The Democratic Party — Change Is At It’s Core

The Democratic Party has not always stood for what it does today. Over nearly two centuries, its positions on morality, economics, and human rights have changed dramatically — at times reflecting progress, and at other times, profound contradiction.

In the nineteenth century, Democrats largely defended states’ rights and slavery, opposing federal interference and emphasizing local control. During the period of Reconstruction and Jim Crow, many Southern Democrats actively resisted civil rights for Black Americans, enforcing segregation and institutional racism. In those decades, the party’s platform stood in direct opposition to equality and biblical principles of justice.

After the Civil War, the party began to evolve. Adopting what became known as the New Departure strategy, Democrats sought to move past their association with slavery and focus on economic and populist issues. By the early twentieth century, they were speaking more about labor rights, poverty, and the needs of the working class — though still deeply divided by race, geography, and ideology.

Then in the mid-twentieth century, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal expanded the role of government in social welfare, and later, when President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965,  the Democratic Party was redefined again, signaling a sharp break from its segregationist past.

Johnson knew this shift would carry immense political consequences. He reportedly told aides, “We have lost the South for a generation,” recognizing that many white Southern Democrats — long the party’s base — would abandon it. He also understood how racism had been used to divide America’s poor and working class. As related to us by Bill Moyer, a close advisor and press secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson: “We were in Tennessee. During the motorcade, he spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs. Late that night in the hotel, when the local dignitaries had finished the last bottles of bourbon and branch water and departed, he started talking about those signs. “I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it,” he said. “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”¹”

In that statement, Johnson exposed a hard truth: that prejudice had long been used as a political tool — not only to preserve power, but to distract citizens from injustice, corruption, and inequality. Ironically, what he condemned then — the exploitation of emotions and identity for political gain — can still be seen in various forms across today’s politics, including within the modern Democratic Party platform.

Today, the Democratic Party of the 2020s bears little resemblance to its nineteenth-century ancestor. It now champions inclusion, diversity, reproductive rights, gender ideology, and climate initiatives — issues rooted less in moral absolutes and more in progressive relativism. While it once shifted toward civil rights and compassion, its modern form often separates compassion from truth and moral conviction from biblical principle.

History shows that political parties evolve — sometimes for the better, sometimes away from the truth. The Democratic Party’s journey from defending slavery to defending “personal freedom” at all costs demonstrates both the capacity for change and the danger of moral drift.

So no, aligning with any party is not eternally wrong or eternally right. But conscience demands discernment. And because this book is meant for Christians and those who believe themselves Christian, the question is not what the Democratic Party once stood for, but what it stands for now — and whether those convictions align with the Word of God.

Content taken from “If You Are a Democrat, You Can Be Anything You Want To Be… Except a Christian.” – Link

Footnotes:
1 – Moyers, Bill., What a Real President Was Like, The Washington Post.   13 November 1988.