Since 2016, a cottage industry of books and articles has steadily arisen in order to answer one flammable question: is it morally permissible for American evangelicals to vote for the “lesser of two evils”? Some evangelicals have recently framed the choice in terms of the “greater good.”[1] Either way, with the presidential election just 2 weeks away, that question hasn’t gone away. When did this dilemma begin? When did evangelicals begin voting for the “lesser of two evils” for the greater good? At the very least, one thing is evident: this problem didn’t start in 2024. Or 2020. Or 2016. You could say that evangelicals have been stuck between a rock and a political hard place since 1796.
As the “American sage” George Washington (an Episcopalian) was stepping down from office, two names were on the ballot in 1796: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Although these two men were both in Washington’s cabinet, they were worlds apart on several issues, including religion. Adams was a Harvard-educated Unitarian from New England. Jefferson was a slave-owning Virginian and a Deist (or rather a self-professed “Christian” who didn’t believe in the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the virgin birth, the resurrection, and who edited his own version of the Bible). Despite their political genius and mutual beliefs about the general value of religion, these founders were so far from evangelicalism that they almost make our current political choices in 2024 seem orthodox.
The choice in 1796 (and again in 1800) was between a party that approved of state-sponsored religion (Federalists) and a party that platformed religious liberty (Democratic-Republicans). As Francis Wayland Jr. wrote of his grandparents’ generation, “The most pious of the Baptists of that day found themselves often making common cause, in behalf of religious freedom, with errorists and infidels.”[2] In other words, for the sake of liberty, godly Baptists voted for a person who ripped up his Bible and made a new one. Politics are funny like that. Indeed, without these kinds of political coalitions, the First Amendment would never have been possible. John Leland, the most Jeffersonian Baptist to ever walk the earth, called government itself “a choice among evils — in fact, a necessary evil, to prevent greater evils.”[3]
Between the age of Jefferson and the age of Jackson, evangelicals were still faced with difficult political choices. William F. Conrad, a Baptist pastor in northern Kentucky in the 1820s, hated the practice of dueling because of its lawlessness and its violation of the sixth commandment. He did not support street violence in any form. However, in 1832, both presidential candidates — Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay — had been in duels (Jackson killing a man). Nevertheless, Conrad confessed, “I supported Mr. Clay on most occasions, possibly because he was the lesser of most evils represented by my politicians.”[4] Although Clay had been rumored to be a “drunkard,” Conrad voted for his fellow Kentuckian simply because he was the best option in Conrad’s view. For Conrad, there was a difference between casting a vote for a man and being that man’s apologist.
Of course, in border states like Kentucky, nothing illustrated the ability of Americans to cast their lot with “the lesser of two evils” than the Civil War. However, it’s also important to remember that the motivation to vote for the least objectionable candidate has never been a strictly Southern or even conservative impulse. On the eve of the presidential race of 1928 between Herbert Hoover and Al Smith, Harry Emerson Fosdick, the leading popularizer of liberal theology, declared, “In announcing my intention to vote for Mr. Hoover, however, let me say emphatically that the religious question has nothing to do with it and that I abhor the un-American attitude which considers any candidate’s ecclesiastical affiliation as a reason either for supporting or not supporting him for office.” For Fosdick, a Baptist who once pastored the First Presbyterian Church of New York City, a candidate’s religion has “nothing to do with it.” Hoover was simply a better alternative to Smith. Nevertheless, according to Fosdick’s biographer, Al Smith’s Catholicism likely played a role in Fosdick not voting for him.[5]
On the other side of the theological aisle, fundamentalists also voted for the candidate who opposed their social and moral causes the least. In an opinion piece in the Decatur Evening Herald in 1928, the author, framing himself as the fictional brother of a Methodist minister, sought to clarify why conservatives vote the way they do. He wrote, “Prohibition is a thing that he labored for, and looked forward to, with all the power of this emotional conviction that it was necessary for the well-being of the human race. Now, when he sees this holy thing threatened, or thinks he sees it threatened, which is the same thing, by one of the candidates for President, he could no more help feeling an intense, emotional opposition to that candidate than he could help feeling abhorrence of blasphemy — and for the same reason.”[6] For many evangelicals in the middle of the 20th century, a vote for a presidential candidate was just as much (if not more so) a vote against another.
To an extent, for evangelicals, the issues in a presidential election have always been more important than the candidates themselves. During the Cold War, the so-called “Fighting Fundamentalist” Carl McIntire, a Presbyterian, believed that no conservative should attack “any of the leaders or the men who are active in the anti-Communist fight…All of us have our different views but everybody who is over on the right side is making a contribution to the defeat of the Communists, and that is what we must have.”[7] From religious liberty to Prohibition to free enterprise, evangelicals have long been willing to swallow their personal opinions of certain candidates for the sake of a larger fight against another. Whether this is right in itself is perhaps another matter. However, for the past 230 years, evangelicals of all generations have been faced with difficult choices very similar to our own in 2024 and have elected to vote for the lesser of two evils with the hope of avoiding a greater one.
[1] R. Lucas Stamps, “No One Said It Would Be Easy,” World Opinions, August 1, 2024.
[2] Wayland and Wayland, Memoir of the Life and Labors of Francis Wayland, 1:14.
[3] The Writings of the Late Elder John Leland, “Blow at the Root,” 238.
[4] Ramage and Watkins, Kentucky Rising, 32.
[5] Miller, Harry Emerson Fosdick, 446.
[6] Trammel, Fundamentalists in the Public Square, 90.
[7] Ruotsila, Fighting Fundamentalist, 177.
Comments