Understanding the Single-Issue Voter, by Anne Chamberlin

Reformation21

by Anne Chamberlin

Moving around often as a child and as an adult, I had the privilege of joining or regularly attending many different American churches in different regions. I've been a member of small (40-80 people), medium (200 members), and large (multi-service) churches. All of these churches have been non-urban, except one (in China). They are demographically just what you'd expect from the suburbs: mostly white communities where lower-middle class to upper-middle class families live. Congregations like these can be very diverse when it comes to livelihood and educational level. Members typically commute into the nearby city; are local service and care workers such as nurses, first responders, and teachers; or run small businesses (everything from storefront business owners to contractors to hairstylists). Some of these suburban areas abut rural areas.

As evidence of the liveliness of their faith, the particular churches I have attended (all in conservative denominations) have embraced multiple local and international outreaches to those in need. After all, a robust commitment to reaching those in need - the poor, the widow, the orphan -- is surely one of the clearest evidences of a true and living Christian faith. A quick survey I conducted of these yields a rich and prolific list of justice-and-mercy ministries. These believers have been busy with the following:

Partnerships with urban ministries and crisis pregnancy centers, support for single mothers, support for homeless ministries, divorce recovery, marriage and family and addiction counseling, ministries to people facing disabilities, prison ministry, deacon's funds, clothing collection or food pantry or service, refugee support, local and international student ministries and meals, ESL classes or Spanish language services, ministries and services for those who are homebound, ill, the elderly, and grief response and caring programs like Stephen Ministry. (And this list does not touch upon a deep-pocketed commitment to multiple overseas missionaries and programs.)

The vibrant outreach of these Christians is a living picture of James' teaching that a personal faith in Jesus Christ necessarily works out through the hands, feet, and wallets of real believers. But for me, all of this is more than a list on a website or a line on a graph. I know these people as friends. My family has worked alongside them and learned from them. I haven't told you the individual stories of people I know who whose personal ministries nurture their communities (in addition to the work they do during their regular work week, of course). If I shared some of their stories, you'd be encouraged and challenged. I can say with the psalmist in Psalm 16, "As for the saints who are in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is my delight."

Many of these evangelical saints -- with their sleeves rolled up in ministry and partnerships that cross local, international, and demographic lines -- voted for Donald Trump. Yet there seems to be a growing notion among some evangelical leaders that white Christians who voted for Trump may not love the least of these as well as Christians who voted otherwise. There seems to be a distancing from and disdain for faithful brothers and sisters who also voted for Donald Trump.

This disdain, despite the fact that these suburban churches believe that salvation is found in repentance and faith in Christ alone, hold Scripture as the final authority, and show it by loving the least and the lost, both in their neighborhoods and out of them.

So -- why the dismissal of the good works of white suburban evangelicals? Perhaps some of these religious leaders are leaning too heavily on their own notion of political purity as an indicator of true Christian faith. Perhaps they struggle with true openness towards "the other," politically speaking (more on this, below). Perhaps they simply have lost sight of the biblical example set by God's people since ancient times. Or perhaps something else.

But the biblical example is that, in a fallen world and as citizens of nations and regions ruled over and populated by pagans, the people of God are often obligated to labor and partner with pagan rulers for the saving of lives and the benefit of His people. Across time, God's people have partnered with pagan kings whose beliefs, rhetoric, and practices might make Presidents Trump, Clinton, and Kennedy collectively blush. Abraham partnered with the kings of the plain. Joseph supported the pharaoh of Egypt (in a powerful position). David allied himself with foreign kings and worked for a Philistine. Daniel worked (apparently with aplomb) on behalf of Nebuchadnezzar. Isaiah refers to the future pagan king, Cyrus, as "anointed." In so doing, they saved innocent lives and the people of God were delivered.

This article is in no way whatsoever a defense of Trump's entire set of values and behavior or, in saying that, of Hillary Clinton and her values and behavior. (And as an aside, have I missed the many hand-wringing articles and interviews from these same evangelicals over the blocks of believers who voted for Hillary Clinton or for President Obama in past years?) This is an explanation of and defense of the faith of the Christians I know who labor for the least and lost, and who also voted for Trump

Of all of the appalling policies in our nation, many Christians have strong convictions that the most appalling is abortion. Minorities rank high in the ledgers listing those killed by abortion, and these Trump-voting believers care about their neighbors. Abortion's victims are hidden, not seen ("undocumented). The oppressor is the only one to see their faces. His acts are valorized as "choice" and "services" in our culture, and his grisly work flourishes behind a glossy storefront or in a clinical building.

