Editors’ Note: Although the Christian Research Institute is a non-political, non-partisan organization, an intersection exists between politics, the public square, and a biblically grounded articulation and defense of the historic Christian faith. For more than 45 years, the CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL has addressed a wide variety of issues within this intersection, especially concerning Christian ethics informed by Christian orthodoxy, including the sanctity of life (abortion, reproductive technologies, euthanasia), marriage, sexuality, LGBTQ+ matters, war, religious freedom, and other biblically relevant topics of our times. Anne Kennedy’s insightful commentary on the writings and influence of the evangelical political commentator David French aligns well within the JOURNAL’S purview.
“I don’t even like him.” I can’t count the number of times I’ve said these words, nor the number of conversations that have provoked them, since 2015. Of course, they are about Donald Trump, former president and the singular modern figure to catalyze the disintegration of any remaining scraps of shared political or moral conviction in the United States. Whether you love him, hate him, or feel no feelings at all, Trump is the line drawn through every American heart.
One of his most articulate evangelical opponents is David French, a person who has emerged in America’s political life as at least as much of a conundrum as President Trump himself. In fact, to me, these two men feel like the Scylla and Charybdis of evangelical politics in 2024. One is intellectual, upright, and legally astute, the other crass and enmired in embarrassing legal and ethical troubles. Both intuitively tap into the forces of American political feeling. Through action and speech, both illumine the shifting contours of moral and spiritual sentiment. Both have had a tone problem. But in the aftermath of the attempt on the life of President Trump, the former president used his speech at the Republican National Convention to call for unity.1 Likewise, in a short podcast, French expressed his hope that America can find a less divided way forward. It seems, for a brief moment at least, that the kindness French so often preaches is on display.2 Nonetheless, navigating the turgid and polarizing discourse every day on X (formerly Twitter) and the New York Times leaves me feeling battered, floating on a sea of promises that nothing good lies ahead no matter which way I steer.
Pluralism Will Save Us. David French3 began his career defending the free speech and free association rights of students on hostile college campuses before doing a tour as a JAG officer in Iraq and then leaving his law work to write for National Review and The Atlantic. When Trump burst on the scene, French flirted with his own presidential run,4 eventually leaving National Review to launch The Dispatch. In January 2023, he became a columnist at the New York Times.5
Understanding French’s personal experience over the last thirty years is central to grasping his political convictions. As a defender and a victim of free speech, he is wholly committed to the kind of tolerance that preserves secular pluralism. In his 2020 book-length response to his debate with Sorab Ahmari,6 one prompted by Ahmari’s “broadside” against “Frenchism,”7 he insists that defending the neutral spaces where pluralism remains is the best solution to the troubles we face.8 “America was built,” he explains, “from the ground up to function as a pluralistic republic. It can flourish only as a pluralistic republic.”9 Evidence of America’s original pluralism may be found in the diversity of local cultures and religious traditions throughout the nation. It was through the exercise of federalism that each diverse religious community learned to respect the others.10 That liberality, cemented by the rights of free speech and free association, has made America what it is, despite its many besetting sins.11 To throw this away in order to “win” the culture wars, as French intimates Ahmari is suggesting, strikes French as a perilous, unreasonable inclination.12
Courage Under Trolling. Another key piece of French’s story is that, as a classical liberal, he is committed to ideological impartiality. In a world of cancellations, of the possibilities of speech costing something, he has endured racist and vile personal attacks against himself, his wife, and his children. As a result of his position as a Never Trumper, his whole family was subject to online harassment, particularly from the Alt-Right.13
This experience continues to be central to French’s view of American politics and religion. It may be that French feels more comfortable with those who ideologically disagree with him on the Left simply because he has been treated more kindly by his supposed enemies. The practice of distinguishing between ordinary (though sharp) disagreement and extremist trolling — a knack not many of us possess to the degree we would like — was abandoned by French in the poisonous vitriol of the Trump era. If people on the Right feel that French does not well represent their views in America’s paper of record, it is nevertheless understandable that he might be deaf to the substantive reasoning given their affection for a political figure whose internet trolling abilities are legendary.
French’s toxic experience of others’ free exercise of speech, nevertheless, has not led him to question his belief that it is only the exercise of speech that offers a way out of the toxicity. Often pleading for kindness, for the Left and the Right to humanize each other, he believes preserving neutral space where anyone can speak is essential. Even for drag queens, even in a public library.14
This Liberalism Is Definitely Deceased. As 2020 finally gave way to 2021, like many other Americans, I was politically and culturally disoriented. I’ve always been politically right-leaning while juggling a smattering of issues that didn’t fit neatly into the GOP — like the fact that I often do not vote for president because no sufficiently (for me) pro-life candidate is on the ballot. The cataclysm of the pandemic upended my comfortable illusions. Who is really running everything? What is going on? For the first time in my life, I began to question the assumptions of the Enlightenment, of Progress, and yes, even of Democracy. I encountered a fascinating array of writers like Christopher Lasch, Mary Harrington, Roger Scruton, Carl Trueman, and others who articulated that while the blessings of the modern era aren’t all bad — potable water and antibiotics are nothing to sniff at — the seeds of liberalism’s own demise are sown into the system.
