Sprinkled With Propaganda
Policies, Principles, and Psyops
Numerous self-appointed Christian spokespersons found themselves appalled and enraged by the election of Donald Trump in 2016. What they were appalled by, if we go by Russell Moore’s incessant complaints and accusations, was the way that conservative Christians were willing, in large numbers, to vote for a candidate who had a history of public moral failings, and who sometimes said mean things about his opponents.
Not content to sit idly by and see Trump elected again in 2020, several of these Progressive-leaning Christian influencers mounted a concerted effort, during the months leading up to that election, to diminish Christian enthusiasm for voting Republican by providing a rationalization to help mute Christian consciences in the voting booth. Muting their consciences was something Christians would certainly need to do, if they were going to bring themselves to vote for abortion advocates. It isn’t easy to convince committed Christians to vote for candidates who favor the dismemberment of unborn children, but the aforementioned Christian influencers found Trump so abhorrent that they were willing to step up to the challenge.
Right on schedule now, in 2024, some of those same influencers are beginning to churn out material that bears the hallmarks of the election year propaganda they produced in the past. (One could be forgiven for imagining they are auditioning for the role of Mark Studdock within the current regime.) Some of the more dyspeptic influencers are even allegedly taking money from outspoken enemies of Christianity to produce materials designed to help conservative Christian voters rethink the moral rationale for how they vote. In open forums, these influencers are actually telling pastors that, by using such prepared materials with their congregants, the pastors can maintain “plausible deniability” about their own political leanings. The euphemism, “maintain plausible deniability”, sounds ever so much more pleasant than “put one over on your church”.
This past week, the video I have embedded below popped up on my news feed. It features a man named Preston Sprinkle. I should have referred to him as Dr. Preston Sprinkle. He makes sure you know his proper appellation right up front in his bio. I haven’t known much about Dr. Sprinkle or followed his work. I knew vaguely that some conservative Christians have taken exception to various and sundry of his LGBTQ ideas. He says in his bio that he encourages people to hold “their predetermined beliefs loosely”, so that’s probably a clue as to which particular direction he’s nudging historically Christian ideas regarding all things LGBTQ. I don’t know enough about Dr. Sprinkle to have particularly strong opinions regarding his views on homosexuality, but his enthusiasm for the rock band U2, which he also openly reveals in his bio, is by itself sufficient to disqualify him on any number of subjects. (That’s sort of a joke. If you can’t take a joke about U2, then you might consider the possibility that you yourself are a part of the problem.)
Conspicuously absent from Dr. Sprinkle’s bio are the words “Christian” or “church”. His church associations, if any, are not apparent in his bio. His site is, however, peppered with strong views regarding what it means to be a proper Christian. Thus, I infer from his web site that Dr. Sprinkle fancies himself as a sort of Christian leader at-large, though it’s kind of hard to tell.
In the very short video, Dr. Sprinkle begins by sounding the alarm for all of us regarding his belief in the widespread prevalence and imminent danger posed by “political idolatry”. No evidence is offered for the existence of such widespread “political idolatry”. We are expected to just take Dr. Sprinkle’s word for it. “Idolatry” certainly sounds bad. Who, after all, wants to be an idolator? But what exactly, we might ask, are these apparently ubiquitous political idolators actually doing?
Well, Dr. Sprinkle says they are exhibiting political allegiance to a political party. One wonders whether, if they alternated their votes willy nilly between the parties, would that be sufficient for Dr. Sprinkle let them out of the idolatry box? And why an allegiance to a political party constitutes idolatry, Dr. Sprinkle declines to explain. What form such nefarious allegiance takes, Dr. Sprinkle also declines to specify. We are left only with our imaginations if we hope to conjure up what such an improper political allegiance might look like. Given the fact that, for the vast majority of Christians, casting a vote during infrequent elections constitutes the sum total of their actual political activity, I conclude that what Dr. Sprinkle is almost certainly trying to do is plant seeds of doubt in our minds regarding the moral criteria that has resulted in so many Christians voting for Republicans. He doesn’t come right out and say that, but we are left with few other options.
Dr. Sprinkle does say, however, that such allegiances inevitably dilute a Christian’s allegiance to King Jesus. Just why that is necessarily the case, Dr. Sprinkle yet again doesn’t reveal. We are simply to take his word for it. The fact that, for millennia, Christians have been able to successfully maintain both temporal and eternal allegiances, is something Dr. Sprinkle is curiously silent about. Has every Christian who ever pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, been ipso facto guilty by this standard, of political idolatry? Apparently Dr. Sprinkle thinks so. Does loyalty (another word for “allegiance”, by the way) toward a family, or a community, or an employer, also constitute idolatry? What if a Christian has a single-minded preference for, say, representative democracy over communist dictatorship? Would that too be idolatrous? If not, then why is Dr. Sprinkle singling out political party allegiance as being unique among temporal affiliations in its ability to dilute our allegiance to King Jesus? Once again, the video doesn’t say.
