Dr. Albert M. Muller is the President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Editor-in-Chief of World Opinions. He has championed the pro-life cause for such a long time, Dr. Muller helps us think through how Christians should vote in the upcoming election.
00:01:11.600Calling me a Nazi in Christianity today.
00:01:16.220And I'll tell you why he said such an egregiously malicious thing.
00:01:24.820And I will give you my reply to those words in the pages of Christianity today tomorrow.
00:01:32.380But today we're going to talk about how Christians should be thinking about this imminent election.
00:01:39.180But before we get into it with Dr. Muller, I just want to remind you Toxic Empathy is on sale.
00:01:45.180So many of the topics that we are discussing today are covered in this book.
00:01:50.880I explain how women in particular are targeted by progressive bad actors with emotional manipulation tactics to make us believe that the progressive position on policies, on these issues, is the righteous and compassionate one.
00:02:11.560And I want to take us to a place of true love, of true kindness, of true compassion, not a superficial toxic form of empathy that blinds us to reality and morality.
00:02:23.780So you can click the link on the description of this episode to buy that.
00:02:27.900Please leave a five-star review on Amazon if you've already read it.
00:02:31.500Or you can just go to ToxicEmpathy.com and you can see where else it is sold as well as on Audible.
00:03:15.520Can you just help us think through that as someone who has championed the pro-life cause for such a long time?
00:03:23.300Well, Ali Beth, first of all, it's good to be with you again.
00:03:25.500And I appreciate the way you set up the situation because that is where we are.
00:03:29.720There is a sense in which there's no champion for the pro-life cause in either party at the top of the ticket.
00:03:36.820But, you know, that doesn't mean that, number one, we face a situation in which there's not a clear alternative between a more aggressively pro-abortion stance and a less aggressively pro-abortion stance.
00:03:49.200And I think there's a very concrete difference in the two administrations that we put in place.
00:03:53.500And even as I limit some of the directions the former president has gone in this clearly and a retreat from what had been hard won pro-life gains in the Republican Party.
00:04:03.200There is still a light year of difference, light years indeed, between the Republican and the Democratic parties and between what would be a Harris administration or Harris-Walls administration and a Trump-Vance administration.
00:04:15.240And so, you know, we have to remember that the pro-life movement didn't get to, say, the reversal of Roe v. Wade except working for a half a century.
00:04:25.120We're called to a very long fight here.
00:04:28.160And that means that we've got to be honest about the political alternatives in an election like 2024.
00:04:33.640And, frankly, if the pro-life priority is clear, there's really not a moment's hesitation to understand what a distinction we're really confronted with.
00:04:42.400Because when it comes to the Harris-Walls ticket, you're talking about absolute unbridled support for abortion at any point up until birth paid for by the American taxpayer and, quite frankly, aggressively supported with all the power of the administrative state.
00:04:56.320But on the Republican side, it's a very different picture.
00:04:59.540And, frankly, we need to be honest about those two stark alternatives.
00:05:03.160I heard Governor Walls say in the VP debate that abortion is a fundamental right.
00:05:11.880And I noticed just in their animation, Kamala and Walls, in the debates, that this is really what they're most excited about.
00:05:22.960This is when they kind of become most articulate.
00:05:25.640It's when they sound the most knowledgeable when they're talking about abortion.
00:05:30.160Their fervor just comes out in full force.
00:05:32.660And he said this is a fundamental right.
00:05:34.800It shouldn't be left up to the states.
00:05:39.760What are they talking about when it comes to legislation and enshrining into law abortion as a fundamental right for the entire country?
00:05:50.100You are so right to zero win on that term.
00:05:52.420And it really has two meanings in this context.
00:05:55.220And the meaning that Governor Walls, I think, certainly has in mind is the meaning that any limitation upon that right has to meet an extraordinary legal standard, a constitutional standard to stand.
00:06:08.460So a fundamental right, like, say, a freedom of expression, the freedom of the press, it requires an extremely close scrutiny standard by the courts to see if any restriction could stand.
00:06:21.500The second meaning of fundamental right is that that's something that government doesn't create, it recognizes.
00:06:29.560And, you know, this is right in our founding documents, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that they're unalienable rights.
