Michael Brown began his Feb. 12 WorldNetDaily column by serving up his view of the political situation — while, of course, being much more harsh on President Biden than he was on Donald Trump:
Have you ever seen an election year like 2024? We’re not just talking about the normal intensity of election fever, with the constant bombardment of political ads, dueling polls and round-the-clock cable news coverage. No, this year is quite different.
On the one hand, a second faceoff between Joe Biden and Donald Trump seems inevitable.
On the other hand, the future of both of these aging leaders is fraught with uncertainty. Will President Biden be able to campaign and participate in debates, let alone lead for four more years? (Of course, many would say he is absolutely not fit to lead right now.)
The recent DOJ special counsel report on Biden, with conclusions that sounded more like a satire piece from the Onion or Babylon Bee, was incredibly damaging, while the damage-control press conference that followed had the precise opposite effect. (Think of it as an all-out train wreck.)
Then there are the ever-present concerns of the charges against Hunter Biden, which could seriously implicate Biden as well.
As for replacing Biden at the last minute, that, too, creates more uncertainty. Would it be the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, who is more radically left than Biden? Will Michelle Obama save the day? Who knows?
When it comes to former President Trump, he is faced with different states seeking to remove him from their primary ballots, leading to court cases that have made their way to the Supreme Court.
He also faces a mountain of charges and indictments, which means many more court cases and endless expenditures of time and money. Will he be disqualified legally from running again? Or will a series of “guilty” verdicts cost him millions of needed voters?
Plus, he is no spring chicken himself.
Added to all this is the fact that the passions for and against Trump are off the charts, with some pundits warning, “If Trump wins the election there will be a civil war!” while other pundits warn, “If Trump loses the election there will be a civil war!” One influential Christian leader even opined that it might be worth a civil war to get Trump back in office.
Rather than offer the same level of judgment against Trump than he did against Biden, Brown punted and took the religious route:
Let us, then, step above the madness of the hour and the political divisiveness – while still doing our part in the election process – and let us talk about Jesus more than we talk about candidates.
It will do our own souls well. And we might just help others too.
Brown followed up with a Feb. 21 column warning of pastors getting too invested in political candidates:
As leaders in the Body of Christ, nothing is more important than your personal testimony – your hard-earned reputation for soundness in life, faith and practice. You are a representative of Jesus in a formal and public way, with believers looking to you for guidance and unbelievers looking at you, scrutinizing you for godliness.
That’s why it is so important that we don’t hitch our wagons to political leaders lest their misbehavior tarnishes our reputations. And even if they don’t misbehave – if they don’t lie or sell out or act in some duplicitous way – if we become more associated with them then we are with the Gospel, we dilute, if not destroy, our witness.
Brown complained that his initial endorsement of Ted Cruz in 2016 “compromised my ability to be an uncompromised, unbiased voice, which is an essential part of my own ministry calling.” He then pretended he wasn’t as vocal of a Trump supporter as he actually was:
In the months that followed, I did make clear that I would be voting for Trump, explaining why I preferred his policies to those of Hillary Clinton. I also challenged Christian voters on the issues themselves, asking how they could cast a vote for someone who advocated for the legal slaughter of the unborn.
We cannot hitch our wagons to them. We cannot put our hopes in them. We cannot look to them to save our nation. And we dare not tie our personal testimonies to them.
But Brown did, in fact, hitch his wagon to Trump — so much so that he wrote two books with the explicit purpose of convincing his fellow evangelicals to overlook Trump’s amorality and support him because he delivered on right-wing agenda items. Still, he hypocritically repeated his line of the day:
But, to repeat, as Christian leaders we dare not hitch our reputations or our ministries or our churches or our denominations or our organizations to a political candidate. The moment we do, we are guilty of mixing politics with faith, joining the perfect to the imperfect, also risking the tarnishing of our own reputations in the process.
That’s because every time that candidate speaks or acts, people will associate us with him (or her). If she says something stupid, we now have to answer for it. If he is vulgar or nasty or caught in a lie, that now reflects on us. And this means that the name of Jesus gets tarnished and our witness to the world becomes compromised.
Nothing in this world – and I mean nothing, from political power to boatloads of money to social media influence – is worth that. Nothing.
So, do not kiss the ring. Do not get seduced by the media spotlight. And do not let anything defile or degrade or diminish you.
Brown won’t admit that this is what has happened to him, despite later walkbacks after the Capitol riot and when Trump didn’t toe the right-wing line on abortion.