Should Christians Sit Out the Midterms?

Jack Hibbs posted a short video this week asking a question a lot of men in the pews have quietly answered with a shrug. He opens with mock advice to stay home and hand the world over to the darkness, then drops the sarcasm and says that’s not what he’s promoting at all:

As a Christian is Your Vote an Option?

— Jack Hibbs (@RealJackHibbs) October 27, 2026

His argument is simple. A big election is coming, with propositions and laws on the ballot in California and every other state, and it matters. Politics got dirty, he says, because Christians packed up and left instead of shining a light. A believer can preach the gospel and be politically active at the same time. He runs through David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Artaxerxes, Cyrus, Nebuchadnezzar, Pilate, and Herod, and points out that Jesus Himself dealt with rulers. Politics is bumpy and ugly, he admits, but Christianity was built for that, and God invented government, so give it good laws and good leaders.

He’s right. He doesn’t name a party or an issue, though, and that’s where a lot of Christian men get stuck. So let’s do it. Here’s what’s actually on the table this November, how the two parties tend to line up, and what Scripture says about each.

Why sitting out isn’t humility

Some men stay home and call it spiritual. They point to Jesus telling Pilate that His kingdom doesn’t come from this world, and leave it there. But He was explaining the source of His authority, not excusing His people from caring what Pilate did (John 18:36). The same Lord called His disciples salt and light, and neither one does anything sealed in a jar (Matthew 5:13-16).

Scripture is full of believers who served in, spoke to, or stood against civil power. Joseph ran Egypt’s grain policy (Genesis 41:41). Daniel served pagan kings and still prayed with his windows open (Daniel 6:10). Nehemiah asked a Persian king for permits and lumber (Nehemiah 2:7-8). Paul used his Roman citizenship to demand due process (Acts 16:37, 22:25). Jeremiah told the exiles to seek the good of the city where God had sent them (Jeremiah 29:7). None of them thought faithfulness meant pretending the magistrate didn’t exist.

You don’t have a king. You have a ballot. In a republic, the citizen holds a small share of the authority God puts in civil hands, and Paul says every authority is God’s servant for good (Romans 13:4). A share of that, however small, is a stewardship, and stewards give an account (Luke 12:48).

Get the order right, though. God isn’t waiting on your vote to accomplish His purposes. He steers the hearts of rulers wherever He pleases (Proverbs 21:1), and every ruler rises and falls on His timetable (Daniel 2:21). You don’t vote because Providence needs help. You vote because God gave you the vote, and a servant uses what his Master hands him (Matthew 25:26-27).

Parties aren’t churches

Before the issues, one fence. Neither party is the church, and neither one is the kingdom. You can vote for a man without trusting him the way you trust Christ (Psalm 146:3). A win in November isn’t a revival, and a loss isn’t the end of the world. Christ’s kingdom grows by the Word and the Spirit, and He saves whoever the Father gives Him, whichever party holds the House (John 6:37) (Zechariah 4:6).

But “both parties are flawed” isn’t the same as “both parties are the same.” On several of these issues, they aren’t close. The question for the Christian isn’t which party deserves your heart. It’s which magistrates and laws are more likely to punish evil and protect good, the very job God gave them (1 Peter 2:13-14).

Abortion

Scripture treats the child in the womb as a person. The law of Moses protected an unborn child and set penalties when he was harmed (Exodus 21:22-25). David says God knit him together and saw him before he was born (Psalm 139:13-16). John the Baptist leapt in Elizabeth’s womb at the presence of the unborn Lord (Luke 1:41-44). And murder is a capital wrong precisely because man bears God’s image (Genesis 9:6). No age, size, or location strips a person of that image.

Here’s where the parties stand in 2026. Since Roe fell, Republicans have generally supported restricting abortion, and many Republican states protect the unborn from early in pregnancy. They’re not uniform. Plenty of national Republicans now say the issue belongs to the states and avoid talking about it, and some support wide exceptions. That’s a real weakness, and Christians should say so. Democrats, by contrast, have generally made expanding abortion access a central plank: codifying a national right to abortion, opposing gestational limits, funding it with tax dollars, and backing state ballot measures that put it in state constitutions.

That’s not a close call. One party is inconsistent about protecting the unborn. The other is consistent about not protecting them. And watch your own state’s ballot. Several states have abortion amendments or related measures this cycle, and those are exactly the “propositions and laws” Hibbs told you to read.

Immigration

Scripture is tender toward the sojourner. Israel was told to love the stranger as one of their own, because they had been strangers in Egypt (Leviticus 19:33-34) (Exodus 22:21). A Christian who sneers at immigrants as a class has forgotten where he came from, spiritually and often literally.

But the same Bible says God set the boundaries of the nations (Acts 17:26), and the sojourner in Israel lived under Israel’s law, not beside it (Numbers 15:15-16). Welcome and law go together. A nation has a right, and a magistrate has a duty, to know who’s coming in and to bear the sword against those who come to do harm (Romans 13:1-4). Mercy to the stranger doesn’t require pretending the gate isn’t there.

On this, Republicans generally push for border enforcement, deportation of people here unlawfully, especially those with criminal records, and a more restrictive asylum system. Some of their rhetoric is harsher than it needs to be, and Christians shouldn’t adopt it. Democrats generally favor broader pathways to legal status for people already here, more generous asylum and refugee policy, and limits on cooperation between local police and federal immigration enforcement, including sanctuary policies in many cities and states. Many of them also speak about real compassion for families, and that impulse isn’t wrong.