00:06:37.320And that's to say that our founder said there's certain human rights that, and we understand this from the Christian worldview, there's certain human rights that the government doesn't create.
00:06:48.440It just recognizes and agrees to honor.
00:06:50.840And, you know, that's ridiculous when it comes to abortion on both counts, because there is no society throughout all of human history that has somehow come to the claim that abortion is a fundamental and alienable right.
00:07:04.240But, you know, the left, one of its strategies is saying things over and over again to where it eventually sounds like it could be true.
00:07:11.720And the next thing you know, you've got courts saying, well, that sounds like it's true.
00:07:15.080And you've got millions of American people who say that sounds like it's true.
00:07:18.220We need to strip back the reality here.
00:07:20.700And, you know, when Governor Walz says it's true, he operates as if it's true.
00:07:24.640I mean, you have Governor Walz, he signed one of the most aggressively pro-abortion bills in all of, I won't say American history, all of world history,
00:07:32.700in which there's absolutely no restriction on abortion, period, in the bill that he supported and signed into law in the state of Minnesota.
00:07:42.580So I'll tell you this, I think he means what he says, and that's what scares me the most.
00:07:47.720Is it too far to say that the Harris-Walls administration would want to make it impossible for states to restrict abortion at all?
00:08:00.340When they use that expression, a fundamental right, they want to make it.
00:08:03.880You know, Kamala Harris at one point said that she thought that abortion restrictions ought to be put in the same category as certain issues that came up in terms of equal rights on the basis of race,
00:08:16.560so that the states would have to have pre-clearance.
00:08:19.080This is back when she was in the Senate.
00:08:21.020That states would have to have pre-clearance for any law restricting abortion.
00:12:58.060I can tell you what platform he ran on.
00:13:00.860And when it comes to George H.W. Bush, he was a supporter of Roe publicly and ardently until the moment he became vice presidential nominee to Ronald Reagan.
00:13:40.020And, again, just looking at the differences between the current administration and what Donald Trump would be, I mean, we have yet another pro-lifer who was just placed in prison for three and a half years for not anything violent but unlawful assembly in the state of New York for protesting outside of an abortion clinic.
00:13:57.480And there's Joan Bell, the 74-year-old, who was also placed in prison for blocking an entrance to an abortion clinic.
00:14:05.420And so that's the Harris-Biden administration.
00:14:09.100That would be the Harris-Walls administration, I think, even more fervently than what we're seeing right now.
00:14:16.620And so that's a really big difference.
00:14:22.880Can I offer one thing there to support your argument?
00:14:25.780And I just want to talk – my dad used to say eventually get down to the hammer and the nails.
00:14:31.140Okay, I want to get there for a moment.
00:14:33.520I truly believe that if the Harris-Walls ticket is elected and if they are able to push through – and the most important issue here is going to be the Senate given the filibuster possibility.
00:14:48.080But remember, you know, the vice president has said she will oppose eliminating the filibuster for a vote on abortion rights.
00:14:54.740If she's elected and they can push this legislation through, pro-lifers just need to understand that would instantly mean a radical abortion state in the United States of America.
00:15:05.480I mean the entire country has an abortion state.
00:15:07.360And, you know, how we would recover from that on the other side – I mean we'd have to figure out a strategy and some of us are trying to think through what that would look like.
00:15:16.840But I just want pro-lifers to know it would be a catastrophe beyond anything we have ever experienced in this country.
00:15:23.360It would be a catastrophe far larger in scale than Roe v. Wade, which at least acknowledged the right of states to restrict abortion in the third trimester.
00:15:32.240We'd be talking about an absolute pro-abortion America.
00:15:36.780And, you know, I think – Ali Beth, I'll just go to say this.
00:15:39.540I think our experience with the Obergefell decision and same-sex marriage, it indicates that America does a moral reset.
00:15:46.340And overcoming that moral reset is something that I think pro-lifers need to take into account.
00:17:20.640What do you say to the tens of millions, according to George Barna, of Christians who attend church regularly?
00:17:31.500This was the study that was just released by his institution who say that they are simply uninterested in politics right now and do not plan to vote.
00:17:42.240They're hearing what you're saying, but they're thinking, OK, you know, I'm probably not going to make that much of an impact with my single vote anyway.
00:17:50.100I just don't really want to be a part of this.