In The Screwtape Letters preface, C.S Lewis described the modern age and its evils like this:

"But it [evil] is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern."

Evil does a very good job at looking nice, and, well, clinical. And since it is easy to forget victims when they are hidden, it is easy to marginalize them. To make the systematic killing of millions a secondary policy issue.



And so, by and large, when I speak to my suburban friends, their vote for Trump came down to abortion. And while they disagree with much or most of his rhetoric, they already see his administration enacting pro-life policies which will work for the saving of international lives as well as those of American children of all races. (And, oddly, Trump's pro-life policy moves are relatively unheralded and uncelebrated by the some evangelicals.)

Christians may disagree with a vote for Trump, just as they may for Hillary Clinton or any of the list of 2016 third-party candidates: Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, Evan McMullin, Darrell Castle, etc. As a matter of fact, conservatives in general can understand that disagreement. Why? Two possibilities.

First of all, it may be a matter of mindset. In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist and "partisan liberal" Jonathan Haidt concluded that conservatives in general (of which white evangelicals are often a subset) are more broadminded than liberals, and appear to be better able to understand various perspectives.

Second of all, it is a matter of experience. Within these churches during the election, there was frank debate and discussion. I sat around coffee tables and at dinner tables in intense conversations with people who were coming at this election from all angles.

These saints are used to disagreeing politically with the very same brothers and sisters they love, admire, and work alongside in ministry. And they have found they can disagree during a difficult election without dismissing the other's faith. Perhaps this nuanced way of understanding each other may be eluding influential evangelical leaders. But people in "flyover churches" confront serious, thoughtful, differing opinions from serious, thoughtful people all the time.

And so I make an appeal for my friends, to my friends. People may assess the political situation differently, but surely canny Christians can understand that many of their brothers and sisters who voted for Trump are also fully Christian, are sacrificially serving the least and the lost, and may even have a legitimate, thoughtful reason for their vote.

Anne Chamberlin is a wife, mother of three living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is a freelance journalist who has written for the Gospel Coalition.

In Defense of the West—and the Third Way; In today's world, a progressive party that stands essentially for big government is not going to succeed.'

Tony Blair believes in "Islamist extremism."

It's U.N. week, and the former British prime minister is in town as the representative of the Quartet—the U.S., Russia, the EU and the U.N.—that aims to broker Mideast peace. We are in his suite at a posh Upper East Side hotel, talking about a passage in his just-published memoir in which he discusses the reach of the radical Islamist "narrative." It's a narrative, he argues, that needs to be "challenged head on."

This prompts me to ask whether he thinks that the widespread reluctance to use the word "Islamist" alongside the word "extremist" is a kind of evasion from reality.

"I think it is, I'm afraid," Mr. Blair answers, deploying the famously elegant diction that used to make for such invidious contrasts in the days when he shared a podium with George W. Bush. By way of explanation, he turns to the recent, aborted attempt by Florida Pastor Terry Jones to burn the Quran.

"I have no difficulty in saying this person is a Christian pastor but I completely and totally disagree with him," he explains. "It's fascinating, though, that when that happens the whole of the Western leadership have to come out and denounce it. . . . Let's say some cleric in some remote part of Pakistan turns up and says, 'I'm going to burn the Bible tomorrow.' What would we all say?"

Mr. Blair has been out of office for more than three years, but he is still sounding the same themes that were the touchstones of his decade in office. He is still faithful to the Third Way school of politics, still believes that government should be for empowerment not entitlement, and is still fighting a rear-guard action against fellow "progressives" who think it ought to be the other way round. But above all, Mr. Blair remains seized by the scope of the challenge posed by radical Islam.

"I think there is a tendency to regard the activities of the extremists who use terrorism and suicide bombings and so on as this small group of people unrelated to the broader [Muslim] community in which they exist," he says. "And I feel that narrative penetrates a lot deeper. And if you can't take that narrative on, you are left in a position where you end up semi-apologizing for your own position in relation to these things. And I think that's dangerous."