The Biblical question isn’t whether to love immigrants. It’s whether the law will be enforced at all. A system that rewards breaking the law and leaves the gate unwatched isn’t mercy. It’s the magistrate failing at his job, and the poor, citizen and immigrant alike, usually pay for it.

Islam

Let’s be careful here, because this is where Christians most easily say something ugly. Muslims are men and women made in God’s image, and many of them are our neighbors. The Christian answer to Islam is the gospel. Jesus is the only way to the Father (John 14:6), and salvation is found in Him and no one else (Acts 4:12). That’s a claim Islam flatly denies, and we should say so plainly and lovingly to every Muslim we meet. Hatred has no place in that conversation.

But civil government is a different question. The magistrate isn’t the evangelist, yet he’s charged to keep public peace and punish evildoers (Romans 13:3-4). Where any religion seeks to impose its law by threat or coercion, through intimidation, parallel legal systems, or violence, the state has to restrain it, for Muslims as much as anyone. Many Muslims came here to escape exactly that.

The parties tend to split here, too. Republicans are generally more willing to name Islamist ideology, scrutinize immigration from regions where jihadist groups operate, and resist pressure to carve out sharia-based arrangements in public life. Democrats are more likely to treat that scrutiny as bigotry and to emphasize protecting Muslim communities from discrimination, which is legitimate, while giving less attention to real pressures like antisemitic intimidation or communities that live apart from the common law.

A Christian can hold both truths. Love your Muslim neighbor, preach Christ to him, and still want magistrates who will defend equal law for everyone and refuse to look away from coercion.

Welfare

God commands care for the poor. He told Israel to lend freely to a poor brother and not to turn cold toward him (Deuteronomy 15:7-11). But look at who carries the load in Scripture. A man who won’t provide for his own household has denied the faith (1 Timothy 5:8). The church is to do good to everyone, especially fellow believers (Galatians 6:10). The church in Ephesus kept a careful list of widows who truly had no family (1 Timothy 5:3-4, 16). And Paul told the Thessalonians that the man who refuses to work has no claim on the church’s table (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Family first, then the church, then voluntary generosity, with work expected of those who can.

The state isn’t forbidden to help, but Scripture never makes it the first or main provider. Its sword is for justice, not for replacing fathers and congregations. When the government becomes the family, families weaken, and when it becomes the church’s charity, the church forgets how to give.

Republicans generally favor limiting and reforming welfare programs, adding work requirements, and slowing the growth of entitlement spending, though in practice they’ve often spent heavily too, and Christians shouldn’t pretend otherwise. Democrats generally favor expanding programs, broadening eligibility, and treating more benefits as permanent rights, often out of a sincere concern for the poor.

The issue isn’t who cares more. It’s whose model keeps fathers working, families intact, and churches giving. A Christian voter should ask which policies make it easier, not harder, for the household and the congregation to do what God told them to do.

The shape of government

Underneath every other issue is this one. God instituted civil authority to praise good and punish evil (Romans 13:1-4) (1 Peter 2:13-14). That’s a real job, and it’s also a limited one. The magistrate isn’t God, and Scripture shows what happens when he thinks he is (Daniel 4:30-32) (Acts 12:21-23). Samuel warned Israel what a king would take from them: sons, fields, and a tenth of everything (1 Samuel 8:11-18). Power that answers to no one grows, and it always grows at the family’s and the church’s expense.

The American constitutional order, with separated powers, written limits, and accountable officials, isn’t Scripture. But it fits the Biblical picture of fallen men holding authority better than most alternatives, because it assumes no ruler can be trusted with unlimited power (Jeremiah 17:9).

Republicans generally campaign on limiting federal agencies, trimming regulation, appointing judges who read the Constitution as written, and returning power to states. They don’t always deliver, and their own leaders have sometimes stretched executive power when it suited them. Christians should hold them to their own words. Democrats generally favor a larger federal role and more power in administrative agencies, and many of their leaders support structural changes like expanding the Supreme Court, ending the Senate filibuster, or reshaping election law at the federal level. They’d call that reform. A Christian should at least ask whether it moves power closer to the people or further away from them.

This race matters for this question in a concrete way. Whoever controls Congress controls oversight of the agencies, the budget, and, in the Senate, confirmation of judges. Those decisions outlast any one news cycle.

For the man who must weigh it

Hibbs asked whether your vote is optional. It isn’t. Not because God needs it, but because He gave it to you, and men who were handed less used it better.

So read your ballot before you show up. Not just the top of it. Look at the judges, the school board, the sheriff, the propositions. Line them up against what Scripture says about life, law, the stranger, the poor, and the limits of power. You won’t find a perfect candidate. You will find real differences, and those differences touch real children, real families, and real neighbors.

And then go home and remember who’s King. Don’t treat November 3 as the day the country is saved or lost. Christ reigns either way, and His church doesn’t rise or fall with a House majority.

As you pray, ask God to give you wisdom when you mark your ballot. Ask Him to raise up magistrates who fear Him and do justice. Ask Him to keep you from trusting any politician the way you trust Christ, and to make you salt and light in your town long after the votes are counted.