00:18:18.060And by the way, if you don't vote, that's a political act.
00:18:20.900If you if you are qualified to vote, you register to vote and you're you're you have the right, the franchise to vote and you don't vote, you just overvalued every other vote, which means you overvalue votes against your convictions.
00:18:42.860Now, I'm not saying that it would never be called for.
00:18:45.040I'm just saying in a situation like this where you've got these kinds of issues at stake, not voting, I think, is a form of of failure of stewardship.
00:18:54.880And I don't know how to put it in any other terms.
00:18:57.500I do believe it's a failure of stewardship.
00:19:00.000Now, I can't bind everyone's conscience.
00:19:02.780But what George Barna is talking about is not a number of evangelicals who are truly torn in conscience.
00:19:09.220It's a number of evangelicals who say I'm just washing my hands of the matter.
00:19:17.140Moral abdication is not a Christian alternative.
00:19:20.620What role do you think pastors play in this?
00:19:23.120I know they've got a they've got a hard job, but certainly if tens of millions of Christians who go to church are disinterested, there seems to be like there would be a role to play for the shepherds of these flocks.
00:19:36.540Yes, and I don't believe that's turning the pulpit into a political action committee.
00:19:44.580Politics has invaded us, which is to say our convictions about, for instance, the image of God and the sanctity of life and the definition of marriage.
00:19:53.680And let's be honest what it means to be male and female, what it means to look at children and say, that's a boy, that's a girl.
00:20:02.160And so I don't understand the pastors who aren't directly addressing these issues with their people.
00:20:08.020These are issues of public policy and biblical truth in collision.
00:20:10.980And I don't believe abdicating that responsibility can be defined as faithfulness for pastors.
00:20:17.420And I will be clear again, I am not saying I want pastors to show up with a donkey or an elephant on their lapel pin.
00:20:23.400I want them to show up preaching the word where their own church members are facing the intersection of biblical truth and a deeply secularizing antagonistic culture.
00:20:35.500Yeah. And you really don't have to get very far into the Bible to answer what are considered those cultural questions.
00:20:41.720Just go in 27 verses and we've got the answer right there to a lot of questions.
00:20:46.560Right. You know, Allie Beth, one of the things I try to do when I talk to Christians about the Christian worldview and ethical priority is, as I say, how close is this to creation order?
00:20:56.100Because creation order is God's intention and purpose for his glory demonstrated.
00:21:00.700And you point out it's so early in creation order.
00:21:03.780We're talking about Genesis 1 with the Imago Dei.
00:21:07.580And by the way, male and female created he them.
00:21:10.040Mm hmm. I hear a lot of Christians who, you know, I characterize them as kind of being in the mushy middle who will say, you know, I understand what you're saying about Republicans, maybe getting it kind of right on abortion.
00:21:25.040But, you know, I'm holistically pro-life and I don't really think the law has anything to say or anything important to say about abortion.
00:21:34.040We can handle that in the private sector.
00:21:36.680I'm going to vote for the Democrats because they help the poor.
00:22:37.580You say, I think I think this will make differences in the lives of real people.
00:22:41.100I'd love to have time to just dissect, by the way, the left's claim about the welfare state.
00:22:45.200And I want to point out that the welfare state, as it was originally intended, by the way, which was to support the natural family.
00:22:51.960We'll never know if that would have worked out or not, simply because the left just messed that up from the beginning, separated the idea of public welfare from supporting the family and marriage to just, you know, what now becomes this radical dissolution of the family and rewarding persons on that basis.
00:23:11.480So I just want to say, you know, I can't take that kind of argument anymore, Ali Beth, with a straight face.
00:23:17.860I can't take it anymore and just say, well, that's naivete.
00:23:29.660You know, the closer you get to creation order, the higher the ethical priority.
00:23:34.140And so I just want to say the defense of life in any sane Christian analysis has to be a far higher, even prior category to deciding, you know, what AFC checks should be based upon.
00:23:47.420And if we start on the other end, it's just evasion.
00:23:53.100That's a good point about the flipping of the priorities, basically putting greenhouse gases or whatever example it is, or immigration in the same bucket as abortion.
