On the evening of May 8, Ben Anderson, Chair of the Greenbrier County Republican Committee, posted on Facebook: "Christian conservatives are taking up arms against Christian conservatives. Absolutely nothing about this primary is glorifying to God." He closed with Proverbs 6:16-19 — the seven abominations. The list includes a lying tongue. A heart that devises wicked plans. A false witness who speaks lies. And one who sows discord among brethren. He asked his readers to apply it to what they had witnessed. They knew what he meant. So does anyone else who has been watching Greenbrier County politics for the past two years.
A Tale of Two Preachers
Vince Deeds pastors Sinks Grove Baptist Church in Monroe County. Jonathan Comer leads Lewisburg Baptist Church in Greenbrier County. Both men have, in recent years, made themselves prominent figures in Greenbrier County Republican politics. Both men preach from the same Bible. Both men claim the same Christ.
The question that Ben Anderson's Proverbs citation raises — and that his readers understood without his having to spell it out — is whether the conduct of this primary is consistent with the faith that both ministers publicly claim. The question is behavioral, and behavioral questions have behavioral answers that are available in the public record.
A person who speaks publicly in the name of Christ and organizes politically through the church has a different accountability standard than a purely secular political actor. Not because the rules of campaign conduct change, but because the claim of moral authority is part of the pitch. You cannot invoke God's name to recruit voters and then decline to be held to God's standards when you use those voters.
The Carrot Made of Coal
For 40 years, the Republican Party has made the same promise to the disenchanted voters of West Virginia: vote for us and we will protect your jobs, restore your industry, and make your community whole again — because we are the moral Christians with family values.
The carrot made of coal has been dangled in front of the same communities in every election cycle since the Reagan administration — the same Reagan administration whose Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Murray Weidenbaum, stood before a towering stack of Federal Register volumes, fired up a chainsaw, and sawed through them on camera as a piece of political theater about cutting government regulation. The symbolism was deliberate. The consequences were not theater. The safeguards dismantled in that era — the ones in place since the Great Depression — set in motion the hollowing out of the very industries and communities that had been promised protection.
The communities voted accordingly, and the jobs continued to decline; the wealth, however, did not. When Sam Walton died on April 5, 1992 — his fortune exceeded $25 billion, making him the wealthiest man in America. It was a number so large it seemed almost incomprehensible.
Fast forward 34 years. Elon Musk is now the wealthiest man in the world and is approaching one trillion dollars in wealth. That is a 3,052% increase. Sam Walton's living descendants — those who inherited his fortune rather than built one — are worth a combined $455 billion, or almost 19 times what their father was worth when he died.
In 1992, the federal minimum wage was $4.25 an hour. Today it is $7.25 — a 70.6% increase over 34 years. It has not been raised since 2009. If the minimum wage had grown at the same rate as the fortune of the wealthiest man in America, it would be $133.96 an hour — $278,636 a year. Minimum wage. The people of West Virginia's coalfields did not get $133.96 an hour. They got the promise. They got the carrot. And they got two Baptist ministers raising $142,000 to attack each other for a State Senate seat that pays $20,000 a year.
Which brings us to May 2026. For forty years, the strategy was to have the ministers endorse the politicians. To borrow the church's moral authority and attach it to an economic agenda that was cutting the floor out from under the very congregations that filled those pews. It worked. Communities that lost tens of thousands of jobs kept voting for the party that promised to bring them back — because the promise wasn't really about the jobs. It was about identity. It was about being the right kind of Christian, the right kind of American, standing against the right kind of enemy. The carrot made of coal was the economic packaging. The family values were the seal on the box.
The Sermon in the Valley
In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:24), when Jesus said, "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money," it wasn't a suggestion.
The Republican economic agenda that both ministers have aligned themselves with — the one that cuts Medicaid in a state where forty percent of residents depend on it, that reduces SNAP benefits in counties where food insecurity is structural, that delivers tax relief to the top of the income distribution while the communities they claim to serve fall further behind — that agenda has a master. It is not the one on the cross.
Matthew 5:44 is equally plain: "Love your enemies, bless those who curse you." Look at the mailers. Look at the Facebook comment section. Look at what Ben Anderson — who built the movement both men have used as their political vehicle — called "the worst election of [his] young adult life." The enemy in Jesus's teaching is not a Democrat. In a Republican primary in Senate District 10 in May 2026, the enemy was each other. And what they did to each other was not love.
