Missionary Dating Your Favorite Politician

...and more thoughts ahead of the 2024 election.

Out of all of the warnings I received as a young man coming of age in my Pentecostal church in the late 90s/early 00s, the potential perils of “missionary dating.”

For those of you who may be unfamiliar, missionary dating was a colloquialism of the time used to refer to a Christian who dated a non-Christian with the hope of winning them to Jesus in-between smooches and hand-holding. The problem with missionary dating, my youth pastor frequently reminded us, was that the chances are far greater that you will become more like them than them becoming more like you. In other words, in close relationship to the one makes your heart go pitter patter, a Christian is more likely to dispense with moral standards of purity, devotion to the local church community, and commitment to deep character formation in favor of the youthful pangs of desire.

While many of us can probably point to an example or two of how missionary dating did work (life change, of course, happens in relational proximity), there is an underlying truth that sits at the heart of warnings against missionary dating: you become what you behold.

A Cautionary Tale: That Time Judah Became What it Beheld

This bore out for the people of Judah in the historical events that led to the fall of Jerusalem around 587 B.C. Despite entering into covenant with YHWH who promised to protect them and bless them, Judah entered into a series of shifting, unholy alliances with Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon and Hophra of Egypt. Kings were deposed, cities were burned, populations exiled, and Jerusalem was laid to waste.

Ezekiel paints a grim picture of what playing geo-political footsie had done to Judah’s spiritual condition in chs 8-10. Worship of other gods had not replaced the worship of YHWH in Solomon’s temple. Instead, the worship of Asherah, Tammuz, Baal, and likely others had been welcomed into the holy places to be worshipped alongside of YHWH (some factions of ancient near eastern religions even viewed Ashram as the queen consort of YHWH). Chapter 10 concludes this episode with a divine vision of the glory of YHWH departing from the temple, indicating that he had given Judah over to its fate, which was already en route in the form of Nebuchadnezzar’s armies.

While Israel (the northern kingdom) was more or less wicked during the entire divided kingdom period, Judah paints a cautionary tale of what “missionary dating” does on a political level—when the people of God make unholy alliances for the sake of safety, power, and comfort. The idolatry of Judah was likely not brought in through the sweeping reforms of a new administration, but in the creeping allowances under the guise of it just not being that big of a deal. Pragmatic justifications of safety and geo-political standing undoubtedly were the reasons used by Judean leadership to justify their alignment with Egypt and Babylon. Yet, close alliances and creeping allowances eroded Judah’s allegiance to YHWH over time.

By the time the young prophet Ezekiel enters the scene, he is forced to rebuke Judah’s leadership for its ambivalence (and even exploitation) of the poor, its unrighteousness at such a level that was shocking to the surrounding pagan nations, and even describes Judah’s unfaithfulness to YHWH in adulterous terms that are so graphic (especially chs 16 and 23) and the language has been tamed in its translation into English and is rarely, if ever, preached from pulpits today.

After missionary dating surrounding political powers, Judah eventually became what it beheld. The people of God, called to be a light to the nations, became a byword of unholiness to the nations and it cost them dearly. (Though, as the latter parts of Ezekiel’s writings show us, God had every intention of redeeming his people.)

A Cautionary Tale: Missionary Dating in 2024 Politics

There is much ado today about who has drifted this way or that, politically speaking. But if those of us who have spent most of our lives and ministries within the evangelical and Pentecostal communities in the United States are genuinely honest with ourselves, we are witnessing a very dark turn in the missionary dating relationship between the church and conservative politics over the last thirty years. We have become what we have beheld and what we have beheld is unholy and unrighteous. Consequently, our close political alliances—formed through pragmatic justifications and maintained through creeping allowances, have born rotten fruit that has brought us to a place where Christians will call even the most evil things “good” so long as it is “our side” and will call even the most good things “evil” so long as it is the “other side.”

We have traded our gospel witness for political power and, in the tradition of Molech, sacrificed the next generation for the promises of comfort, expediency, and dominance. We have not affected change in the system, we have been corrupted by the system. We have become what we have beheld for all of these years.

So what to do?

For the Christian, “winning” in the 2024 election cycle does not look like getting our guy or gal in the White House or our preferred political party in control of the congress. It does not mean down-ticket dominance or passing whatever local issue is on the ballot.

For Christians to win in 2024, we must break up with our missionary dating relationships with politicians. We must remove the pundits out of our pulpits, destroy unholy alliances that turn our worship services into idolatrous mixing of Christianity with American Civil Religion. We must return to a vigorous, unwavering, unapologetic defense of allegiance to Jesus and Jesus alone, exaltation of Jesus and Jesus alone, reliance upon Jesus and Jesus alone.

For Christians to win in 2024, we must run from even the appearance of unholy alliances and political idolatry. We must loudly and boldly denounce ungodly character instead of seeking to justify it so our team wins. We must rebuke attempts to abuse Christian language, symbols, and terms to further the political ambitions of ungodly men and women, regardless of party.

We must teach the next generation that character matters in leadership above all else—and then live up to that message with our lives and our votes.

We must promote God’s design for human flourishing, resisting the exploitation of the poor and vulnerable. We must rebuke attempts to impose Christian values from the halls of Congress as a means of outsourcing our missional birthright to carry the gospel message with us so that it might transform the hearts and minds of people so dearly loved by Jesus.

For Christianity to win in 2024, we must be less concerned about making America great again and be more concerned with making Christianity Christian again.