New US President
The confirming of the Democratic candidate Joe Biden as the next President of the United States has been surrounded by a great deal of controversy. Leaving aside the political aspects of his election, it is a matter of no little concern that the new President is a practising Roman Catholic. The position of President is one of tremendous power and influence throughout the world as well as in America itself, and the incumbency of a Romanist in the White House is something which Bible-believing Protestants everywhere strongly deprecate. Mr Biden is only the second Roman Catholic in American history to become President, the first being John F Kennedy, who was elected 60 years ago.
Although the Church of Rome is the largest religious body in the USA, the influence of Protestantism has been historically very strong, with nearly all of the Presidents being nominal Protestants, mostly Episcopalians and Presbyterians. Whether Biden is a faithful adherent of Rome is a moot point but, even where there has been much outward divergence from Rome’s official teaching on public questions, the potential influence of a Roman Catholic President to forward the interests and agenda of the Vatican is formidable and can only be seen as a further judgement upon the USA and upon the Western world more generally.
Throughout his long political and legal career, he has occupied many important positions and has consistently been inclined to take a liberal stance on moral issues. Even although he had voted in the past against same-sex unions or allowing sodomites to serve in the armed forces, in recent years Biden has increasingly supported legislation of an anti-biblical and immoral character, for example in calling for wider government funding for abortion. Indeed, it is mostly for his consistent support for abortion that Biden’s liberal social stance has placed him at odds with the Roman Church’s official position. The Democratic Party, having shed its socially-conservative wing in recent decades, has become more and more militantly pro-abortion and Biden’s popularity with liberal Democrats has been gained, in part at least, through continuing to uphold the legalised slaughter of multitudes of unborn children in the USA. There are reports that, for his views on abortion, he was refused communion in a Roman Catholic church in South Carolina as late as last year.
Throughout his long and influential career, Mr Biden has not spoken up for those ready to perish, and the words of Proverbs 24:11,12 seem very applicable in his case: “If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn to death, and those that are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not, doth not He that pondereth the heart consider it? And He that keepeth thy soul, doth He not know it? And shall He not render to every man according to His works?”
AWM