Patrick Deneen, in Why Liberalism Failed, makes the pithy observation that “Liberalism would…simultaneously ‘prevail’ and fail by becoming more nakedly itself.”15 Liberalism, by expanding the range of acceptable social, familial, economic, and spiritual norms, by providing the philosophical justification to question and ultimately dismantle everything, “created the conditions, and the tools, for the ascent of its own worst nightmare”; and worse, “it lacks the self-knowledge to understand its own culpability.”16 Which is to say, the unusual felicity of economic progress that launched America onto the world stage as a superpower came about through a certain kind of religious and cultural openhandedness — the kind that, gently at first, eroded the necessary assumption of obligation and virtue at the heart of social cohesion.
Unhappily, erosion, by its very nature, doesn’t wake up one morning and decide to start shoring up the damage. The task of deconstruction doesn’t cease once the world has become a marred dystopia. The forces of liberalism did not arrive in 1995; look around to observe the relative delights of an obligation-free sexual culture enlivened by rampant consumerism and the folding of hands in satisfaction. If “diversity” untethered from moral constraint and spiritual wisdom is accepted as a “strength,” it is but a short step to the democratic majority embracing the evil of anti-social, anti-culture autonomy that characterizes the world we live in now.
Indeed, it feels quaint to listen to French and Ahmari arguing about the relative ills of Drag Queen Story Hour five years on. Ahmari was right to be alarmed and dismayed. The very existence of such a phenomenon signaled a ghastly cultural and political failure to privilege good over evil. The desecration of personhood through “gender-affirming care,” the grooming of children through exposure to p*rnographic material, the economic and spiritual degradation of the family, the virulent post-Dobbs opposition to the pro-life movement, and now the humiliating spectacle of President Biden’s rambling anger and refusal to step away from the presidential race17 make it almost impossible for me to hear French’s cries for “tolerance” and “pluralism” as anything but entirely misguided.
This is in no way to propose a solution to the disintegration of American political and cultural life. I don’t think anyone knows what to do. However, a willingness to observe the real state of affairs must surely be the first step toward recovery.
Sundays Are Made for the New York Times. Americans are hard-pressed by vitriol and division. The question is, who is to blame? And what do we do about it? Writing in his usual Sunday column in April this year, French titled his piece, “Don’t Let Our Broken Politics Mangle Our Faith.” He addressed the hue and cry over the Biden administration reminding the American public that March 31, which happened to be Easter Day, had previously been declared Transgender Day of Visibility. The White House, in separate statements, wished everyone happiness on both counts. “One can certainly disagree with Biden’s choice to elevate the Transgender Day of Visibility,” wrote French, “but it’s quite a stretch to say that Biden was deliberately targeting Easter when Easter doesn’t occur on a fixed date and only rarely falls on March 31. In fact…the next time Easter is on March 31 will be the year 2086.” French went on to ask if issuing such a statement made President Biden into a “demon,” wondering if there could be “any ounce of charity in saying that a practicing Catholic ‘deliberately desecrated’ his own holiday?” Answering his own question, he said, “Of course not.”18
French used the rest of the piece to introduce a curriculum called The After Party.19 Quoting 1 Corinthians that “if I ‘do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal,’” he castigated “many of these Republicans” for whom “it doesn’t matter if a Democrat professes faith in Christ, believes in the inerrancy of scripture and exhibits the fruit of the spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. The fact that she might also be pro-choice, support a legal right to same-sex marriage or find elements of critical race theory compelling and persuasive makes her destined for hell.” Maintaining fairness at all cost, French did allow that he’s “seen the same dynamic in reverse, with more progressive Christians condemning as apostates those believers who don’t share their views on guns or race.”20
If you read the column and found yourself muttering into your coffee while trying to decide what to wear to church, wondering if President Biden really should be considered a “practicing” Catholic, as he so openly supports and promotes pro-abortion and same-sex marriage in contradiction to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, and why there even exists something called “Transgender Day of Visibility” that requires the United States government to issue a statement of joy, French would like you to pause and consider your charitable inclinations. He used to experience negative gut-level reactions towards these skirmishes in the culture war. “But,” he writes, “the more I matured, and the more I recognized my own tendency toward combativeness and judgmental behavior in the face of disagreement the more I realized that this approach profoundly misunderstands Christian moral commands.” Taking up the Scriptural admonition to kindness and humility, he quotes Micah 6:8 and insists that while “Christians can’t shrink from confronting injustice,” they “must engage with humility and kindness.”21
The Morning After Virtue Party. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation,22 French was joined by Pastor Russell D. Moore (currently Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today)23 and Curtis Chang (Duke Divinity School faculty and Senior Fellow at Fuller Theological Seminary)24 in producing content for the After Party. The curriculum is designed to help pastors who are hesitant to bring politics into the pulpit to shift the narrative from the ideological substance of the issues to the “how” of engagement. Speaking to a group of pastors, Chang explains, “This way, if you run the After Party in your small group community, in your Bible studies and so forth like that, then if people get mad, they get mad at Curtis, Russell, and David, they get less mad at you. You can have plausible deniability, right? You can just, you know, I don’t agree with everything these guys say, but I think they’re worth listening [to]. That’s a classic move you do make as a pastor, right?”25
I am extremely dubious that abdicating spiritual authority to those so eager (especially with the financial backing of radical progressives) to delineate the parameters of proper Christian speech is a move many American pastors are eager to make. I don’t know how well the curriculum is doing, but I do know that teaching Christians that it is “humble” not to engage in “the Culture War” at the very least strikes a blow to the plurality of ideas French hopes will proliferate in the neutral marketplace of religious toleration.
