John Piper is drawing criticism for his remarks about the re-election of former President Donald Trump. Piper, who has long been respected as a pastor and theologian in evangelical spaces, has also been consistently critical of Trump.
“Presidential election results,” Piper wrote on Wednesday. “Having delivered us from one evil, God now tests us with another.”
Piper added a reference to Deuteronomy 13:3: “The Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”
While Piper’s stern opposition to Trump is notable among evangelicals, he has been equally opposed to the candidates against whom Trump has faced off in the last three election cycles.
In 2020, Piper said in reference to the race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump that his calling as a pastor would be “contradicted by supporting either pathway to cultural corruption and eternal ruin.”
“When I consider the remote possibility that I might do any good by endorsing the devastation already evident in the two choices before me,” he added, “I am loath to undermine my calling (and the church’s mission) to stand for Christ-exalting faith and hope and love.”
“At times, it happens in a fallen world that a vote for any proposed candidate is so offensive, so morally compromised, so misleading,” Piper said in 2023, “that it may be a matter of greater integrity, more faithful obedience to Christ, and a clearer witness to truth if we do not vote for any of the proposed candidates.”
Piper’s remarks on Wednesday raised the ire of a number of Trump supporters, many of whom are Christian leaders and influencers.
“MASSIVE L TAKE HERE,” commented activist Sean Feucht, a worship leader and self-described Christian nationalist.
“This is religious horsecrap,” said author Eric Metaxas. “Shame on these pastors for NOT being Sons of Issachar, but rather modern day Pharisees and Sadducees, not knowing Truth from a lie. Lord deliver us from them.”
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Metaxas is perhaps best known for his award-winning biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, although the book has recently come under fire from a group of Bonhoeffer’s relatives, who allege that Metaxas “ignored the historical context and misrepresented Bonhoeffer as a fundamentalist Evangelical.”
