Voting As Christians: The Creation Order Political Scorecard

You can make a good case that the defining conflict of our age is over what it means to be human. Then again, these anthropological questions are as old as time. Are we self-created, self-defined, and thus self-determined? Or are we something else more dependent, more profound, more transcendent? 

The birth certificate of the United States explicitly addresses this question. The Declaration of Independence unequivocally grounds our unalienable rights, which are implications of what it means to be human, in the fact that we are created by God:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

While inherent and self-evident, The Declaration of Independence makes clear these unalienable rights are neither spontaneous nor granted by a merely human institution, but are endowed by our Creator. This idea that we are“created persons”¹ forms the foundation of human dignity. 

In fact in some ways, this is the central truth on which the West was founded. The Christian doctrine of the imago Dei, which teaches that mankind is created in the image of God, has arguably contributed more than any other idea to the advance of human flourishing, peace, and justice in society. Therefore, we can accurately say that the health of human society depends on how cultures grasp and appropriate this doctrine. And divergence from this vision explains the most fundamental political divides facing our country today.

The Image of God

In Genesis 1 and 2 we find what theologians refer to as the Creation Order. These chapters present a narrative of how God made the world, including his design for mankind, and for what purpose. Genesis 1:26–28 roots the biblical doctrine of the image of God. These verses are a wellspring for theological reflection on what it means to be human. Genesis 1:27 in particular is the centerpiece of biblical anthropology:

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

We could summarize what the Bible teaches about humanity here in two categories that mirror the structure of Genesis 1:27: (1) The importance of human life rooted in the image of God, and (2) The centrality of family life grounded in male-female sexual complementarity. 

Christian theology first grounds the dignity and worth of every human person not in their age, their size, their ethnicity, their sex, their mental acuity, or their ability to contribute to society, but merely in the fact that they bear the image of God. And secondly, Christian theology grounds human life together in the family, which is the fundamental building block of society, rooted in the institution of marriage and predicated on male-female sexual complementarity.

The Creation Order Scorecard

Christians should therefore be able to score visions of the common good, first and foremost, according to how they treat these principles rooted in the Creation Order. Any vision of the common good should be grounded in what is good, true, and beautiful about humanity. What we aspire to do together should be informed by what we are. This means that a vision for the common good built on an erroneous and harmful view of the human person is like building on the sand. And civilizations built on the sand do not last.

A political platform is nothing more than a vision of the common good. How should Christians assess political platforms? I would urge Christians to use what I am calling the Creation Order scorecard. Fundamentally, how does a particular political platform approach the most basic questions of humanity? How does each partisan vision align with the Creation Order? Does it (1) Respect human life, especially vulnerable human life like the unborn? And does it (2) Acknowledge and respect the Nature of mankind, created male and female, and the goods of marriage and family?

It is easy to get lost in the weeds of complex policy proposals. But it is also easy to see which visions of the common good are built on assumptions about humanity that flow out of self-identification and self-determination, and which visions are built on the given-ness and created-ness of reality. It is easy to see which political visions are at war with Nature and Nature’s God, and which visions are attempting a political order within the grooves of God’s created world. It is easy to see which visions aim to conserve the good, and which visions aim to destroy the good.

Republican vs. Democrat

By this point, the reader has probably figured out which political vision I believe today more aligns with a Christian vision of the common good. It's important to note that I limit my comments below to party ethos and platform, without engaging specific statements by partisan candidates.

Over the past two decades, Democrats have radicalized their stance on the most fundamental questions of human nature: life and sexual complementarity. The current Democratic platform fails miserably according to the Creation Order scorecard. What it advocates for is not just out of line with the Creation Order, but is fundamentally against the Creation Order. This includes its advocacy for unlimited access to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, its unnatural support for “transwomen” and LGBT policies, and the way it treats men and women interchangeably by supporting initiatives like the Equality Act. Whereas the Republican platform in decades past was much stronger in its support for Creation Order issues like life, marriage, and sexual complementarity, it contains no positive policy proposals that would do similar harm to the Creation Order. Instead, it falls short in its failure to fully protect life and marriage.

According to the Creation Order scorecard, I would say that the Democratic political vision gets an “F-,” as it continues to undermine God’s created order by treating human life as discardable and treating human nature and sexuality as infinitely malleable. The Republican political vision gets a “C,” as it doesn’t actively undermine the Creation Order, but it does fail to advance protections in line with our created human nature.

So what is a Christian to do this election cycle? I believe Christians should use the Creation Order scorecard and prefer to conserve whatever Creation Order is still intact, rather than take a sledgehammer to the foundations of human society.

The Moral Fabric of a Nation

In 1977 Reverend Jesse Jackson — no conservative, mind you — asked a haunting question:

What happens to the mind of a person, and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? What kind of a person, and what kind of a society will we have 20 years hence if life can be taken so casually? It is that question, the question of our attitude, our value system, and our mind-set with regard to the nature and worth of life itself that is the central question confronting mankind. Failure to answer that question affirmatively may leave us with a hell right here on earth.

Reverend Jackson threw down this gauntlet in an essay titled, “How We Respect Life Is the Over-Riding Moral Issue.” I would simply update his argument for the 21st century: “How We Respect the Creation Order is the Over-Riding Moral Issue.” Christians ought to vote accordingly this November.

¹“In sum, the human being is both a creature and a person; he or she is a created person.” Anthony Hoekema, Created in God’s Image (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986), 6.