of two evils either. Idiots are also the majority of those working at American Vision whom I know personally, including some members on the board.

Pastor Joe Morecraft III, whose political activity has never been inconsistent with his confession of faith, must be an idiot too.

Jerry Johnson at NiceneCouncil.com is another idiot. (Knowing Jerry, he won’t object; he’ll just give different reasons why he is one.)

Douglas Wilson who declared he is not voting for Romney must be an idiot, by DeMar’s standards.

The list can be extended to many other Christian pastors and leaders in areas like education, business, economics, media, etc., men and women of high reputation and consistent moral positions throughout their lives. They are all idiots. Add to it thousands of readers and followers and sponsors of DeMar’s American Vision. Add to it anywhere between one-third and one-half of the Tea Party Movement who still remember why we started the Tea Party in the first place, back in 2007. (Hint: It wasn’t to vote neocon socialists in power, not at all.)

In one sentence, DeMar declared all these friends, coworkers, followers, etc., to be his enemies. We are all idiots.

He’s never used such language before. In fact, he has always been against such language. This is the first time he makes the move to openly insult so many people for disagreeing with him.

This reveals he is desperate. I don’t know the reason for that desperation, and I don’t know what led to it. I can only tell this article marks a new stage in DeMar’s political rhetoric. I can only guess about the reasons. In our personal conversations in the past DeMar liked to say that using arguments is better than using pejoratives. The logical conclusion from his own words is that he has run out of arguments. Pejoratives is all he has now, to defend his political rhetoric.

And indeed, as I pointed before, Gary DeMar’s defense of his voting for Romney in his articles in the last months is lacking what his books of before have in abundance: Logical arguments. I have pointed before that lack of logical consistency. The trend continues. In an article a week before the above mentioned, he exhibits the same lack of logical thinking again. He calls Ron Paul’s supporters “wimps.” Why? Because they have left the Republican Party. Gary’s argument is that if there’s an exodus, the people who participate in it must be wimps. They should have stayed and tried to change things. He avoids applying the same argument across the board, consistently. Was Moses a wimp for leading the Exodus? After all, he could have stayed back in Egypt and tried to change the things there. Were the American Patriots wimps for seceding from the British Empire? Couldn’t they remain and try to change the Empire, through one of the two parties in the Parliament? Are homeschoolers wimps for taking their kids out of the public schools? Indeed, they are often accused by the public school advocates that they do not stay back and try to change the public schools. Gary doesn’t go to that logical end of his own argument. He is more concerned with preserving the political legitimacy of the Republican Party than with justice and righteousness. He doesn’t even respond to Joel McDurmon’s argument that “only a fool plays against a stacked deck.” No, DeMar wants the Ron Paul supporters to stay and play against a stacked deck, to support with their votes a system that is geared to use them for its own purposes while depriving them of choice and representation.

Neither is he any more logical in this article where he calls us “idiots.” He never really tries to prove his claim that the issue is “voting for the lesser of two evils.” He just takes it for granted and writes as if everyone agrees with him. DeMar doesn’t even stop to think that there are no two evils, there is only one evil, Romney/Obama, and voting for either is voting for that one evil. This is his greatest logical fallacy. And there are many more, if one cared to spend the effort to document them. Like I said before, seems like Gary’s political articles are not written by him but by a proxy who has no idea of logic, and no idea of writing either.

But his greatest problem is not his logical fallacies. His greatest problem is his own professed theology. In the last several years, in his political rhetoric, DeMar went straight against his own writings of the past, negating everything he taught others about theology, and about how his theology applies to our cultural endeavors, and especially to our political actions. He has written on the application of Gospel to politics before, and many of us have learned from him. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have learned from his own writings.

I know many will criticize me for this article, not because what I say is not true but because I am not supposed to criticize a Christian celebrity. I disagree with that. Christian celebrities should be criticized more than anyone else, in obedience to the Biblical principle, “To whom much is given, much shall be required of him.” They must be criticized even by their closest associates and followers. This is the principle of accountability, applied in the case of those who were given authority and influence in the church. Error must be exposed, and we shouldn’t remain silent in the face of it, even when it comes from those most responsible for our training and growth. And I am not planning on remaining silent. While I was writing this, a friend of mine told me the following: “Whether you write it or not, Romney will lose, and he will lose big time. And, mark my words, the day after Romney loses, DeMar will be writing articles mocking Romney, and wondering how in the world the Republicans picked him for their candidate.” That may well be true. But my point is not DeMar and his political rhetoric. My point is the theological betrayal he exhibits. It is even more important because DeMar is not the only postmillennial theonomist who exhibits this kind of treachery. There are others with him, well-known Christian Reconstructionist authors who are taking the same path of sacrificing their theological commitments on the altar of political expediency. This kind of betrayal should be called out for what it is, and opposed by all true Christians. A man must be held accountable, always, whether he is a celebrity or not.

The Sovereignty of God

Once upon a time, Gary DeMar believed that the first and foremost principle for Christian political action is the Sovereignty of God. He said in his book on God and Government:

All discussion of the duties of citizenry and those called to minister in the civil sphere must begin with the Sovereign God of Scripture. [1]

The fact of God’s Sovereignty over the affairs of men must control all our actions. It is not just a passive sovereignty in the sense that men can do what they please, and God’s Sovereignty is expressed in being the invisible backdrop for men’s sovereign actions. For a political action to be a legitimate Christian political action, it must be self-consciously based first and foremost on the question: “What is God’s will for a situation like this?”