What Dr. Sprinkle seems to be doing with this video is raising the specter that commitment to voting for a specific political party constitutes personal moral failure on the part of Christian voters. As I write this, I recall that many of the very same people now suggesting that loyalty to a political party constitutes a moral failure, are those who, during the pandemic, told us that vaccine hesitancy, or failure to wear a mask, also constituted a lack of love for our neighbors. Let’s just say they haven’t covered themselves with glory with their lengthening track record of guilt-mongering accusations. I write this, by the way, as someone who is no particular admirer of Republicans. I find them to be comically hapless and often uninspiring. Republican aspirations often seem to run no higher than being the Washington Generals to the Democrats’ Harlem Globetrotters. So it is not out of love for Republicans that I take exception to the accusations of guilt merchants like Sprinkle and Moore.
The ultimate goal of their histrionics, I suspect, is to manufacture a narrative in the minds of non-Progressive Christians that puts them on a defensive footing from a moral point of view. They are less concerned with actual analysis than with forming an intuition in our minds. That intuition is something along the lines of “political enthusiasm for a particular party, even if motivated by conscience, represents a failure of loyalty toward Jesus.” It is not important for us think too critically about this narrative. In fact, for Dr. Sprinkle’s purposes, I suspect it’s important for us not to think too critically at all.
Unfortunately, I myself like to think at least a wee bit critically about how Dr. Sprinkle is nudging me to conceive of Christian voting. Would that be all right? I hope that doesn’t put me in there with all those sweaty idolators.
Let me start by observing that if Christians are to be precluded from ever voting for morally flawed candidates, we shall be forced to give up voting altogether. Voting is a prudential judgment rooted in what the voter believes a candidate is likely to do while in office. If a party’s policies openly advocate, say, the dismemberment of unborn children, or their sexual mutilation later into their childhoods, I’ll go out on a limb and say that it is not particularly “idolatrous” to consistently vote against a political party in pursuit of such policies. It is therefore probably safe to say that showing “allegiance” to a political party is not inevitably a form of idolatry. In the real world, depending on the circumstances, political loyalties may actually reflect wisdom born out of faith.
The elephant in the room during this election year is, of course, Donald Trump. The Donald enjoys being the elephant in every room as it happens. I myself am, in many ways, not a fan of Mr. Trump. But alas, all of my own favored candidates routinely go down in flames during the primaries. In 2016 I was hoping for Scott Walker. In 2024 I was cautiously optimistic about Ron DeSantis. So if you are looking for a politically savvy prognosticator who unfailingly picks a winner, I am not your man. Happily though, we are in possession of four years of existence proofs which do tell us something about how Trump would probably govern if he ends up being elected. He has shown himself to be notoriously determined to keep many (though not all) of his promises. And for all of his faults, he does seem to actually love his country. Perhaps not as much as he loves himself, but we can’t always have George Washington for president. Joe Biden, on the other hand, to the extent he still even knows what day it is, seems to view his country the way a pimp views a prostitute — as something to be exploited for his own personal gain.
Conservative Christians are often lectured by Russell Moore, David French et al for having voted for Donald Trump. But Moore and company, who are so exercised by Trump’s personal failings, are notably silent regarding the moral failures of Trump’s opponents. It isn’t as if the Democrats are fielding Mother Teresa as their candidate for president. Honestly, to pretend that Joe Biden is a paragon of relative virtue and moral fastidiousness, by comparison to Donald Trump, would be laughably absurd if it wasn’t so revealing of the pathetic political self-dealing of Russell Moore’s accusations. Notwithstanding my own preference for someone other than Trump, I would crawl over broken glass to vote for him against Joe Biden. Far better to vote for a flawed man who wants to build up his country than an equally flawed man who wants to plunder it.
Whoever each of us votes for, it is always wise to remember that there are no ultimate and final answers that will ever be found in temporal politics. It is unfortunately the case, especially in the soft totalitarian environment we are now living in, that government policies can have a large effect on the well-being of our neighbors, for either good or ill. Were the government more limited and less intrusive, politics and politicians would be far less consequential. I myself very much prefer limited government with its inconsequential politics. But as things now stand, the duty of love we owe our families and neighbors seems hard to decouple from advocating for temporal politics that reflect a Christian understanding of justice, and of human flourishing.
Nevertheless, it is good to keep in mind that no matter how beneficial this or that conservative policy might be, public policy is itself not the Christian gospel. For Christians, this world has a shelf life beyond which temporal politics will cease to matter at all.
What I really suspect is going on with Dr. Sprinkle’s video, and with the work of other similar influencers, is an effort to weaken the general inclination among many Christians to vote for Republican policies as a matter of conscience. But as Progressives everywhere are wont to do when trying to justify their goals, Sprinkle and the other influencers are occupying themselves by saying very silly things. Until they start to make more forthright and cogent arguments, we should feel free to disregard all their manipulative histrionics.