The narrative, as Mr. Blair describes it, consists of the view that the West is in cahoots with its client regimes in the Middle East—not just Israel, but also countries like Pakistan, Egypt and the Gulf emirates—to oppress Muslims and denigrate Islam. That narrative has its own subscribers among Western leaders and opinion-makers who believe the right approach is to say, in Mr. Blair's mocking paraphrase, "We kind of understand why you feel like this about us and maybe it's our fault but, you know, let's try and work this out."

Terry Shoffner

Mr. Blair has little patience with this view: It rubs him wrong not only because he believes the analysis is flawed and the prescription misguided, but also—and here I'm reading between the lines—because it suggests Muslims should be held to a different set of standards and values.

Yes, he says, the Muslim world needs "genuine demonstrations of equality, respect, partnership and so on." That's one reason, he adds, why he puts so much stock in the Israeli-Arab peace process. But Mr. Blair also stresses that what the Muslim world—or at last the modernizing forces within it—need from the West is "for us to be really strong about our own confidence in our position, our own way of life and the values we represent."

Part of that confidence is affirming the rightness of what the U.S., Britain and the rest of the Coalition of the Willing did in Iraq—and what they continue to do in Afghanistan. Regarding the so-called occupation of Iraq, Mr. Blair notes that from the middle of 2003 coalition forces were in the country "with full U.N. authority." The international community followed up with billions in aid to the country. Democratic elections were held; Iraqis indicated the kind of future they wanted for their country.

And then the effort nearly fell apart on account of the unremitting savagery of Baathist holdouts, al Qaeda recruits, and Iranian-backed militias. Mr. Blair would like to know why Iraq's tormentors should be let off the hook while its liberators are vilified. "For us to end up in this situation where people say this is an indication that you should never have gone there, that you should have just let Saddam stay—we really need to think about what we're saying when we're saying that."

Mr. Blair feels the same way about the apportionment of blame in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is confident of the good intentions of both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (about whom, he adds, he is "absolutely sure [he] would sign a deal"). But he is also mindful of the way Israel is mindlessly castigated in the West, "particularly in Europe," for its every misstep, real or alleged.

"You cannot refuse to accept that Israel has a genuine security problem," he insists. "What does it mean when, the other day, President Obama launches the [Israeli-Palestinian] talks in the White House . . . and Hamas kill those [Israelis], including a pregnant woman and the parents of six children, and then put out a statement saying that this is an heroic act of courage? What does it say of the nature of what we're up against?"

Mr. Blair is equally emphatic about the need to confront Iran, which in his memoir he treats as morally equivalent to al Qaeda. Though he says he agrees with President Obama's approach to the regime—summed up as "here's a hand of friendship and now it's your choice"—he is under no illusions about the threat Iran poses. He is particularly enraged at the role it played in Iraq, including the supply of IEDs to insurgent forces that killed British and American troops. Might things in Iraq have gone better had the coalition confronted Iran's meddling sooner than it did? "I think that's a very, very good question," he replies.

The interview turns to the subject of Tehran's nuclear program. Could an Iran with nuclear weapons be contained, I ask, as it is now so fashionable to argue?

"I wouldn't take that risk," he replies without hesitation. "It is perfectly possible that a nuclear-armed Iran might be contained. But I think it's impossible to guarantee that, and it so drastically changes the balance of power within the region that it's not responsible" to allow it.

I say that sounds like he'd be prepared to countenance military strikes if other options fail.

Mr. Blair hedges for a moment: "When I'm asked this, [I always] default to the traditional line, which is to say I don't think you can take any option off the table."

I press: "But it sounds like you actually mean it."

He comes back more firmly: "I do mean it. . . . The alternative is to say that you are prepared to contemplate [a nuclear Iran], which, by the way, the moment you send that signal makes it a lot more likely to happen. So I think it's perfectly possible that we can avoid the situation. But I think the stronger and clearer we are, the more likely we are to avoid it."