00:24:03.620And I see that a lot from a lot of—I don't know if they're well-meaning or not, but it's a lot of Christians who believe that their Christian responsibility—and a lot of pastors, I see this from them too—to simply say both sides are bad and leave it at that.
00:24:19.220To simply say, sure, some of the policies on the left are bad, but look at Donald Trump and look at who he is personally or look at some of the things that he's said.
00:24:29.360And they see that as kind of boldness, or they see that as courage and clarity for their congregations.
00:24:37.180I really see that as a lot of moral confusion, and their congregations are probably ending the service thinking, okay, but what am I supposed to think about those things?
00:24:46.760And then they're finding the answers on Instagram, which I don't think is a great system.
00:24:50.520Well, you have a great way of describing that.
00:24:55.280You know, I want to turn to some of those pastors and say, okay, I want you to tell me your base minimum for the candidate you would support.
00:25:03.200I want to know what moral requirements you put in place.
00:25:06.020And then I want to know how you consistently hold to those.
00:25:10.020And I'm not saying that it's irrelevant.
00:25:12.920Character has to be a part of our consideration.
00:25:14.680But, you know, quite honestly, when you look at American history and you ask honest questions, we are looking at the fact that we're voting over one center in regard to another one.
00:25:27.680And again, I don't want to act as if I'm suggesting there's moral equivalence.
00:25:31.180No, that's not a faithful argument either.
00:25:33.740But we do need a sane analysis of how we're applying a moral judgment here.
00:25:38.840And this is where we can't act like our electoral vote, our vote on election day, all of a sudden ends our moral responsibility.
00:25:49.500We're responsible for what happens when that person for whom we voted operates in office.
00:25:57.200I think there are a lot of people who say, you know, I'm just – I'm going to put the election as the giant moral category and answer that one way or another.
00:26:06.620And I'm not going to take responsibility for what comes after.
00:26:09.100The fact is we've never been able to vote for a perfect candidate.
00:26:12.240And holding that up is just an irrational, unbiblical standard.
00:26:15.880We do have to understand we have to take responsibility.
00:26:19.340And by the way, not just for the candidate that's put in office but the government that that implies.
00:26:24.840And so in our system, as you well know, 4,000 direct appointments by the president.
00:26:29.720You're really talking about who's going to set the direction for the entire federal government.
00:26:33.620And so I'm not saying the character issue is irrelevant.
00:26:36.780But honestly, you look at this election, I've got character concerns everywhere I look.
00:26:46.480Okay, guys, have you gotten my box from Good Ranchers?
00:26:51.540If you haven't, it is time to give this gift to yourself for Christmas.
00:26:56.420Or maybe this is a part of your New Year resolution.
00:38:58.580But the Equality Act, they could show up at this door just on the basis of that federal legislation.
00:39:04.300They can and will basically try to shut down Christian witness on these issues.
00:39:11.240So that's something else that's at stake that I think a lot of people don't fully understand,
00:39:15.780that they feel that somehow they'll be shielded by that.
00:39:18.920But actually, we've actually seen in several states, including in California,
00:39:24.540including in Washington, that Christians have been punished for their speech.
00:39:29.720And of course, many of these cases have been won by the pro-First Amendment side in the Supreme Court.
00:39:36.280But even just looking at Kamala Harris, of course, who doesn't care about the First Amendment at all,
00:39:42.040when she was Attorney General, forcing the FACT Act on pro-life pregnancy centers that forced them to advertise for abortion,
00:39:50.320going after David Daleiden, the pro-life reporter who reported on Planned Parenthood.
00:39:55.200So I hear a lot that, OK, we've got to vote for Kamala Harris just to save democracy.
00:39:59.920We've got this autocrat over here in Donald Trump who doesn't care about the Constitution.
00:40:04.040But when I'm looking at Kamala Harris's record, just when it comes to our First Amendment rights and walls as well,
00:40:10.840I'm not seeing a team that really cares about my true freedom.
00:40:14.920Oh, it's so helpful you detail the issues just that way, Allie Beth.
00:40:22.240And, you know, I don't mean this against all lawyers, but I'll say it's not one of the faults of Donald Trump that he is an attorney.
00:40:28.460It is one of the faults of Kamala Harris that she's the former Attorney General of California.
00:40:32.660And you look at what she did as Attorney General, and you're exactly right.
