The conservative movement was arguably most impressed at the Blaze Media presidential candidate forum last week with one particular Republican: former pharmaceutical entrepreneur and dark horse contender Vivek Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy entered the race earlier this year after resigning from the healthcare company he founded, emerging as an influential critic of corporate wokeness, and launching an asset management firm. But his candidacy, rather than focusing on leftist hegemony in the business world, has centered on the reclamation of national identity. Ramaswamy, the son of Indian immigrants and a Hindu, has built his campaign on slogans such as “God is real.”
This emphasis was manifest in his interview with Tucker Carlson at the Blaze Media summit. Ramaswamy spoke with considerable passion about the “secular religion” with which Americans have tried to fill the “void” in their hearts, repeatedly calling the nation “spiritually broken” and observing that the American political conversation treats God as a “four-letter word.”
Conservatives immediately noticed the contrast between the breakout performance from Ramaswamy and the instant collapse of rivals such as former Vice President Mike Pence and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, both of whom profess to be Christians. Pence droned about providing Ukraine with more tanks and munitions while Ramaswamy proposed an exit strategy which in many ways resembled historic Christian just war theory. Hutchinson failed to defend his shameful veto of a bill that would have prohibited sex-change surgeries on minors while Ramaswamy has spoken against the transgender movement as a “cult.”
Ramaswamy’s performance concluded in another interview with Blaze Media founder and chief executive Glenn Beck, in which the candidate said he “believes in a single God,” sees the United States as “one nation under God,” and represents the “Judeo-Christian” values upon which the nation was founded “more so than even many self-professed Christians across the country.” Ramaswamy added that he has read the Bible thoroughly, a feat which has only been accomplished by roughly one-tenth of Americans even as one-quarter of the population claims to be Protestant.
Conservatives immediately noticed the contrast between the breakout performance from Ramaswamy and the instant collapse of rivals such as Pence and Hutchinson, both of whom profess to be Christians.
To be clear, the singular god which Ramaswamy mentioned is presumably the pantheistic deity in which Hindus profess to believe. Ramaswamy therefore cannot meaningfully call anything “under God” if he sees himself, and everything else in creation, as a part of the divine essence. Nor can Beck, a Mormon who believes that God was once a man and that men can be exalted as gods through their good deeds. The works-driven righteousness which Beck affirms was indeed exhibited by his conclusion that Ramaswamy knows “the principles of the gospel.”
Ramaswamy may very well be correct in his assessment that he represents Christian values in the public square better than his professed Christian rivals and voters. This reality can only be interpreted as an indictment on American Christians and their complete surrender of the political realm.
The consistent message from many evangelical elites in recent years has been the rejection of political activity as a worldly endeavor, the notion that purported neutrality in the political sphere is a positive good, and the promotion of an inwardly focused Christianity occupied largely with making converts. They have failed to see that the Great Commission calls for the making of disciples, rather than mere converts, and teaching the nations to obey all that Christ commanded.
The consistent message from many evangelical elites in recent years has been the rejection of political activity as a worldly endeavor.
The abandonment of the political sphere by Christians has meanwhile utterly failed to produce a more obedient nation. Inside of the institutional church, orthodoxy is under assault from every corner and most professing Christians are wholly ignorant of the Bible. In the public square, wicked laws and petty tyrannies prevail, and Hindus and Mormons are the strongest standard-bearers of righteousness the conservative movement can muster.
The emergence of Ramaswamy as a viable presidential contender, despite his strengths as a candidate, must serve as a harsh rebuke for American Christians. Our nation needs unashamed and bold Christians who possess the righteousness of Christ to advance righteousness in the public square. For all of our laments about Christless conservatism, we must remember that we are the ones who, by our abdication, have rendered the movement Christless.
