Keeping the Heart in a Politically Idolatrous World
Looking back for guidance in the present
As Matthew Bingham shows in his superb new book on Reformed spirituality, A Heart Aflame for God, Proverbs 4:23 was a favorite verse of the English Puritans. The admonition to “keep your heart with all vigilance” inspired shelves of volumes of practical instruction on how to sustain pure devotion to God throughout life’s varied circumstances. Bingham writes, “To keep the heart is not just saying no to sin but actively saying yes to God and the things of God.”[1] Since the heart is the control center of the person, to keep the heart is to maintain faithfulness to Christ in the whole of one’s life. As a shorthand description for the main emphasis of Puritan spiritual formation (and what I would argue is biblical spiritual formation), you could do no better than “keeping the heart with all vigilance.”
This concern with heart-keeping didn’t end with the English Puritans. Leaders from the next generation of English-speaking Protestantism—men like Isaac Watts (1674–1748), Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), Gilbert Tennent (1703–1764), John Wesley (1703–1791) and George Whitefield (1714–1770)—found inspiration in the writings of the Puritans and popularized the heart-keeping legacy of Puritan spirituality for a new generation, sparking the Evangelical Revivals (known as the First Great Awakening in America) on both sides of the Atlantic. Emphasis on the heart and its affections pervades the sermons and writings of these ministers as they called people away from nominal faith to authentic Christianity.
For example, Edwards wrote A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746) to answer the question, “What is the nature of true religion?” His preaching had ignited extraordinary revivals in New England—awakenings he believed were genuinely wrought by the Spirit of God. However, he also saw evidence of hypocrisy and iniquity mixed in with those authentic encounters. He wrote the book to help his readers distinguish true operations of God’s Spirit from fake. For Edwards, the key was the heart’s affections, or “the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul.”[2] True faith could be discerned only when the heart is vigorously affected in love, desire, hope, joy, and gratitude toward God and the things of God. Thus, genuine faith in Christ would manifest itself in diligent keeping of the heart’s affections.
Subsequent generations of evangelicals continued to expand and apply this emphasis on heart-keeping into new cultural contexts. For example, Andrew Fuller’s (1754–1815) ministry coincided with the emergence of political partisanship in Britain as Whigs and Tories, formerly distinct political ideologies, organized into competing political factions for the first time after the American Revolution. It’s hard for us today to imagine a pre-partisan political system, but Fuller witnessed partisanship’s emergence and was bothered by the way it often led to disordered affections among believers. Thus, in The Backslider (1812), he identified “taking an eager and deep interest in political disputes” as one of the chief causes of a “Laodicean lukewarmness” among professing Christians. For such backsliders, “their whole heart has been engaged in this pursuit. It has become their meat and their drink: and, this being the case, it is not surprising that they have become indifferent to religion; for these things cannot consist with each other.”[3] For Fuller, partisanship was merely the latest hindrance to the work of “keeping the heart with all vigilance.”
Partisan political culture has only intensified since the days of Fuller. Christians regularly match the spirit of the age in allowing the concerns of a frantic and divisive political culture to disorder the heart’s affections. We allow fear-mongering media narratives to obscure the life-transforming story of Christ’s triumph over the world. We tune in to the happenings on Capitol Hill with far more interest than the news of the gospel spreading around the globe. We spend our days with eyes habitually glued to the headlines coming out of Washington and ears filled with the rumors and speculations of political commentators often at the expense of an unread Bible and unused prayer line. In such a context, the Puritan call to “keep the heart with all vigilance” takes on even greater significance.
Toward the goal of “keeping the heart,” or properly ordering the heart’s affections in an age of political idolatry, I offer these heart-searching questions for your consideration:
1. What riles you up the most? What impassions you? What makes you angry? Triumphalistic? Depressed? Fearful?
If Edwards was right that the heart’s affections reveal the devotion of the person, then asking tough questions about our affections should signal our true loyalties. If you find yourself uncontrollably angry and embittered over political decisions, for example, you may have disordered affections. Obviously, righteous anger over injustice derives from the heart of God. However, much of our political anger comes from hatred of our political enemies rather than godly zeal over the mistreatment of innocents. Similarly, what really gets you excited? Do you wake up excited to commune with Christ through Scripture and prayer or do you run to the glowing screen of your iPhone to get the latest political rumors? To keep the heart with vigilance, follow your affections.
2. How do you divide the world? Do you define others by their political identities, or do you see them as fellow image-bearers, some who’ve encountered Christ’s redeeming grace and some who haven’t?
If you cannot tolerate another person because they disagree with you politically, you may have disordered affections. Christ issued his original call to love our enemies in a context of pure political hatred between Jews and Romans; it’s silly to pretend it doesn’t apply equally to Republicans and Democratics today. When we refuse to see past political identifiers, we ignore the rich theological categories of the Bible. Behind the expressions of both the angry Gaza protestor and the smug MAGA hat-wearer, there is an image-bearer of God who desperately needs redemption. We must fight to allow theological truth to override partisan categories in our imaginations.
3. Do you find yourself unwilling to render honest critique of your own political team?
This question gets to the heart of misplaced affection, for when we divide the world simplistically into good and bad without theological justification, we blunt the prophetic edge of God’s word. Christ offended all sides. He spoke truth to the power structures of both the Romans and the Jews, and among the Jews, he rebuked every major faction. He was an equal opportunity offender. If we can’t tolerate valid prophetic critique of our favored political team, then we’re likely blinded by disordered affection. If we passionately jump to defend our team without considering the validity of the critique, then we’re no longer serving the causes of truth and righteousness. The Christian must never forfeit the right to call both sides to the unchanging standard of Christ’s word. We can do this because we understand that no political party will ever line up perfectly (or even substantially?) with the values of Christ’s kingdom.
4. Do you use partisan criteria to define faithfulness to Christ?
I have a hard time understanding Christian support for certain political causes. For example, the pro-choice agenda ignores so many weighty theological truths that any defense of it seems to me like nothing more than compromise with the libertine spirit of the age. I have personally committed to never voting for any pro-choice candidate, and I do not believe that a Christian can be faithful to Christ while supporting the legal right to abortion. But issues and parties are two different things. In our heated partisan context, we’ve elevated loyalty to party over loyalty to righteous causes. As a result, Christians today from both sides commonly define political faithfulness to Christ by the sole criteria of party loyalty, ignoring the complexity of political decision-making in the present evil age. There are good reasons to abstain from voting for certain candidates, and we must charitably consider these complexities before we render judgment on the choice of another.
[1] Matthew Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2025), 24–25.
[2] Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, vol. 2 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959), 96.
[3] Andrew Fuller, The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, vol. 3, Expositions – Miscellaneous, ed. Joseph Belcher (1845; repr., Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle, 1988), 640.