When this first question is omitted from our political thinking and action, sovereignty as a concept does not disappear. As R.J. Rushdoony has shown so many times, once we exclude the Sovereignty of God from our cultural practice, another sovereignty takes its place: the sovereignty of the state. That is, the alternative to the Sovereignty of God in politics is statism. If we do not self-consciously ask ourselves the question of “What is God’s will?”, anything we do will eventually lead to us doing the will of man, or, rather, the will of man’s most powerful institution, the state.

DeMar agrees with this in his book on Biblical principles for government, Ruler of the Nations. He says the following:

The rejection of this first principle substitutes the supposed transcendence of the State for the transcendence of God. The State demands obedience by denying God or acting in a neutral way toward Him. This is called “statism.” The State is a substitute deity. [2]

But if the State is a substitute deity, and if there is no neutrality, as DeMar himself claims in that same book, then a self-conscious rejection is not necessary to lead to statism. All we need is to avoid making God and His will our starting point. Once we do that, we have by default become statists, whether we are aware of it or not, or whether we admit it or not.

The most conspicuous characteristic of DeMar’s writings in defense of his neocon rhetoric is the absence of any positive reference to the Sovereignty of God or to God’s will as expressed in Scripture.

DeMar’s opponents, those who vote for Ron Paul, or simply refuse to vote for Romney or for the Republican Party, have quite logical, positive, Bible-based arguments for their positions. The main one of those arguments is the position of Biblical qualifications for rulers. Christians are supposed, according to this view, to support only those who are Biblically qualified for political positions. (As we will see below, this was also DeMar’s earlier position, when he wrote Ruler of the Nations.) While I disagree somewhat with this position, I must say that it is a self-conscious attempt to build a positive, Bible-based blueprint for political action; there is a very significant element of acknowledging God’s Sovereignty, and applying it to our political actions. Another position – to which I subscribe – is that God has a specific will for specific generations which must be our guidance for our political actions (1 Chr. 12:32; Acts 13:36). This is not to say that God has different laws for different generations, it is to say that He has different enemies that need to be opposed and destroyed. This is also a position that is positively based on the idea of the Sovereignty of God and what it means for our political action. Another position is that of Christian Libertarianism: very often misrepresented and maligned by neocons like DeMar but solidly based on the Biblical ideal for society and civil government. Christian libertarians refuse to vote for someone, whether he is Christian or not, who has proven that he would only increase the government violation of our God-given liberties.

DeMar’s main argument for voting for Romney is none of these. His main argument, to which he resorts every time, is how bad Obama is. There is no positive injunction that DeMar can show from the Bible as to why we should vote for Romney – or why we should vote at all, for that matter. There is no Biblical reference to the Sovereignty of God and how it requires that we vote for a socialist, pro-abort, cultist liar. The first and foremost argument is: Fear Obama, and therefore vote for Romney. DeMar goes into minutest details about Obama’s real and perceived Marxism, or into what this or that part of Obama’s speeches might mean for the future of America. He uses his best skills to paint a grim picture of what America could be if Obama is re-elected. He never makes the effort to do the same for Romney, given that Romney’s record is much worse than Obama’s, in all respects. DeMar is only content to mention in passim that he knows Romney is not the best candidate, and then returns again to his detailed horror story of what might happen under Obama’s second term. The bias is obvious, and the bias is based on one single propagandist technique: Fear.

Fear of man, thus, rather than fear of God, is DeMar’s first and foremost principle of political action, at least in the last several months. He never stops to consider what the Sovereignty of God means for our voting or other human activity. “Obama is bad, vote for Romney.” This is in contradiction to what DeMar wrote in the past, and what he taught in the past. His political rhetoric has nothing to do with the principles of the Christian Reconstruction; it is thoroughly humanist in its very foundation, for it is based on fear of man rather than fear of God.

But the statism in DeMar’s political rhetoric is not just indirect, following by default from his omission of the Sovereignty of God as the foundational principle of his position. It is also very direct, active statism, a deliberate defense of a centralized state with a non-Christian ruler on the top of it, as an issue of “pragmatic” or “practical” politics. This direct defense of statism is present by bits and pieces in all of DeMar’s political articles in the last several months; but it is directly evident in James Jordan’s essay on why it is OK for a Christian to vote for Romney, which DeMar published, and expressed his agreement with it.

In that essay, Jordan uses the Biblical examples of Joseph, Daniel, and Mordecai in support of his advice to his Christian readers to vote for Romney. Now, these three Biblical examples have three characteristics in common: 1) covenant-keeping men placed in position of authority, 2) in a centralized state, 3) over predominantly pagan population in a culture which is originally – or, “constitutionally” – set up as an explicitly pagan society. Jordan claims that these examples give him the right to defend 1) placing a covenant-breaking man (a professed cultist) in authority 2) in a decentralized (by Constitution) society, 3) over population which in its majority is professedly Christian, and a society which (by DeMar’s claims) was originally founded upon Christian foundation. (See Benjamin Morris’s book on The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States, published by American Vision and highly advertised and praised by DeMar.) Jordan ignores characteristics 1) and 3) of his Biblical examples, and focuses on 2), insisting that there is nothing wrong for Christians to vote for and support a centralized state over a Christian population. Obviously, Jordan has his priorities, and they do not include covenant-keeping men in authority; the priority is defending the centralized state. Very actively and purposefully, he defends statism, and not even statism under Christian rulers. A cult-member would do very well, as long as the concept of centralized state is defended.

