I was amazed at the reaction generated by Christianity Today’s editorial calling for President Trump’s removal from office–either by trial in the Senate or by voters in the 2020 election:

In our founding documents, Billy Graham explains that Christianity Today will help evangelical Christians interpret the news in a manner that reflects their faith. The impeachment of Donald Trump is a significant event in the story of our republic. It requires comment.

The typical CT approach is to stay above the fray and allow Christians with different political convictions to make their arguments in the public square, to encourage all to pursue justice according to their convictions and treat their political opposition as charitably as possible. We want CT to be a place that welcomes Christians from across the political spectrum, and reminds everyone that politics is not the end and purpose of our being. We take pride in the fact, for instance, that politics does not dominate our homepage.

That said, we do feel it necessary from time to time to make our own opinions on political matters clear—always, as Graham encouraged us, doing so with both conviction and love. We love and pray for our president, as we love and pray for leaders (as well as ordinary citizens) on both sides of the political aisle.

…Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.

It was a difficult choice in 2016 for many of us–Trump or the enabler of the man CT said should be removed from office 20 years earlier. The question the editorial didn’t answer is— should Trump be removed from office–what then? If he’s removed by the Senate, Pence is a man of faith, but still one of Trump’s enablers, and since the editorial shamed them too, ostensibly he wouldn’t do. And if Trump is defeated in the ’20 election, CT will have to say with a straight face that they have a “moral” president who not only tolerates the “great evil” of abortion but endorses it. As the election approaches, I’d be curious to know which of Trump’s prospective opponents best represents “loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.”