Mr. Blair's tenure in office—begun, as he accurately puts it in his memoir, as a veritable love affair between him and the British electorate—is widely believed to have soured precisely because he holds these foreign policy views and was willing to act on them. Given that the Labour Party in Britain and the Democrats in the U.S. have now turned their back on the Third Way politics that gave Mr. Blair and Bill Clinton their resounding electoral victories, I wonder whether those politics would not have been more in vogue today had it not been for Iraq.

Mr. Blair demurs. "People forget this, but the closest I came to losing my job in a [parliamentary] vote was actually over tuition fees [for university students], and not over Iraq. The most difficult things were . . . introducing private-sector [reforms] into the health-care system, introducing academy schools, the equivalent of charter schools, and law and order."

It's a useful reminder. When Mr. Blair and Gordon Brown first came to office, the New Labour moniker was widely suspected of being a kind of political marketing device rather than representing a real change of heart by a party that had once been a de facto subsidiary of Britain's trade unions. But if Mr. Blair's memoir is anything to go by, he for one was a sincere convert to the New Labour faith. Among other things, it explains his current opposition to high rates of marginal taxation.

"The most important thing is to encourage strong growth, for the economy to create wealth. And I just think this is a very basic point . . . you need tax rates that are competitive with the world in which we live and in which people's hard work and enterprise is rewarded." As for the notion that the purpose of progressive governance is to tax the wealthy and redistribute it to the rest, Mr. Blair urges caution: "The people you end up hitting are not the very wealthy, because in my experience the very wealthy can make their own arrangements."

Mr. Blair is similarly worried about the perils of excessive regulation. While he believes that governments were right to respond to the financial crisis as they initially did, he worries that the recovery runs the risk of regulatory strangulation. "How you stabilize the economy is not the same as how you then get it let out of the crisis and back to strong growth, where you will need the private sector to be enterprising, innovative and able to compete." Nor does he have any patience with the demonization of the financial sector as "the bad guys" in the crisis.

The question arises of how Mr. Blair—a prep school boy and Oxford graduate who came to the Labour Party more from its intellectually Fabian wing than from the trade union movement—came by his views. Partly it's to do with his own father's rise from working-class roots, and partly by the pre-political years he spent as a commercial and industrial-relations lawyer, where he learned that "most people aspire to do better and most people actually want their kids to do better than them—and these are actually great engines of growth and progress."

But he also says his views are informed by traveling to emerging economies such as China. "These are all places where, if we're not careful, they are going to learn the lessons of our development and, funnily enough, they're not going to replicate all those lessons. . . . They will learn from our successes as well as our mistakes. And if we're not careful, they are going to leave us behind."

So much of what Mr. Blair says is so consonant with the political right-of-center that I ask him if he doesn't feel closer to John McCain politically than to Barack Obama. He laughs it off, calling himself a straight "Democrat-Labour" kind of guy. But elsewhere in the interview he offers a political warning to his fellow progressives:

"In today's world, in the 21st century, a progressive party that stands essentially for the state and big government is not going to succeed. Simple as that." I wonder if anyone in the White House is listening.

Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's Global View column.

How Government Created the Financial Crisis

By JOHN B. TAYLOR

Many are calling for a 9/11-type commission to investigate the financial crisis. Any such investigation should not rule out government itself as a major culprit. My research shows that government actions and interventions -- not any inherent failure or instability of the private economy -- caused, prolonged and dramatically worsened the crisis.

David Gothard

The classic explanation of financial crises is that they are caused by excesses -- frequently monetary excesses -- which lead to a boom and an inevitable bust. This crisis was no different: A housing boom followed by a bust led to defaults, the implosion of mortgages and mortgage-related securities at financial institutions, and resulting financial turmoil.

Monetary excesses were the main cause of the boom. The Fed held its target interest rate, especially in 2003-2005, well below known monetary guidelines that say what good policy should be based on historical experience. Keeping interest rates on the track that worked well in the past two decades, rather than keeping rates so low, would have prevented the boom and the bust. Researchers at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have provided corroborating evidence from other countries: The greater the degree of monetary excess in a country, the larger was the housing boom.

The effects of the boom and bust were amplified by several complicating factors including the use of subprime and adjustable-rate mortgages, which led to excessive risk taking. There is also evidence the excessive risk taking was encouraged by the excessively low interest rates. Delinquency rates and foreclosure rates are inversely related to housing price inflation. These rates declined rapidly during the years housing prices rose rapidly, likely throwing mortgage underwriting programs off track and misleading many people.