And DeMar agrees with Jordan, if we take his own words. Statism is not just indirect and passively lurking behind his writings; it is a self-conscious, purposeful defense of a centralized socialist state led by Republicans in the name of protecting us from a centralized socialist state led by Democrats.

Representation and Institutions in Society

God delegates sovereignty to men. He does this directly, for all men are created in His image. He also does this through government: some men become God’s representatives in His ordained hierarchies. God establishes plural hierarchies. [3]

DeMar says this in his book Ruler of the Nations, in the chapter on “Reconstructing Civil Government.” He is correct. First, God does delegate sovereignty to men, and He does it directly. And there are plural hierarchies which means that God doesn’t work through one institution only. Neither the state nor the church, nor the family can claim to be God’s distributor of authority on earth. There is separation of powers, but that separation is between the different institutions in the society – family, church, state, and voluntary associations.

And men are representatives of God in those hierarchies. If they are covenant-keepers, of course. Others, the covenant-breakers, are representatives of Satan, and of evil.

It is here where Gary DeMar commits his most serious blunder in his political rhetoric, a blunder that would have disqualified him completely as a Reformed teacher and author if it wasn’t for his previous writings. (And it would disqualify other Reformed teachers who also, like DeMar, use total depravity as an excuse to vote for evil.) That blunder is inexplicable when it comes from a man who has spent his life teaching others the Reformed doctrines, and writing books on some of the most important points of the Christian theology. If it were to be explained, it would either lead us to the conclusion that DeMar never really understood the theology of the Reformation in general and its doctrines of grace in particular, or that he deliberately dumped his convictions when he started his involvement in the political arena.

The blunder is this, from one of his articles:

You’ve heard anti-Republican critics say, “I just can’t vote for the lesser of two evils.” If this is true, then you can never vote since we’re all evil, although some are more evil than others. I have a number of Calvinist friends who use the “lesser of two evils” argument. If you know anything about Calvinism, then you know the acronym TULIP. The “T” in Tulip stands for Total Depravity. It also goes by the names total inability or total corruption. It’s not that a person is pure depravity but that all his actions and thoughts are tainted by evil. Sin has corrupted every part of our being.

This means that any choice of a political candidate is a lesser of two totally depraved people. The people that say they will not vote for the lesser of two evils will get one of the two evils whether they vote or not.

In other words, Gary is saying, we can never make a good choice in this world because whatever choice we make will have to deal with the total depravity of man, and therefore will be evil. All we can hope for, when it comes to man, is to choose the lesser of two evils. It gets even worse. Since God delegates sovereignty to men, as I quoted from DeMar above, and since these men are all depraved, God also makes that choice between two evils, and He chooses the lesser evil.

And since history is the conflict between the kingdom of Satan and the Kingdom of God, and that conflict is between the representatives of those two kingdoms, and we know that these representatives are all depraved, therefore history is not the cosmic conflict between good and evil but between a greater evil and a lesser evil. That conflict is not ethical, defined in absolute ethical terms anymore: it would have been if we had perfectly good people on one side and perfectly bad people on the other. But since we have depraved people on both sides, the best we can say about the two warring kingdoms is that they are just different degrees of evil. After all, it is the depravity of the participants that defines the ethical value of the conflict, and they are all depraved.

Thus, DeMar’s use of the concept of total depravity negates the absolute ethical conflict between the two kingdoms and introduces ethical relativism. Since we are all depraved, none of the sides can claim God – Who is ultimately good – on its side. We now do politics as Christians in the name of the lesser evil, knowing our own depravity. But why stop there? We should evangelize in relative terms too, under the same principle; we should call people to the lesser of two evils, for we can never promise them that they will cease being depraved even when they repent. DeMar says in his books that Christians should speak and witness to rulers, in the area of politics and justice; but on what basis? On the basis that we are the lesser of two evils? Since we can’t claim God on our side – we are evil, y’know, and God is good – we are now reduced to proving that we are really the lesser evil. We can’t even rebuke sinners for their sin. The sinners have a ready response: “Don’t rebuke me just because I sin differently than you.” Then we are left to explain why our different sinning is actually the lesser sinning, and not the greater sinning. DeMar is leading his listeners on the path to ethical relativism.

And guess what: That ethical relativism, when developed to its logical end, will end up in the pit of the Two Kingdoms Theology. For indeed, the Two Kingdoms theologians do use the same argument of the lesser of two evils – albeit reversed – to explain why Christians shouldn’t take positions of political authority. Al Mohler, Peter Wehner, David VanDrunen, John Macarthur, R. Scott Clark, Michael Horton, they have all argued in one form or another that Christians in power have actually done greater evil than the unbelievers, and under the principle of the lesser of two evils, the rule of the land should be left to the covenant-breakers. With his use of the total depravity argument, DeMar is destroying the fruit of decades of his own labor and effort, and conceding his position to his ideological opponents.