00:40:36.880And I add to that what she suggested in terms of preclearance for states restricting abortion.
00:40:42.580She is no friend to our constitutional rights.
00:40:44.660And that begins at the very beginning, even with religious liberty.
00:40:48.060And I'm not saying that she will come out and campaign against it.
00:40:50.700I'm saying she has taken actions that have presented huge subversions of basic liberties.
00:40:58.940And that preclearance issue, I know I come back to it again, but what it tells me is she's a threat to our constitutional order.
00:41:05.240And so I'm not saying that we don't have big problems in the 2024 election.
00:41:10.240I'm just saying that if you're going to talk about saving democracy, you better take some account for at least acknowledging the very things you have helpfully outlined there.
00:41:19.720We are talking about the Democratic left that will use the power of the state to accomplish its ideological and moral ends and will trample our liberties in the process.
00:41:31.100And frankly, I think redefine the power of the federal government.
00:41:33.760I like to remind people that when Democrats say freedom, they're only talking about two things.
00:41:40.640They're talking about sexual immorality and abortion.
00:41:43.880They're not talking about your First and Second Amendment rights.
00:41:46.560They're not talking about your constitutional liberties.
00:41:48.700They're talking about sexual libertinism and killing your children.
00:41:53.880So every bit of freedom that they say they advocate for tends to fall under those two categories.
00:42:01.460When it comes to immigration, this is another one that I think a lot of Christians are confused about.
00:42:07.620It's good to feel compassion for those who are fleeing violence.
00:42:11.080It's good to feel compassion for the downtrodden.
00:42:16.820I use the term toxic empathy to describe how people become blinded to reality and morality because they only feel strongly exclusively for a particular victim on a side of an issue, especially when it comes to immigration.
00:42:33.480And so they may feel that really any border enforcement or any immigration enforcement is cruel.
00:42:39.620And yet we're seeing the human cost to opening up the border and the federal government undermining Texas's efforts to secure its own border.
00:42:47.660So how should Christians think about this issue?
00:42:50.240Is this a biblical issue in a similar way that these created order issues are?
00:42:56.180Well, that last twist is really important, and I thank you for it.
00:43:02.200No, this is not a creation order issue, except, and we need to acknowledge this, to the extent that we recognize every single human being as made in God's image and thus worthy of being considered, in some sense, our brother and our sister, our neighbor.
00:43:15.760And in that sense, in what it means to share the image of God, but, you know, Ali Beth, you mentioned the issue of immigration and you defined it rightly.
00:43:25.660And so let's understand when the left is talking about this, they're talking about reshaping the nation and reshaping the moral order.
00:43:31.960And there are real humanitarian crises all over the world, and some of them fairly close to us across the border.
00:43:39.640But you see this in Europe right now, where you have liberal regimes, liberal governments that are being toppled and shaken by immigration crises in their own countries, and the realization that decisions were made that have been disastrous for these countries.
00:43:54.340Love of neighbor means we concede some truths.
00:43:56.560One of the truths is that a nation, that includes the United States of America, can handle only so many immigrants of a certain kind coming for, you know, qualified reasons at a time.
00:44:06.140That can only be done a certain amount at a time.
00:44:09.180When you have a humanitarian catastrophe, such as what's happened in some situations, there's some legal allowance for a special case after this kind of disaster.
00:44:19.520But the disaster in this case is the failure to apply the laws of the United States of America and maintain recognized borders.
00:45:58.160And then you can kind of work from there because I don't know very many people who, when it gets down to it, truly believe in allowing an unmitigated flow of unvetted strangers into our country.
00:46:14.320And yet they also won't say, OK, well, how do we get to enforce that then?
00:46:20.520Which means that they're not really living in reality.
00:46:23.540No, they're not being intellectually honest.
00:46:25.480And, you know, here's where I think there's a conspiracy of sorts.
00:46:29.380And so I don't mean that as a conspiracy theory because I'm going to give you the facts.
00:46:39.380They won't go to border towns and tell you what's actually happening.
00:46:42.400And you know better than I know the fact that there are those who try to make this just a leftist argument based upon ethnicity.
00:46:51.140But an awful lot of the people who are most concerned about the effects of illegal immigration are those who are from the same communities and have immigrated here legally and now understand the threat of illegal immigration and what that means.
