I became good friends with my pastor in California when I lived there. During one of our hunting trips the subject of his sermons came up and I mentioned to him how I liked the fact that he did not preach politics, but salvation. (He and I were pretty closely aligned politically).
He told me that if he did his job correctly, people would know how to vote.
I was raised by activist, leftist academics, not entirely, though nearly devoid of matters of salvation. I, too, became an activist Democrat until my late 20's when my fellow Democrats nominated Walter F. Mondale as their candidate against Ronald Reagan's re-election. He and his running mate, you may recall, were, to me, shockingly intolerant of Christians in politics, and said so. I couldn't support the ticket, and resigned from a semi-public official position, quietly so as not to offend my extended family.
Then President Reagan came to town and I listened to his speech ahead of the pre-convention Prayer Breakfast in Dallas, that summer. He humbly said, among other things, "politics and religion are, of necessity, related."
I realized I was in the wrong Party and the elites now in charge of the national Democrat apparatus represented a 'clear and present danger,' and I voted for the president's re-election.
Ever since, I've made a study of those things neglected in my education, at a heavy personal and professional cost. I realized there's no such things as 'no religion,' because that fantasy is, itself, a religion.
Again and again I've had to return to Ephesians, to understand the deeper, seemingly endless spiritual wrestling match we are engaged in, and I did not get into this battle to vote for the same hamburger on the other side of the street, as they say. It's left me with little tolerance for those who treat politics as some sort of league play, trading their heritage for sport, who change parties as easily as a player moves from the American to the National baseball league.
And it's left me with less regard for Republicans who don't want to fight Democrats, specifically, and the worldview of the Left more generally.
There is a time for every season under Heaven, for knowing when one should not allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good, and when dying for the perfect to defeat the wrong becomes the only choice possible.