The theologically consistent answer to that argument is this: TULIP is more than just the “T.” There is Election, there is Atonement, there is Grace, and there is Perseverance. A depraved man is not evil, even if he still has the inclination to do evil – which is the definition of depravity. Once he is elected, justified, and restored, God looks to that man as good, not evil, for He sees in him the goodness of Christ. This is a basic Christian doctrine, emphasized and expounded upon in detail by the Reformers. Today, we call that doctrine the Sovereignty of Grace, meaning that Grace trumps all depravity and all sin (Rom. 5:15-21). Therefore, even if all men are depraved, we elect between evil men and good men, and we know the good men by their open declaration of faith in Christ, like Ron Paul did, being the only candidate who had a profession of orthodox Christian faith on his web-site, and a life of consistent ethical record (perseverance) to back it. Electing professing Christians with proven ethical record to positions of power is choosing good over evil.

And DeMar knows it. He ended Chapter 7 of Ruler of the Nations with a paragraph of one sentence that said simply:

Christians should support qualified Christian leaders.

And in case someone asked what that meant, the last point of the summary in the same chapter states:

26. Leaders should be elected because of their righteous behavior.

Neither of these statements supports DeMar’s current political rhetoric in favor of Romney.

In politics, as well in everything else, men do not represent themselves; and therefore their depravity is not an issue. They represent one of the two ethical kingdoms, that of Satan and that of Christ. It is this representation which defines the good side and the evil side in the cultural conflict, not the individual inclination to evil in the individual participants. When David declared himself “blameless” before God (Ps. 18:23), it wasn’t because David was not depraved but because God “took” him (v. 16). We are considered good or evil based not on our inclination to do good or evil but on which kingdom we represent. The issue of representation is the issue in politics, and in anything else in the cultural war. “Whose side are you on?”, is the question (Joshua 5:13). The question is never, “Are you morally perfect?”

Here is an example of the difference between focusing on the spiritual condition of people and their covenantal representation for one of the two kingdoms. If a Hindu who is spiritually more perfect and less inclined to sin than DeMar applies to become the President of American Vision, by the doctrine of the lesser of two evils, DeMar should step down and let the Hindu take over. Why? Because all men are depraved, but in this particular situation the Hindu is the lesser evil. But a true Calvinist, knowing the teaching of the Covenant of God, will insist that the President of AV be a Christian, that is, a representative of Christ.

A Calvinist knows this very, very well. It is a fundamental doctrine in the Reformed theology, the imputed righteousness of Christ, and the principle of representation. Either DeMar never understood the basics of his professed theology, or he deliberately rejects them in favor of political expediency. Gary DeMar, in his political rhetoric, uses the doctrine of Total Depravity as a behaviorist who views depravity as the essential nature of man, not as a Reformed theologian who understands Covenant Theology and the power of regeneration through the Spirit of God.

But if in politics, as in everything else, men are representatives of one of the two kingdoms, then the choice can not be between two evils but between good and evil. And those who represent the kingdom of Satan must be considered evil, period. And if both Romney and Obama by their professed faiths, their policies, and their ideologies are representatives of statism, socialism, and anti-Christianity, then we can’t look at them as two evils but as one evil which has two representatives. It makes then just as much sense to choose between them as it makes sense to choose the lesser evil between Baal and Molech. From a covenantal perspective, DeMar’s “two evils” are actually one evil. He is committed to prove that there is a choice. But there isn’t. If the system is rigged to have the same evil win in either case, then the system offers no choice. DeMar desperately wants to believe that it still offers such a choice. His whole political rhetoric is not so much because he believes Romney is the good guy, or that he represents the Kingdom of God, not at all. DeMar just wants to believe that there is choice, and that we can do something through the Presidency. The reality is, the very institution and the system behind it have become evil.

So, then, what do we do? Do we abandon the fight? DeMar criticizes those who won’t vote in the Presidential elections that they have abandoned the fight; somehow voting for “our” side of that evil is “participating in the fight.” That is because he forgets his own writings in the past, where he has much better solutions than voting for evil. For there he has the solution, and the solution is Biblical, covenantal, and Reformed:

The State is not synonymous with society. Society is much broader: associations, churches, schools, families, etc. In effect, “we” are not “the government.” The government is simply an agency of force that has the power of the sword. It receives this power from God, but also through lawfully constituted transfers of power from the people. If people refuse to submit, no king can rule. [4]

Obviously, if one of those powers in the society – the Presidency – has fallen in the hands of the enemy to the point of where we have no legal way of electing a representative of Christ there, the solution is not to elect there the representative of Satan who seems “less evil.” The solution is to continue the fight in those areas of civil government and other governments as well, where we can still have the right people elected, or can establish a godly government. Neither the Dutch Calvinists in the 1570s nor the English Puritans in the 1640s had the opportunity to elect their heads of state. But they acted through lower level hierarchies in church and state, and succeeded. A moral compromise on a higher level may make it impossible for us to convince the majority of the people that we would be uncompromising on lower levels of civil government. If DeMar is willing to vote for a Mormon to be President, it will mean that he would be willing to surrender his vote to the enemy at every level. Why should anyone trust him on state or county level then? But if the highest office in the land is out of reach for Christians because the system has disenfranchised them, then voting for the “choice” of the system would not change the situation but will only legitimize the system. We have better things to do with our votes.

The solution is obvious, and DeMar has written about it before, but for some reason he does not go back to his earlier writings. In his political rhetoric, he rejects his professed theology. He argues as if he doesn’t believe in the Sovereignty of Grace, and as if he doesn’t believe in covenantal representation, and as if he doesn’t believe in the principle of multiple hierarchies as checks and balances to each other.

To the Law and the Testimony!

There was time in the past when Gary DeMar understood the doctrine of the Total Depravity to have exactly the opposite meaning to what he uses it for today. In God and Government he said the following:

The theological shift from theocentric Puritanism to Arminianism clouded the potential secularization inherent in the depravity of man. Puritanism understood the pervasive depravity of man while Arminianism downplayed human depravity and asserted man’s self-sufficiency. In time, the seeds of Arminianism grew and bore its rotten fruit. [5]

We need to pay attention to his words because they give us a very important lesson: the true – that is, the Puritan – understanding of human depravity should lead us to rely more on God in our political activities. When human depravity is being downplayed – as Arminians do – then human self-sufficiency is asserted.

How does that work out in practice?

Obviously, a Puritan society which has the proper view of human depravity, will also have the proper view of God’s grace and the sovereignty of God’s grace. And therefore a Puritan society will look to appoint godly leaders. An Arminian society will look at man as self-sufficient, and therefore would not worry about the godliness of its leaders; some general morality would suffice.

DeMar used to side with the Puritans on this issue. Like I mentioned above, he did believe that “Christians should support qualified Christian leaders,” and that “Leaders should be elected because of their righteous behavior.”

The question now is: How do we know righteous behavior from unrighteous behavior?

DeMar knew the answer, in his past. He explained in Ruler of the Nations that we know a righteous leader by their fear of the Lord, which DeMar translated as being willing to obey the Law of God. Not only in their personal lives, but also in their political actions:

Fourth, we must elect public officials who say they will vote for Biblical laws. [6]

He said the main thing is voting against abortion. But in the context of his books other Biblical laws about politics also are laid out as important. Limited constitutional government, free markets, protection of the family, restitution for crime – all these are Biblical laws which a civil ruler must vow to uphold and enforce in order to get support from Christians. While it is true that rulers seldom have such high standard for themselves, at least the theological commitment to God must be there, and therefore the ideological commitment to fear and obey Him in their political actions.

Here’s DeMar again, from God and Government:

The ethical leads to the practical. For example, how does a voter know whether a political candidate reflects biblical moral behavior? “You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). We should see their ethics worked out in everyday situations. Ethics, then, must be made visible. A voter should not simply trust a politician’s position on an issue. His voting record and his lifestyle should be open for all to see. The individual who is scrupulous in personal, family, and business affairs will gain positions of leadership if the citizenry respects such behavior. Unfortunately, the immorality in civil government is a reflection of immorality in self, family, and church governments. [7]

In fact, not only did DeMar believe that righteous behavior as defined by the Law of God must be the standard, but also that a theological commitment to the Law of God must be the standard. Simple morality won’t suffice. On page 67-69 of Theonomy: An Informed Response DeMar criticizes the Moral Majority for abandoning their original theological commitment:

Near the end of Carter’s presidency, Rev. Falwell cranked up the Moral Majority. In the beginning, his message was guided by what the Bible had to say. In an “I Love America” rally, Falwell counseled the crowd to use “theological considerations” in their choice of candidates: “If a man stands by this book [holding up a Bible], vote for him. If he doesn’t, don’t.” Falwell could not defend this position in terms of the generally accepted doctrine of religious pluralism and his own separatist Baptist background. In time, however, the message of the Moral Majority became dross.

• Moral Majority is a political organization and is not based on theological considerations.

• The battle against humanism … is not theological; it is moral. [8]

He ended the passage with the following indictment against Moral Majority:

With a moral rather than a biblical common denominator the Moral Majority sounded like every other advocate touting the virtues of “morality.” And these non-religious moral advocates were seen as less strident, and there was no need to repent and trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

In other words, DeMar advocated Biblical, theologically faithful principle for political action and voting, based not on some general notion of morality but on the Law of God. At the time he wrote his books, he didn’t advocate any “lesser of two evils” tactics. To the contrary, all of DeMar’s writings concerning political action and voting were invariably focused on the Law of God as the only standard for political righteousness.

And that was in agreement with what Rushdoony said when commenting on Exodus 18:13-27:

Finally, an important point must be made in respect to God’s qualification for judges, God’s Law, and the Biblical requirement for social order. There is in Scripture an essential relationship between law and morality. [italics mine—B.M.] In the modern world, there is virtually none; the essence of statist law is enactment or legality. There is also an hostility to any moral critique of the law in terms of God’s Word. . . .

As against the Biblical requirements for a judge, as cited in vv. 21-22 and elsewhere in the law, the statist requirement is increasingly in favor of a party hack for whom justice is the will of his class or his political party. Justice in such states is steadily replaced by the will of some men. [9]

These days of understanding the meaning of the Law of God to our modern civil government and political action are gone. DeMar’s political rhetoric today rejects what he and other Christian Reconstructionist authors have said in the past. His only criterion today for voting for a candidate – and encouraging others to vote for a candidate – is that that candidate is “not Obama.” Fear of man, rather than fear of God, is DeMar’s guiding political principle.

He readily admits that Romney is not qualified. But he never goes into detail about why Romney is not qualified. There is much to be said there, and if DeMar is going to encourage people to vote for Romney, honesty requires that he does a meticulous scrutiny of Romney’s real beliefs and record, instead of only talking about Obama’s beliefs and political record. After all, no one of his readers is planning to vote for Obama; the question is, “Should we vote for Romney or not?” But in his answer to this question, DeMar deliberately avoids any mention of Romney’s record or Romney’s qualities. There is nothing positive he can say about Romney; so instead of giving an honest account, DeMar always redirects the discussion to Obama.

Here, in DeMar’s rhetoric, we see that theological shift from Puritanism to Arminianism: A man is self-sufficient morally, and there is no need for theological scrutiny of a candidate. DeMar has abandoned the call for looking at the “righteous behavior” of those he supports for leaders. No discussion of Romney’s behavior, and no discussion of Romney’s political actions in the past. He claims in one of his articles that Romney has “policies closer to the Biblical values.” He doesn’t explain how a Mormon can have policies closer to the Biblical values; apparently, DeMar is making the same mistake he criticized in Moral Majority: the separation of theology and morality. And of course, if theology and morality are separated in a politician, the only testimony we as Christians give to the unbelieving world would be, as DeMar himself said about Moral Majority, that “there is no need to repent and trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ.”

And as R.J. Rushdoony said about the end result of it, such separation of theology and morality eventually brings to power a party hack for whom justice is the will of the party.

DeMar is voting for such a party hack, and is asking others to do so.

Rewards and Punishments

What Christians seldom understand is that all of life is essentially a law court. [10]

Bingo. Yes, all of life is a law court. And, in this law court, God is the Supreme Judge. And we are judges too. Lesser judges. And we are also witnesses, for the prosecution. But what are we to witness to?

DeMar had an answer, in the past:

God tells His people to be witnesses for Him throughout the world. But to what are Christians to witness? The answer is simple: they are to witness to the faithfulness of God’s holy Word, the Bible. When a Christian presents the gospel of salvation through faith in Christ to someone, he is witnessing for Christ. He presents the testimony of the Biblical account of sin and redemption. But what does this account involve? The Christian is to witness to the truth of the whole Bible. He does this when he testifies to the rule of God over His creation, the responsibilities that men have to God and other men, and the law of God as the proper blueprint of such personal and governmental responsibility. [11]

“And the Law of God as the proper blueprint for such personal and governmental responsibility.” Very clear: All life is a law court, and therefore in everything we do we must witness for God and His Law. Including in our voting. The first part of that witnessing, of course, is our confession of faith. We can not witness for God unless we confess Jesus Christ. Then comes our practical living as Christians. While we can never be perfect in this life, we can still give a testimony of a life which is controlled by righteousness, not by sin. And third, we witness through our cultural practices, policies, voting, business, and any other participation in the culture in general.

But our work in that immense law court called “life” is not limited to our personal witnessing. We are also judges, and we are supposed to judge the testimony of others. We can never judge perfectly, but through the Spirit of God, we can declare judgment on the testimony and the work of other people, and either rejoice in their spiritual growth and righteousness, or correct them for their error or their sins (1 Cor. 6:1-11). And as judges, we must be very careful not to subsidize iniquity, and not to miss commending any good work. We do that to our children every day. We need to do the same to our brothers in the church every day. And we need to do that to those in the culture around us, Christians or non-Christians, and to all organizations and institutions. Any good confession, work, and cultural activity must be encouraged and supported by Christians, as part of our testimony for God; and any wicked confession, work, and cultural activity must be criticized, denounced, and opposed by Christians, as part of our judgment on the world through the Spirit. And our standard must not be relative; we must use the Word of God as our foundation, not try to find out who of the candidates is less evil than the rest.

DeMar agreed that we need to bring judgment on politicians through our votes and our support. He said,

Most politicians hold no clear and consistent ideology. They vote according to the way they feel the winds are blowing. Let them feel the wind and some heat. [12]

In his early books DeMar didn’t talk about finding the least evil candidate; he specifically talked about judging by the Law of God, and supporting the righteous candidates. How would we know who the righteous candidates are? If we summarize DeMar’s teachings of the time, we will find the following:

First, by their profession of faith. We can’t make any compromises there. We support Christians, said DeMar back then, not just the least evil people around. DeMar even criticized Moral Majority for abandoning the standard of faithfulness to God and His Word.

Second, we look at their personal lives’ record. Of course, we know, every person still has sin living in them. But as spiritual persons, we can easily judge if sin has control of the life of a person, or the Spirit has control of it.

Third, their actual policy and voting record, and their professed views in cultural and social and political matters. Yes, we expect inconsistency there, not just with politicians, but even with our pastors. But we can still judge if the person has a general commitment to obey the Law of God in his policies.

DeMar never said that we should have pragmatic considerations: Who can win and who can’t. He said we need to witness for God, no matter what.

Ron Paul fits all three points above. But DeMar never advocated for Ron Paul.

Mitt Romney’s record doesn’t fit any of the three points above. In addition to it, the GOP establishment forced Romney’s nomination by a number of illegal and tyrannical acts.

And now DeMar wants us to reward Romney for his heretical faith, for his personal immorality, and for his anti-Christian social and political views and policies. And reward the Republican Party for its cheating and lying and voter fraud. And the only reason he gives is that Romney is not Obama. He doesn’t explain what kind of a testimony that would be in the eyes of an unbelieving world. And he doesn’t explain how that would be witnessing for God’s justice and righteousness.

In short, DeMar has abandoned his theological convictions for his political purposes.

