Christians have a real civic responsibility, and it starts with letting Scripture, not the culture, tell us what that looks like. With an election less than a week away, I sat down with one of my closest friends to talk it through.
Lance Ralston pastored Calvary Chapel Oxnard for 42 years. He’s been a mentor to me for a long time, and we serve together on the Enduring Word board. I always walk away from our conversations having learned something, and this one was no different.
There’s a lot out there right now that seems designed to discourage believers from engaging at all. Some say politics has no place in the pulpit. Others are just worn out by the noise. So I asked Lance the questions I hear from people in our church every week.
Having an opinion doesn’t make it true
Lance started with a simple observation: a lot of people have confused having an opinion with reality. Our opinions are shaped by our input sources. If those sources are mostly online, we’re often taking in propaganda rather than information.
He remembered a high school journalism class where the teacher drilled into students how easily bias slips into reporting, even when you think you’re just stating facts. Today, he said, there’s hardly any attempt to hide it. Bias isn’t only in what gets reported and how. It’s also in what never gets reported at all.
We talked about how much of what passes for news has shifted from journalism to activism. As Lance put it, a lot of it is “crusaders for an ideology masquerading as news.” The takeaway for believers is to be humble and careful about where our convictions are coming from.
Should politics be in the pulpit?
I’ve had people leave our church because I taught on Romans 13 and connected it to what’s happening in California. Their reason was, “Politics shouldn’t be in the pulpit.” So I asked Lance where that idea comes from.
His answer: usually from “separation of church and state.” But that phrase isn’t in the Constitution. It comes from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists, in an era when colonial pulpits regularly preached on citizens’ duty to govern their towns and colonies by biblical principles. When we let that phrase define the church’s role, we’ve let a secular worldview do Scripture’s job.
Instead, Lance pointed to Jesus’ words in Matthew 5. We are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Salt slows decay. Light exposes. And Jesus said not to hide it.
Lance drew a clear line here. The pulpit shouldn’t promote a political party. But it absolutely should speak to how Scripture addresses the way a society is governed.
Test every platform by Scripture
What about a believer who says, “I’m a Christian, but I support the Democratic platform”? Lance’s approach is to ask them to name specific positions, then weigh each one against Scripture.
He distinguished the party’s older emphasis, like justice for the little guy and equal treatment under the law regardless of skin color, which he fully affirms, from where he sees the party heading today. He named two specific concerns. First, socialism, which he described as making the state a substitute for God. Second, abortion on demand, which he called incompatible with the sanctity of life.
But Lance didn’t let the other side off the hook either. When I asked how to answer the pushback that “you’re just pushing the Republican Party,” his answer surprised me. He no longer sees the Republican Party as a standard-bearer for his morality. In his view, both parties are ultimately driven by gaining and keeping power, and he believes Republicans have traded away historic values to hold onto it.
The point isn’t loyalty to a party. It’s loyalty to the Word, applied one issue at a time.
“The culture war is over”
When we got to issues like boys competing in girls’ sports, Lance stepped back to the bigger picture. In the ’80s and early ’90s, Christians talked a lot about the culture war between a biblical worldview and secular humanism. “Well, the war’s over,” Lance said. “And secularism won.”
What replaced the Christian worldview is what he called expressive individualism. You find your identity by looking within, and your desires become the core of who you are. Once that’s the starting point, society is expected to affirm whatever a person feels.
Lance’s encouragement was to notice where our questions are coming from. Many debates in the church today are being asked from inside a secular framework. Go back to Genesis 1 and 2, he said. God created humanity male and female. Our sex is given by God and grounded in our biology, not shaped by our desires.
Stewarding the vote
Lance has long taught that voting is a duty of citizenship. Our citizenship is a gift God has blessed us with, and we’re called to be good stewards of it by voting biblical values.
The tension, he admitted, is that many Christians, himself included, have spent several election cycles holding their noses and voting for the lesser of two evils. And he shared something he’s openly rethinking.
What if a large bloc of believers told a party, “I can’t support your candidate or your platform, and that’s why I’m not voting for you. Put forward people and policies that line up with these values, and I will”? Lance suggested calling your local party office and saying exactly that. If they heard 2,000 of those calls, he said, “you better believe that would send a message.”
You may land in a different place than Lance does on this, and that’s okay. His deeper challenge stands either way: don’t hand your vote over automatically. Make the parties earn it by what they actually stand for.
Change happens one life at a time
Lance’s Substack article looks back at 50 years of cultural change and asks what the church should do now. His answer is that this isn’t the first time the church has lived in a culture that rejects it. The early church was born into a thoroughly pagan Roman Empire, and it spread organically, through relationships, one person at a time.
“Society is just individual lives writ large,” Lance said. It’s easy to blame pastors or “the church” for where we are. It’s harder to ask: Do I know my neighbor’s name? Have I ever had him over for a meal?
He pointed to Rosaria Butterfield, a former secular professor who came to faith after a Christian colleague simply welcomed her into their home and shared life with her.
Lance had a direct word for pastors too. How many unbelievers are your friends? How many do you share a meal with at least once a month? If the answer is none, start, and bring some of your church family along.
We also talked about building relationships across generations. At Hope Chapel we’re seeing young men and women hungry for older believers to invest in them. Lance encouraged churches to let small group leaders lead, and to keep most groups open to whoever comes, mixing young and old, and people from different backgrounds.
Point people to the good cisterns
Lance’s article borrows Jeremiah’s image of people drinking from broken cisterns (Jeremiah 2:13). I pushed back a little: the church is good at pointing out the broken cisterns, but what are the good ones we point people to?
His answer was church history. Scripture is the source, and history shows what happens when ordinary believers actually live it out.
He told the story of Gregory the Great. When plague swept through Rome, Gregory’s fellow monks wanted to stay safe behind the monastery walls. Gregory asked what they were doing. People were dying outside, and their job was to minister to them. And if they caught it? “Then we go to be with Jesus.” He went into the streets, some joined him, and many in Rome came to faith because they finally saw Christianity lived out.
We won’t agree with all of Gregory’s theology, but his love for people was animated by Scripture. Church history is full of stories like that, and they carry a weight that’s worth passing on.
Watch the full conversation
We covered even more in the full episode, including how Lance responds to postmillennial arguments that Christians are giving up on society’s institutions too easily. You can watch it here: Practicing Hope Podcast: Lance Ralston on a Christian’s Civic Duty.
I’d also encourage you to subscribe to Lance’s Substack and his YouTube channel. He’s a wealth of wisdom, and I’ve been learning from him for years.
Whatever you decide this election, decide it prayerfully and with an open Bible. And then go knock on your neighbor’s door.
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