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Should a Church Discipline Members Over Politics?
...On fiscal and economic matters, along with issues of trade policy and many aspects of foreign policy and national defense, the two parties are both essentially centrist. Contemporary debates may obscure the reality, but the economic policies of John F. Kennedy and Ronald W. Reagan were very similar, as were the domestic policies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. The real issues of division are moral and cultural--and have everything to do with issues of life and death, authority and autonomy, marriage and sexuality. There the divide is wide and growing.

Conservative evangelicals, awakened to political responsibility by a sense of crisis, have in recent years voted for Republican candidates in overwhelming numbers. Liberal Protestantism has been just as solidly identified with the Democratic Party and its candidates. There are no political innocents here. Evangelicals undoubtedly run the risk of identifying the Republican Party as the source of national virtue and the salvation of a culture in crisis. At the same time, the Republican Party has taken stands, made commitments, and demonstrated leadership in defense of what animates millions of Evangelicals in the political process. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, has taken stands (through formal platform statements and political actions) that formally put it in opposition to those same commitments. Though a few brave Democratic candidates buck the trend of their own party, the Party itself maintains these commitments. Abortion has been the most significant issue of division for decades. Now, marriage and sexuality rise to similar levels of concern....

...We must hasten to make clear that our political context is not that of Germany in the 1930s. The Democratic Party cannot fairly be compared with National Socialism, Maoism, or analogous evils. Furthermore, there is room for hope that the Democratic Party can be reformed. ...