Adjustable-rate, subprime and other mortgages were packed into mortgage-backed securities of great complexity. Rating agencies underestimated the risk of these securities, either because of a lack of competition, poor accountability, or most likely the inherent difficulty in assessing risk due to the complexity.

Other government actions were at play: The government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were encouraged to expand and buy mortgage-backed securities, including those formed with the risky subprime mortgages.

Government action also helped prolong the crisis. Consider that the financial crisis became acute on Aug. 9 and 10, 2007, when money-market interest rates rose dramatically. Interest rate spreads, such as the difference between three-month and overnight interbank loans, jumped to unprecedented levels.

Diagnosing the reason for this sudden increase was essential for determining what type of policy response was appropriate. If liquidity was the problem, then providing more liquidity by making borrowing easier at the Federal Reserve discount window, or opening new windows or facilities, would be appropriate. But if counterparty risk was behind the sudden rise in money-market interest rates, then a direct focus on the quality and transparency of the bank's balance sheets would be appropriate.

Early on, policy makers misdiagnosed the crisis as one of liquidity, and prescribed the wrong treatment.

To provide more liquidity, the Fed created the Term Auction Facility (TAF) in December 2007. Its main aim was to reduce interest rate spreads in the money markets and increase the flow of credit. But the TAF did not seem to make much difference. If the reason for the spread was counterparty risk as distinct from liquidity, this is not surprising.

Another early policy response was the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, passed in February. The major part of this package was to send cash totaling over $100 billion to individuals and families so they would have more to spend and thus jump-start consumption and the economy. But people spent little if anything of the temporary rebate (as predicted by Milton Friedman's permanent income theory, which holds that temporary as distinct from permanent increases in income do not lead to significant increases in consumption). Consumption was not jump-started.

A third policy response was the very sharp reduction in the target federal-funds rate to 2% in April 2008 from 5.25% in August 2007. This was sharper than monetary guidelines such as my own Taylor Rule would prescribe. The most noticeable effect of this rate cut was a sharp depreciation of the dollar and a large increase in oil prices. After the start of the crisis, oil prices doubled to over $140 in July 2008, before plummeting back down as expectations of world economic growth declined. But by then the damage of the high oil prices had been done.

After a year of such mistaken prescriptions, the crisis suddenly worsened in September and October 2008. We experienced a serious credit crunch, seriously weakening an economy already suffering from the lingering impact of the oil price hike and housing bust.

Many have argued that the reason for this bad turn was the government's decision not to prevent the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers over the weekend of Sept. 13 and 14. A study of this event suggests that the answer is more complicated and lay elsewhere.

While interest rate spreads increased slightly on Monday, Sept. 15, they stayed in the range observed during the previous year, and remained in that range through the rest of the week. On Friday, Sept. 19, the Treasury announced a rescue package, though not its size or the details. Over the weekend the package was put together, and on Tuesday, Sept. 23, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson testified before the Senate Banking Committee. They introduced the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), saying that it would be $700 billion in size. A short draft of legislation was provided, with no mention of oversight and few restrictions on the use of the funds.

The two men were questioned intensely and the reaction was quite negative, judging by the large volume of critical mail received by many members of Congress. It was following this testimony that one really begins to see the crisis deepening and interest rate spreads widening.

The realization by the public that the government's intervention plan had not been fully thought through, and the official story that the economy was tanking, likely led to the panic seen in the next few weeks. And this was likely amplified by the ad hoc decisions to support some financial institutions and not others and unclear, seemingly fear-based explanations of programs to address the crisis. What was the rationale for intervening with Bear Stearns, then not with Lehman, and then again with AIG? What would guide the operations of the TARP?

It did not have to be this way. To prevent misguided actions in the future, it is urgent that we return to sound principles of monetary policy, basing government interventions on clearly stated diagnoses and predictable frameworks for government actions.

Massive responses with little explanation will probably make things worse. That is the lesson from this crisis so far.

Mr. Taylor, a professor of economics at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the author of "Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged and Worsened the Financial Crisis," published later this month by Hoover Press.