Christianity Today’s editor in chief, Mark Galli, has called for President Trump to be removed from office. The impeachment, he says, has shown unambiguously that Trump has immorally violated the Constitution. Evangelicals may have supported him up until now for his policy decisions. They may have looked the other way at his character failings. Now, however, he has crossed the line.

I must echo Dr. Michael Brown’s view regarding Christianity Today: CT has been evangelicalism’s flagship magazine for a very long time. Its viewpoints are well worth respecting and taking seriously. But this is the wrong moment to say this. Maybe there’s a right occasion for it coming, but the impeachment is not that time.

Trump’s flaws are legion. Dr. Brown has recently (and rightly) called him out for his rudeness to the late Rep. John Dingell’s widow. He included a well-placed word of correction to believers who laughed at it.

It’s another example of the conflicted and complex relationship believers have had with Trump all along. Are his policy decisions worth the cost of his moral gaffes? So far I’ve thought so. Can Christians effectively communicate our support for his policies along with our criticism for his moral errors? So far I’ve thought we could do that, too.

Siding With the One Party That’s Been Allowed to Speak

Apparently CT has thought so as well — until this impeachment. Now, they say, “the president of the United States has attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents.”

To that I say, let’s read Proverbs 18:17: “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” There’s actually nothing terribly profound there. It’s just the simple principle that one side of a story isn’t the whole story. But the impeachment hearings have relentlessly, unambiguously allowed just one side of the story to be heard. The same goes for most major media coverage.

This is wrong. It’s an egregious violation of due process. It’s unambiguously politically motivated. Nancy Pelosi displays unambiguous hypocrisy in blocking the next steps until she can be sure the Senate will conduct “a fair trial.”

An Unambiguous Violation of Due Process

I do like that word unambiguous. It fits almost everything in these proceedings except for the president’s guilt. No one should make that judgment without due process, yet congressional Democrats and the major media have done so.

And the story does have another side to it. Here at The Stream we’ve told some of it. For example,  Trump isn’t even accused of any crime, he has been mercilessly subjected to illegal investigation, and even Joe Biden was hardly what you’d call a viable political opponent at the time of the famous phone call.

I repeat: This rush to politically motivated judgment ahead of due process is wrong. It violates our constitutional governance and the rule of law far more egregiously than anything Trump has done or been accused of doing.

This Is No Time To Drop Principle for Pragmatism

To call for the president’s removal at this stage in history, and to do it in agreement with the Democrats’ processes and reasonings, is to participate in the wrong they are doing.

I can appreciate CT’s long-standing distaste for the president’s displays of poor character. I don’t like it either. But I can’t agree with them on this: “Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election — that is a matter of prudential judgment.”

No, it’s not a matter of prudential judgment. One fork in that road supports the grossly unjust proceedings we’ve seen to date. The other fork is the normal operation of electoral processes. To opt for the former is nothing better than calculating pragmatism.

They condemn Christians who say, “It doesn’t matter if his character is bad, as long as we get the outcome we want.” Now, however, they’re saying, in effect, “It doesn’t matter if due process is violated as long as we get the outcome we want.”

Supporting President Trump can certainly be difficult on many grounds and for many reasons — but not those that Christianity Today has fastened upon here.

Tom Gilson (@TomGilsonAuthor) is a senior editor with The Stream, and the author of A Christian Mind: Thoughts on Life and Truth in Jesus Christ and Critical Conversations: A Christian Parent’s Guide to Discussing Homosexuality with Teens, and the lead editor of True Reason: Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism.