The devil is not fighting religion ...

This past New Year’s Day, Pete Golding’s Ole Miss Rebels knocked off Georgia 39–34 in the Sugar Bowl. Last Saturday night in Oxford, Georgia returned the favor, 42–7. Golding didn’t sugarcoat it: “We’re going to have to go back to work and fix a lot of things.”

The Republican Party would do well to take the same approach after its thrashing at the polls on Tuesday, November 3.

We must begin with Politics 101: there is nothing inherently good or bad about the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. They are simply holding vessels housing like-minded constituents.

But this much can be said without fear of contradiction: Evangelical Christians are not housed in a party that celebrates gayness, transgenderism, and queerness, or applauds taking a baby’s life the day before he or she is born.

Vance Havner (1901–1986), whom the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association named “Preacher of the Year” in 1973, offered a prophetic warning that speaks to the political reality now unfolding in America’s public square: “The devil is not fighting religion. He is too smart for that. He is producing a counterfeit Christianity, so much like the real one that good Christians are afraid to speak out against it.”

That counterfeit was on full display last week in several candidates running in strategically important states. We’ve entered a new phase in American politics, with candidates invoking Scripture while advocating policies that contradict Biblical teaching.

November 3, therefore, offered a harbinger of the battle ahead, exposing how unprepared Evangelical and pro-life Catholic Christians are to confront and counteract deception. Having forfeited America’s once Judeo-Christian heritage and the Biblically grounded cultural foundations laid by the Founders, why should we be surprised?

Alas, exit polling indicated that white evangelicals accounted for only 17% of the 2026 electorate—a figure that should sound a fire alarm throughout American Christendom. Yet she sleeps on. That figure measures their share of the electorate, not the percentage of evangelicals who voted, but it warrants sober reflection on the larger question of the Church’s capitulation to secular culture.

Having abandoned the headwaters of American culture over the last century, we now inhabit a nation the Pilgrims—who set sail “for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith” (Mayflower Compact, 1620)—would scarcely recognize.

As we begin the second quarter of the 21st century, a spiritual principle A.W. Pink articulated in his commentary on Joshua applies equally to American Christendom and its place in the public square: Canaan was God’s free gift to Israel, entered by grace alone—yet they still had to fight for every inch of it. That deserves careful consideration, remembering that Pink understood Israel’s experience as “typical”—a picture of spiritual reality.

An old saying comes to mind: “It’s hard by the yard, but a cinch by the inch.”

Peter J. Leithart’s commentary on the anemic influence of Christian academic theologians fits here—men “who have never been engaged in any political struggle more serious than annual departmental budget battles.” His critique illuminates a deeper problem: a failure of spiritual discernment in many of our pulpits and the inability of contemporary under-shepherds to recognize the death rattle of a society suffering from spiritual malnutrition while the Church has “checked out.”

Before shepherds can equip their flocks to shoulder the responsibilities of freedom and liberty in a self-governing Republic, they themselves must understand the intricacies of campaigns—not merely policy—and how organization, votes, candidates, and sustained local involvement translate Biblical convictions into governing authority. They must also reckon with how the Church’s retreat from the culture—its forfeiture of the very ground early America once held—has contributed to the rise of the profane nation we now inhabit.

The notion that the evangelical vote simply arrives at the polls with power on its own is an illusion. Turnout occurs because shepherds have equipped their flocks for spiritual battle. A Sunday sermon alone is no large denomination of political currency—perhaps a nickel on the dollar. Turnout requires building teams to register the flock; recruiting elders, deacons, and congregants to run for city council, county commission, school board, and parks and recreation boards; and following through to get parishioners to the polls.

A practical Election Day project would be for the Salt & Light Committee to work through the church directory, calling each household: “Pastor wants to make sure you know he’s voting. Can we send the church van to take you to the polls?”

Mobilizing and organizing aren’t sexy. They’re just plain hard work. Solomon put it plainly: “In all labor there is profit, but idle chatter leads only to poverty” (Proverbs 14:23, NKJV). The principle reaches every area of responsibility: speaking about the work cannot substitute for doing it.

But what is true of local shepherds applies doubly to America’s Evangelical leaders, many of whom seem to mistake delivering a speech for organizing. The two are hardly interchangeable, as last week’s election should remind us. The difference is as great as that between lightning and a lightning bug.

Consider 2018: my friend Joel Rosenberg, who lives in Jerusalem, led a delegation of U.S. evangelical leaders to Riyadh to meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on November 1—five days before the midterm election. They were overseas during the closing days of a political cycle in which Republicans lost the House, Democrats gained a net 41 seats, and Nancy Pelosi returned to the Speaker’s chair.

Consider 2022: the North Carolina Baptist State Convention held its annual meeting at Greensboro’s Koury Convention Center on Monday, November 7, and Tuesday, November 8—Election Day! Scheduling the gathering on those dates raises serious questions about priorities and civic responsibility. Attendees were gathered at a convention when they could have been helping marshal voters to the polls. Fortunately, the North Carolina Renewal Project was mobilizing evangelicals across the state.

Consider October 26, 2026: eight days before the November 3 midterm election, two leaders of President Trump’s White House Faith Office—Senior Advisor Paula White-Cain and Faith Director Jenny Korn—were, according to the Instagram post linked here, in Italy.

All of which underscores the need for Evangelical and pro-life Catholic Christians to take their civics game to a whole new level if America is to endure for our children and grandchildren. Somebody’s values will reign supreme in the public square. When Christians stay home—and too often we do—those “who speak perverse things, who leave the paths of uprightness” elect their candidates, draft and pass legislation, and codify their profane values into law—with anarchy as the “natural consequence and fitting punishment.”

Will a Gideon or Rahab please stand?

David Lane

American Renewal Project