Conservative evangelicals were at the White House last week for an event the Rev. Robert Jeffress described as “a half state dinner and a half campaign rally.” Evangelicals like Mr. Jeffress are ebullient as the Senate prepares to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh next week, praising President Trump as “the most pro-life, pro-religious liberty, pro-conservative judiciary president of any president in history.”

While Senate Democrats and an array of advocacy groups continue to sound the alarm about the threat Judge Kavanaugh poses to women’s rights, organized labor, civil rights, gun reform and voting rights, evangelicals who toe the line that the religious right has laid out for decades lift their hands in prayer to thank God for a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that now seems just weeks away.

As an evangelical who cut my teeth in politics during the heyday of the Moral Majority movement in the 1980s, I know the enthusiasm many conservatives feel at the prospect of culture war victories at the Supreme Court. But I join many other faith leaders to oppose Judge Kavanaugh not in spite of our faith commitments, but because of them. As we read the Bible alongside Judge Kavanaugh’s record, we find his nomination a threat to the Christian ethic we are called to preach and pursue in public life.

Leading the evangelical challenge to an extreme conservative majority on the Supreme Court, a group of evangelical women has issued a “call to pause,” asking fellow believers to step back from the rhetoric of “life” to examine how decisions before the court would impact the vulnerable people we claim to care about, even the unborn. “The way to reduce abortion is not through escalating culture wars but by reducing poverty,” they argue, noting studies that show abortion rates at an all-time low, though they remain highest among poor women who lack access to health care.