You could not get a starker contrast of worldviews. At a recent Kamala Harris presidential rally, someone shouted out “Jesus is Lord!” and Vice President Harris snapped back: “Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally. No, I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street.” Harris’s hearers boisterously applauded her dismissive retort.

Measure that against the quick reply of vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance at a different event. Just days after Harris’s put-down, someone shouted “Christ is king!” while Vance spoke, and he calmly but boldly said, “That’s right, Jesus is King.” The crowd went wild.

In the span of a few hours, Harris and Vance showed us how Christianity is received by the two major parties in America today. In one rally, Christianity is not welcome; in the other, Christianity is affirmed (albeit quickly). Rarely have we gotten a clearer demonstration of the divide in American politics and American culture than this.

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In noting this divide, we do not make the mistake of equating Christianity with the Republican Party. Further, zooming out from this particular moment, we evangelicals know that there are no perfect candidates in this fallen world. Jesus is not on the ballot and never will be. This truth, however, is not a defeatist principle. It is a liberating reality. Because we are under no pressure to choose the perfect candidate, we are freed to choose the best possible candidate.

We can operate in this freedom because we Christians are not voting to elect a national pastor. We are trying to honor good and oppose evil, and elect those who we believe will best carry out this mission (see Romans 13:1-7). In such a posture, we believers seek to be “salt and light” as Christ called us to be (Matthew 5:13-16). Salt, we remember, is preservative. In love for our neighbor (Matthew 22:39), we believers do what we can to preserve what is good in our nation.

We do this in dark days, to be sure. But Christianity, we recall, is a faith that is made for the darkness. As such, we Christians cannot abandon the public square. Scripture gives us no such mandate. In fact, the Old and New Testament alike summon us in the opposite direction. For example, the following figures show us powerful examples of faith in action — faith applied to politics.

In righteous Joseph, we see a man thrust in the center of a kingdom, doing great good for many through careful leadership. In courageous Esther, we see a woman who used all her God-given agency to save the Jewish people, those murderously opposed and targeted by wicked Haman. In uncompromising Daniel, we see a man given great influence in Babylon, yet who refused to live by pagan lies. In the prophet John the Baptist, we see a man who called out a ruler for his sexual sin and became the first Christian martyr for doing so. In Paul the apostle, we see a man who used his Roman citizenship to go on preaching the gospel when others tried to stop him.

All of these figures applied their faith to a fallen world. They did not have perfect political choices before them. Several of them, in fact, worked in pagan administrations and did so by the providential direction of God. (Note that Esther was involuntarily married to a pagan king — how’s that for an opportunity for cultural engagement?) Yet these brave men and women of God honored God in difficult circumstances. Placed in the fire by God, they did not run away from the smoke; they ran toward it.

These believers give us a marvelous example for our own day. They summon the modern church to moral action. Like them, we are not responsible for making the world sinless and painless. We cannot do so; only Jesus can (and Jesus surely will). We are responsible, instead, for doing all we can to love our neighbor. In a democracy like ours, which allows us the God-given privilege of voting, I believe that this entails that we are free to vote for the best possible candidate and party before us. In sum, we are freed to practice political realism in order to do what good we can.

This leads us back to where we started. One presidential candidate has declared that Jesus has no place in her rally. What a startling and frightening response Kamala Harris gave. We tremble for her soul. By contrast, J.D. Vance affirmed the kingship of Jesus. These starkly different responses clarify where we are in our society today. The church has just been given a visceral picture of its impending future. Tragically, one party is openly hostile to the Christian faith; the other is openly welcoming. May this reality wake us up and move us to act as we can.

But let us also remember this: there will come a day when the gathering of God’s people will not be small. Then, the people of God will be gathered in one glorious throng to honor and worship the King, Jesus Christ, the lamb slain before the foundation of the earth (Revelation 5). On that day, no one will be holding a counter-rally, no one will be mocking Christ, and no one will be able to hold back the action of his arm, an arm that is mighty to save, and terrifying in its power to judge.

LifeNews Note: Owen Strachan is Senior Fellow for FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview.