Andrew T. Walker of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Commission on Ethics and Religious Liberty says no in an essay entitled “The Impossibility of the Apolitical Church.”

I have to be very clear about something: The church that insists on calling itself “apolitical” or relegates “the gospel” to a message of pious sanctimony unbothered by earthly affairs has a tragic misunderstanding of what “politics” really is, and how the church’s very essence is fervently political in nature.