Although most of the major candidates for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination are hostile to Christianity, Mayor Pete Buttigieg “is without a doubt the most dangerous candidate for Christianity and the gospel,” declared the Federalist’s Kylee Zempel.
This might seem odd given that the South Bend, Indiana, potentate seems to miss no opportunity to flaunt his professed Christian faith. But Buttigieg’s brand of Christianity is markedly different from, and frequently at odds with, the historic faith.
To begin with, Buttigieg’s embrace of the central tenets of the faith is iffy at best. Buttigieg likes to describe the Gospel as “protecting the stranger and the prisoner and the poor person,” all of which are outgrowths of salvation but not the Good News itself. However, when MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asked him if he had accepted Christ as his savior, Buttigieg replied, “Yes, but maybe that means different things to different people.” After Buttigieg evaded the question a second time, Scarborough put it to him in very specific terms: “Do you believe the orthodox view: Jesus, Son of God, died for your sins, was buried, the third day was resurrected, and will come — will sit at the right hand of the Father, and that your salvation depends on your faith in Jesus Christ?” Buttigieg spat out a “yes” about as fast as he could before resuming his pontification.
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Then there’s the matter of Buttigieg’s unabashed homosexuality and his “marriage” to another man. Despite numerous prohibitions of homosexual behavior in both the Old and New Testaments, Buttigieg refuses to believe that God has a problem with his lifestyle. At an LGBT Victory Fund event, Buttigieg deflected responsibility for his choice to engage in homosexual conduct, saying, “If you’ve got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”
Of course, as the Bible makes clear, all humans are born with a propensity to sin thanks to the original sin of Adam. Our job is to accept Christ and, with His help, to overcome that tendency, not to indulge it and blame God for making us this way.
Buttigieg certainly believes in sin — just not the kind that would require him to change his ways. To him, sin is “whatever doesn’t fit his preferred policy goals,” wrote Zempel.
Indeed, Buttigieg has a Bible verse to spout whenever he needs to justify his positions, noted Zempel: “He has preached a veritable sermon for every policy agenda of the 2020 Democratic platform: endorsing late-term abortion, raising the minimum wage, demonizing guns, elevating LGBT ideas, radically counteracting climate change, promoting illegal immigration, and, of course, condemning President Trump.”
Buttigieg has called opposition to measures supposedly designed to curb pollution (but actually meant to institute socialism) “a kind of sin.” But couldn’t people who engage in this alleged sin follow Buttigieg’s lead and blame it on God? How, then, could he condemn them?
On abortion, Buttigieg claims the Bible teaches that life begins with one’s first breath, yet there are also verses indicating that life begins at conception. What’s more, Old Testament law makes killing an unborn child a capital offense. Once again, Buttigieg shows that he isn’t about to let God have the final say. “The most important thing,” he averred, “is the person who should be drawing the line is the woman making the decision.”
During the July Democratic debate, Buttigieg slammed “so-called conservative Christian senators” who were blocking a bill to increase the minimum wage, saying, “Scripture says that whoever oppresses the poor taunts their maker.” This ignores the fact that the minimum wage actually oppresses the poor more than allowing wages to be determined by the free market.
Buttigieg has condemned laws permitting businesses to refuse requests that conflict with their owners’ religious beliefs, arguing such laws are “a license to discriminate, provided you remembered to mention your religion as an excuse for discriminating.”
“Buttigieg upholds his self-made religion as if it were biblical Christianity and then uses it as a litmus test to condemn true Christ-following conservatives,” observed Zempel. That is why, in her opinion, no one seeking the presidency in 2020 is more of a threat to Christians than the mild-mannered Mayor Pete.
Image of Pete Buttigieg: Screenshot of peteforamerica.com