Writing about the “He Gets Us” campaign, French reminded his readership he was once numbered among “fundamentalists,” like Matt Walsh and Samuel Sey, who found the Super Bowl LVIII “He Gets Us” advertisem*nt offensive26 — an ad that culminated with the line, “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet.”27 “When I left my fundamentalist church and joined an evangelical fellowship in law school, I learned a different approach,” he explained. There is a “difference between declaring your faith and demonstrating your faith” (emphasis in original). It takes “immeasurably more courage,” he says, “to love people you’re often told to hate — even and especially if they don’t love you back. There is nothing distinctive about boldly declaring your beliefs. Many people do that. But how many people love their enemies?” That, says French, is “what the Super Bowl ad is communicating.” It’s saying, “I can love you and serve you even when I disagree with you” (emphasis in original).28
Except that loving people with whom you disagree isn’t the problem. The problem is about the definition of love. What does it mean to “love” your enemy? The “He Gets Us” ad shows a woman washing the feet of a young woman outside of an abortion clinic, while in the background a group of people, the haters as it were, face away and toward each other, their anti-abortion signs propped on the sidewalk. The message is clear. Those protesting beside the clinic don’t love the women walking in. They are ideologically motivated. They don’t really care about people. In fact, the way to love the abortion-minded woman is not to tell her that she might be about to do a catastrophic thing. Indeed, love demands not saying anything but simply washing her feet. That’s the act of love.
That’s not love, though. That’s the very definition of hatred, for it allows the person caught in sin to go on with no warning, no intimation that a chasm of eternal separation from God lies just over the horizon. Pro-life Christians who have poured out their lives to care for women and babies are not the enemy here.29
Suspicious conservatives have yet to embrace The After Party curriculum and have largely rejected the “He Gets Us” effort. Others took the bold step of publicly lauding the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) when they, largely as a result of the tone of his Sunday columns, disinvited French from participating in a panel on political divisiveness at their Annual General Assembly.30
Charitable Discourse. Can someone who does not appear to hear his own tone be the one to tell others how to speak? That question, for me and many others, is the crux of the matter. The admonition to speak and deal kindly with others appears to work in only one direction. In the Left against Right of American politics, using the Holy Scriptures to insist that the substance of a political argument is less important than the tone with which it is discussed feels hollow coming from a Christian writing in a magazine read by thousands of progressives who don’t know any Christians. The frame of anti-Christian bias is reinforced over and over by an articulate, reasonable-sounding Christian whose commitment to free speech is nearly unassailable, except that the legitimate concerns of those apparently within his own “tribe” are judged — by him — to be secondary issues.
The irony is that freedom of speech and freedom of religion don’t exist in the way we believe they do. It isn’t the case that each American citizen wakes up in the morning, clicks onto the internet, considers a range of neutral ideas, uses her intellect and education to choose the best ones, and then goes merrily on her way to love her enemy. Depending on the socially gilded frame casting a golden hue over acceptable belief, one kind of speech and one kind of religion will ultimately prevail.
For French, the speech of Christians must be proscribed to accommodate a “pluralistic” frame. In this way he finds he cannot support the Ten Commandments being posted in schools in Louisiana because it will violate the rulings of America’s highest court,31 but he does not seem to mind the propagation of America’s new civic LGBTQ+ religion — or at least in all my searching, I have not found a case made by him against the display of Pride paraphernalia in America’s classrooms. Religious pluralism, one would think, would mean for every garish rainbow festooning a public building, for every statue of Baphomet, the cross and Ten Commandments would at least be tacked onto a bulletin board. And yet everyone understands that this is not the case, witness the desperate battles in all spheres of American life.
There is no such thing as a neutral space. Everywhere that words are spoken has some spiritual underpinning that gives those words intelligibility. In the sharp ideological divide, the scraps of space where Christians might freely express their views, where they might admit that the nature of the Scriptures governs everything about their lives, is rapidly diminishing. Indeed, it is not Donald Trump who is the plumb line of decency and goodness dividing tolerance from bigotry. It is the living and active Word of God who gets in between joint and marrow and illumines the truth. Christ is the measure and meaning of love. I’m still waiting for David French to wake up on Sunday morning and decide to share the good news of the gospel of Jesus with the world rather than vaunting the blessings of America’s so-called liberty. —Anne Kennedy
Anne Kennedy,MDiv, is the author ofNailed It: 365 Readings for Angry or Worn-Out People, rev. ed.(Square Halo Books, 2020). She blogs about current events and theological trends on her Substack,Demotivations with Anne.