Matthew 25 describes the final judgment. The criterion is not abortion. It is not the Second Amendment. It is not any piece of legislation either man has endorsed from a pulpit. The criterion is this:
"I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me."
And then verse 45 — the one that gets less airtime on Sunday morning: "Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me."
The least of these in District 10 and throughout West Virginia are not abstractions. They are the family that can't afford to feed the dog they've shared their life with. They are the animals at the Greenbrier Humane Society running at less than half its needed budget. They are the people in the pews on Sunday morning who trusted their pastor with their spiritual life and found that trust converted into a campaign asset.
The question Matthew 25:45 forces is not whether these two men believe it. They have preached it. The question is whether they did it.
What the Money Could Have Done
Jonathan Comer's campaign — Comer 4 WV — raised $70,218.90 and Vince Deeds' campaign — Committee to Elect Vince Deeds — raised $72,490.00. Together, two Baptist ministers running for a single State Senate seat in District 10 raised $142,708.90 and spent $124,859.70. On the public record. Sworn to under oath.
Now imagine what two men of God could've done with the same money they raised to fight each other for a political position.
That is not a hypothetical exercise. Every line on that ledger represents a real need in the district both men claim to serve — a need that both men, from their pulpits, have the platform to see and the Scripture to address.
The Greenbrier Humane Society in Lewisburg — miles from Jonathan Comer's church — receives approximately $200,000 from the county to operate a shelter that costs more than $500,000 to run. It has been running at a deficit for years. Neither minister made that deficit his cause. The food pantries in Greenbrier County — the ones run out of church basements and community centers, open one Saturday a month, some by appointment only — have expanded their hours because the need has grown. In a state where one in six families is food insecure, the pantries are stretching further on less. Neither minister made that his cause either.
And then there are the ones nobody counts, like Kristen Downey, who posted on Facebook on the 3rd of May — a little over a week before West Virginia's primary — that she would be homeless in a week and was desperately trying to find long-term fosters for Molly, a twelve-year-old dog she has had since Molly was eight weeks old, and two cats she has raised since they were kittens. She wasn't abandoning them. She was begging strangers on the internet to be a bridge — to hold her family until she could get back on her feet and bring them home. There is no system built to catch Kristen. There is no shelter with space. There is no fund she can call. There are only strangers on Facebook, and hope, and a twelve-year-old dog who doesn't understand what's happening.
Those are the least of these. Not in the abstract. Not in the sermon illustration. In our county. In our district. And in the state whose people these two men, and hundreds more like them, are asking to represent.
The Fruits
When two Baptist ministers running for the same State Senate seat go to war with each other in a primary election, they are fighting over political influence in communities where political influence shapes resource allocation — infrastructure spending, economic development priorities, and the everyday needs of the people they claim to serve. Neither minister, as far as the public record shows, has made the economic disadvantage facing the communities of District 10 the centerpiece of his political engagement. Neither has made the case that addressing it is a more durable solution than electing the right person to wave the coal flag for another cycle.
Ben Anderson invoked Proverbs 6:16-19 on May 8 — four days before the primary. He named seven abominations. The seventh is the one that lands hardest here: one who sows discord among brethren. That phrase is not generic. It is specifically aimed at the rupture of community by people who are supposed to hold it together. When two pastors — two men who stand before their congregations every Sunday and ask them to love their neighbors — instead spend $124,000 sowing discord between Christian and Christian, conservative and conservative, brother and brother, that is not a political tactic. It is a betrayal of the office they hold.
You do not need discernment to identify a thornbush. You look at what grew.
Here is what grew. Mailers that people across the political spectrum — Republicans, conservatives, lifelong church members — described with one word: lies. A community that, in Anderson's own assessment, will see Christians "discouraged from getting involved in public service for years to come." A coal promise that neither minister challenged. Tens of thousands of dollars spent on opposition research and attack mail, by men who preach the servant leadership of Christ, for the purpose of acquiring the political power they preach against.
That is the harvest. Those are the fruits. The Scripture is not ambiguous. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit. The filings are public. The fruit is documented. The congregations they preach to on Sunday morning and the donors they appear next to on Monday are, in many cases, the same people. They gave because they believed the tree was good. They can judge for themselves — and now, so can everyone else.
You will know them by their fruits. — Matthew 7:20