00:47:02.760And, you know, there are too many people in endowed, you know, professorial chairs at Ivy League universities and frankly, you know, 18 to 20 year olds on campuses and too many suburban liberals who have no skin in the game.
00:47:54.780But that does not mean we give them citizenship based upon the moral context.
00:48:01.020And I think a government has a moral responsibility to protect its own citizens.
00:48:06.200And people seem to understand this when it comes to other countries.
00:48:09.440If you asked, hey, should a million of us Americans get to go to Zimbabwe, set up camp there illegally and, you know, conform the culture and that city to our image, of course, they would call us colonizers and oppressors and all kinds of things.
00:48:24.840And they would absolutely defend Zimbabwe's right to protect their borders, to protect their people.
00:48:29.760But for some reason, when it comes to Britain, when it comes to America, that's seen as racist, bigoted, wrong, invalid, illegitimate.
00:48:38.500But the truth is, and you've talked about this before, is that your country is like a family in the same way that you don't live in a house because you hate your neighbors.
00:48:47.580You don't lock your door because you mistrust the person who lives across the street.
00:48:53.000And if you allowed strangers to come into your home to take your children's bed, to take your children's food while they starved and slept on the floor, that wouldn't make you a kind person.
00:49:17.600These are all gifts of common grace that lend themselves to human flourishing.
00:49:23.080That's how I like to think about it, that God is a God of order, and borders allow order that leads to human good.
00:49:30.660And those borders, and this is what you underline very helpfully, those borders help to make clear to whom we owe first priority of care and loyalty.
00:49:39.680And I think that's deeply rooted in creation order.
00:49:42.620I mean, you know, and this is, you know, what the, in the Christian world we call the principle of subsidiarity.
00:49:49.260You know, you cannot have a healthy neighborhood or you don't have healthy families.
00:49:51.900You can't have a healthy city without a healthy neighborhood.
00:49:54.340And so it's the most basic relationships you've got to get right first.
00:49:58.380And, Ali Beth, one other illustration I'd love to use just to talk about immigration is, you know, we have very good relations with Canada.
00:50:05.420But if a million Americans illegally invaded Canada, and I don't mean with guns, I just mean if they walked across the border, Canada would consider that an act of war.
00:50:16.500This is, in other words, the liberal politicians playing around with this and the ideological left, they're not honest about how this actually works.
00:50:23.900And so I think we need to call them out on it and just say, you know, again, if you mean what you say, turn your passport in.
00:50:30.460Right. And the DOJ, this is just insane to me, right before the election, the DOJ is suing states like Virginia because Virginia threw off non-citizens from their voting rolls.
00:50:41.580And the DOJ is actively saying, no, you can't do that.
00:50:45.460It seems that they're saying, no, we want these non-citizens to vote.
00:50:49.780If non-citizens can vote, then what special rights and privileges do we have as citizens?
00:50:56.100And then, again, that's just another way to undermine our sovereignty.
00:51:01.140I was kind of surprised by the audacity of this administration.
00:51:07.240Yeah, you know, you hear the argument, and I've seen this in several soundbites with people who are asked pointed questions just as you raise the issue.
00:51:27.300And by the way, I think this is one of those issues, if you look at the Virginia polling, when the Virginia governor says this and the federal government says, no, you can't do that, you know, an astounding number of Virginians have their eye opened on that question.
00:51:41.220The public understanding of immigration in Texas has reversed itself in 20 years.
00:51:47.280And frankly, you've got even Republican politicians who've had to reverse their argument in 20 years because they've had to come to a new reality of what illegal immigration means.
00:51:56.240And so I think we need to call out the hypocrisy and the dishonesty when we see it.
00:52:16.180It's Recapturing the Glory of Christmas, and it's a 40, 25-day, in this case, day devotional that should help Christian families and parents to understand.
00:52:56.280And I love that we're talking about a book that's going to come out after the election.
00:53:00.060It reminds us that the world is going to go on, that the Lord is always going to be worthy of celebration, that we continue to do what Christians have always done.
00:53:11.580That against the powers, that be against the powerful ideologies of our day, we continue to give glory to God.
00:53:17.640And so thank you so much for writing that.