Hope for the Future

DeMar’s political rhetoric wouldn’t be so disturbing if it came from a dispensationalist or an amillennialist. In fact, it is only logical that a dispensationalist or an amillennialist would advise us to vote for the “lesser evil,” and that we can never choose anything but evil. And indeed, the majority of the evangelical leaders of those two eschatological persuasions have rallied behind Romney in one way or another. Eschatological pessimism requires such position; after all, things are going to get worse, and we should expect that it would become normative in history when Christians in a Christian nation will have to vote for a member of a satanic cult, in order to prevent a “worse” candidate from coming to power. You might call it the fulfillment of the “prophecy” of the great apostasy.

But DeMar’s whole career was spent writing books on postmillennial, that is, optimistic, eschatology. He has shown many times how history actually goes upward, to the victory of the Gospel. DeMar is one of the main teachers of optimistic eschatology, the eschatology that teaches us that history is not a global march to more darkness and despair, culturally and socially and politically, but a linear progression to more influence of the Gospel in every area of life, including politics and culture.

This optimism for the future is expected to produce an increased interest in preparation for victory in history, and therefore preparation for the future. The pessimillennialist eschatologies, given their view of the inevitable triumph of evil in history, can only be focused on the present, for the future holds no promise to them. (Except at the Second Coming, of course.) Their most logically consistent tactics would be to slow down the descent of culture into darkness. They do not expect any winning strategies at any point in time because accepting that there could be winning strategies at any point in time would go against the very belief of the pre- and amillennialists that the Gospel can not win in history. Thus, any ideology for social and cultural action would be heavily existentialist: “What can we do here and now to stall the fall into darkness, temporarily. And let’s not try to think this long-term, for long term we can’t do anything, except wait for Jesus’s return.”

But a postmillennialist doesn’t have that mentality. Confident in the victory of the Gospel in history, he looks to the future, and prepares for the future. And he does not try to make emergency decisions for today; neither is he scared by the presumed “importance” or “destructiveness” of short-term dangers. A Christian lives today for the future, and nothing here and today should scare him so much as to compromise his preparation for the future and focus on fighting the imagined dangers of today.

DeMar knew that in the past. He devoted a whole chapter in his God and Government to the future. [13] In it, he insisted that Christians should not be afraid of the current evil, that it must not make them forget the future and stop building for the future. He said these words:

The Christian’s view of the future determines how he lives, plans, and works in the present for the future. Even during Israel’s captivity under Babylonian rule, the nation’s darkest hour, the people were told to plan and build for the future: “Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens, and eat their produce. Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease… For I know the plans that I have for you, ‘declares the Lord,’ plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:5-6, 11).

God’s words seemed contrary to what people saw all around them. Destruction and captivity awaited the nation, yet God commanded them to prepare for the future. In spite of every pessimistic view, God wanted the people’s desires and hopes to be future-directed. Build for what will be. The psychological benefit of such a mindset does much to spur the church of Jesus Christ to greater kingdom activity. A preoccupation with defeat brings defeat by default. Why would anyone wish to build for the future when there is no earthly future hope? Who would invest in a losing proposition? Why should anyone work to establish a godly home, school, business, or civil government when all such institutions seem doomed despite our efforts? [14]

I remember how these words made a great impression on me when I was first reading them. They became the foundation of my ministry. I had read Ken Gentry’s He Shall Have Dominion before, and it gave me the theological foundation of an optimistic eschatology. Then I read Rushdoony’s The Biblical Philosophy of History, and I learned what that eschatology meant for my expectations of history. Gary North’s Millennialism and Social Theory and Is the World Running Down? explained to me what was wrong with the church’s view of history and the church’s psychology of action. But it was DeMar’s God and Government that actually helped see how a Christian should approach any action in this world, whether in his personal life, or in his family, or in the political arena. Don’t worry about short-term fixes; prepare for the future. Don’t succumb to fear tactics about what’s going to happen at the next election; stick to your theological guns and the Biblical principles you’ve been taught, no matter how impossible victory looks to you and to others.

As Rushdoony said, “History has never been dominated by majorities, but by dedicated minorities who stand unconditionally on their faith.” DeMar’s Ruler of the Nations and God and Government were based on that principle.

Does DeMar’ current political rhetoric exhibit the same postmillennial hope, and the same confidence that minorities standing unconditionally on their faith dominate history?

Not by a long shot.

To the contrary, DeMar’s political rhetoric is marked by three very obvious characteristics: 1) deep pessimism concerning the future, 2) an existentialist focus on the present over the future, and 3) a refusal to evaluate the historical consequences of the political pragmatism he is advocating.

First, the fact that DeMar’s political positions for these elections echoes the positions of his Evangelical peers who are pre- or amillennial, is not mere coincidence. It follows from the same basic outlook of history: a pessimistic outlook. In several of his recent articles DeMar made the comment that our choice is between moving faster to destruction or slowing down on the way to destruction. His attention, of course, is focused on politics, and specifically on the institution of Presidency. DeMar ignores the historical evidence of the last 20 or 30 years, that there is significant progress in our culture toward a greater influence of the Gospel, even if the political realm has remained less touched by it. Even the political arena has changed quite a bit, if not on a higher level, in Washington DC, at least on a lower level. We don’t even need to vote for President to change things; all we need to do is focus on the local level and use the principles of local sovereignty of which DeMar has been talking all along, and make progress which we can’t make on a federal level – and to be honest, should not attempt to make on a Federal level, if we are faithful to the Constitution and to the principles of the American Republic. Ron Paul’s Liberty Movement is a great example of that positive growth, but there are others – the Tenth Amendment Movement, and others as well. DeMar, of course, refuses to see any positive development in those movements; he mocks those that believe that anything of significance is happening through those movements. And the reason he refuses to see it is the same reason why the pessimillennialists refuse to see it: DeMar has adopted a pessimistic view of the future for his political rhetoric.

