on David French

I admire David French because he tries to live out his Christian convictions as consistently as possible. Those convictions led him and his wife Nancy, who are white, to adopt a girl from Ethiopia, which resulted in many people on the left denouncing them for practicing some kind of familial colonialism. I’m sure the term “white supremacy” was deployed as well. But when French opposed the nomination of Donald Trump, the vitriol from the Trumpist right came to exceed what had come from the left, as French explains in this sobering essay.

For French, the decision to adopt a girl from Ethiopia and the decision to reject Donald Trump’s dishonesty and general moral turpitude arose from the same source: a determination to live as a faithful Christian, as a follower of Jesus. And if you think that such an attempt at moral and spiritual consistency is going to gain any respect in our current political climate, you have not been paying attention.

A person who tries to live the way David French lives is certainly not going to win any points from the left — his long-term commitment to a pro-life agenda and his work as a lawyer in favor of religious liberty ensure that — and from the Trumpist right? He’ll get mocked as “Pastor French” — I wonder where the idea of giving sneering nicknames to your political opponents, or insufficiently supine allies, came from — and people who say they believe that we’re in a take-no-prisoners Culture War Death Match will decide that one of the top items on their military agenda is to attack him.

David French’s critics on the Trumpist side of things tend to be proud of their commitment to Realpolitik. They’re all about winning. For them, it appears, French’s commitment to be Christlike in all circumstances is a contemptible form of weakness. I don’t think God shares their contempt. And even if they end up achieving so much winning that we’ll be sick of all the winning, I wonder whether they might lose something in the process. A figure of some authority has suggested that they are courting danger.

I disagree with David French about a lot of things — especially what I believe to be his sometimes uncritical support for American military action — but I admire him because he’s trying. He’s trying to “take every thought captive to Christ.” I believe that if you could demonstrate to David French that positions he holds are inconsistent with the Christian Gospel, he would change those positions accordingly. Among Christians invested in the political arena, that kind of integrity is dismayingly rare.