Given those developments, we don’t need to sacrifice our principles and vote for a liberal Mormon who is also a liar, a big government power-monger, a war-monger, and a pawn of the elite. We don’t need to endorse the choice of the GOP establishment to move forward. We don’t need to be afraid of another Obama term – for the movement to stop whatever is being done in Washington DC is already under way, and we can join that movement without having to sacrifice any moral principles we espouse. Add to this the fact that Washington DC will be going completely broke within the next Presidential term, no matter who is in the White House, and the picture for our near future is quite positive. Only someone who is deliberately blind to these positive developments and who insists on his pessimistic outlook, can offer us the limited choice between going off the cliff at 80 mph or 70 mph, and claim that 70 mph is the “pragmatic” choice.

Second, DeMar doesn’t give any long-term justification of his choice, nor any long-term vision for his voting for Romney. How does voting for Romney prepare the ground in the future, to change the direction in which politics is moving, currently? Who inherits the political future in the Republican Party, if we vote for the choice of the liberal wing in the party?

DeMar has only vague promises that if we support the Republican candidate, we will be able to influence the future course of the Republican Party. That makes as much sense as to claim that the Roman slaves’ collaboration could influence the direction of the Roman Empire; or that the Nazi collaborators in the occupied countries in Europe could influence the political future of Nazi Germany. He deliberately misses the main point: That by supporting a liberal candidate with an R behind his name, we are surrendering the future of the Republican Party to the liberals, and therefore we won’t be able to influence anything. If you are “stuck” with whoever the establishment tells you to vote for – as Murdoch is mocking the “far right,” that it is “stuck with Romney” – you won’t have any influence. This is common sense. And the future is not yours, no matter how much you promise yourself to change things in the future. If every election is so crucially important that you need to always support the lesser evil, the party leadership will keep giving you evil candidates, for they will know they have your vote anyway.

And indeed, third, DeMar doesn’t stop to think about the question: “How did this pragmatic approach work for us in the last 40 years?” After all, if we look forward to the future, we should be able to learn from the past. Part of DeMar’s career was committed to teach us from the past. Let’s see: After 40 years of voting for the lesser evil, we have a “conservative” candidate today who is far to the left of all Democrats of 40 years back. In fact, Romney is far to the left of Al Gore of 20 years back. Logically, thinking about the future, what will we get in the future if we continue the same trend?

We will get a Republican Hitler, and we will be stuck with him, because he’ll be a better choice than the Democrat Stalin. But DeMar doesn’t think that far. He is only focused on this coming election, and nothing else. He has betrayed his previous advice that we should look to the future, and prepare for it. He has adopted a political position that will gradually deliver the future more and more into the hands of our political enemies; and which contains no clear strategy for a Christian victory in the political arena.

Conclusion

Gary DeMar, in his political articles of the last several months, is not the Gary DeMar of his theological books that he wrote years ago. He has committed a theological treachery, and he has abandoned his previous theological commitments.

First, he has abandoned the Sovereignty of God as a principle and has replaced it with fear of man.

Second, he has abandoned the Reformed teaching of the Sovereignty of Grace and the representation of the Kingdom of God by the covenant-keepers, and has replaced it with an anti-Christian behaviorist reading of the doctrine of the Total Depravity which establishes man’s evil nature as the ultimate fact of man and of his society.

Third, he has abandoned the Law of God as the theological standard for our political action and has replaced with vague moralism where “Biblical” values have nothing to do with the theological standards of Scripture.

Fourth, he has abandoned the principles of the Gospel testimony in the culture as he had taught them before, and therefore the principles of righteous judgment that the covenant-keepers are to abide by, and has replaced them with a system where the covenant-breakers – and especially those covenant-breakers who openly violate the Law of God – are rewarded with our votes and political support.

Fifth, he has abandoned his eschatological optimism and his focus on the future, and he has replaced it with pessimism and an existentialist focus on the next election, surrendering the inheritance of the faithful to the wicked. And he has no vision, nor any strategy to offer for any Christian victory in the political arena, now or in the future.

For all practical purposes, DeMar’s political articles are preaching another gospel, not the one he preached before. True Christians must reject DeMar’s political positions and rebuke him, and attempt to correct him, so that he returns to the sound Biblical doctrine for political action.

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[1] Gary DeMar, God and Government (Powder Springs, Georgia: American Vision, Inc. [1982, 1990], 2010), p. 507.

[2] Gary DeMar, Ruler of the Nations: Biblical Blueprints for Government (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987), p. 205.

[3] Ruler of the Nations, p. 205.

[4] Idem.

[5] God and Government, p. 592.

[6] Ruler of the Nations, p. 217.

[7] God and Government, p. 531.

[8] Theonomy: An Informed Response, pp. 67-69.

[9] R. J. Rushdoony, Commentaries on the Pentateuch: Exodus (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 2004), p. 232.

[10] Ruler of the Nations, p. 210.

[11] Idem.

[12] Ruler of the Nations, p. 223.

[13] God and Government, ch. 30, “The Future of Government.”

[14] God and Government, p. 698.