Written by Megan Basham

In September, Wheaton College dean Ed Stetzer interviewed National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins on his podcast, “Church Leadership” about why Christians who want to obey Christ’s command to love their neighbors should get the Covid vaccine and avoid indulging in misinformation.

For those not familiar with Stetzer, he’s not just a religious liberal arts professor and this wasn’t just another dime-a-dozen pastorly podcast. To name just a few of his past and present titles in the evangelical world, Stetzer is also the executive director of the Billy Graham Center and the editor-in-chief of Outreach media group. He was previously an editor at Christianity Today and an executive director at LifeWay, one of the largest religious publishers in the world. That’s to say nothing of the dozen-plus books on missions and church planting he’s authored.

Which is why, when Stetzer joined a line of renowned pastors and ministry leaders lending their platforms to Obama-appointee Collins, the collaboration was noteworthy.

During their discussion, Collins and Stetzer were hardly shy about the fact that they were asking ministers to act as the administration’s go-between with their congregants. “I want to exhort pastors once again to try to use your credibility with your flock to put forward the public health measures that we know can work,” Collins said. Stetzer replied that he sometimes hears from ministers who don’t feel comfortable preaching about Covid vaccines, and he advises them, in those cases, to simply promote the jab through social media.

“I just tell them, when you get vaccinated, post a picture and say, ‘So thankful I was able to get vaccinated,’” Stetzer said. “People need to see that it is the reasonable view.”

Their conversation also turned to the subject of masking children at school, with Collins noting that Christians, in particular, have been resistant to it. His view was firm—kids should be masked if they want to be in the classroom. To do anything else is to turn schools into super spreaders. Stetzer offered no pushback or follow-up questions based on views from other medical experts. He simply agreed.

The most crucial question Stetzer never asked Collins however, was why convincing church members to get vaccinated or disseminating certain administration talking points should be the business of pastors at all.

Christians and Conspiracy Theories

Stetzer’s efforts to help further the NIH’s preferred coronavirus narratives went beyond simply giving Collins a softball venue to rally pastors to his cause. He ended the podcast by announcing that the Billy Graham Center would be formally partnering with the Biden administration. Together with the NIH and the CDC it would launch a website, coronavirusandthechurch.com, to provide clergy Covid resources they could then convey to their congregations.

Much earlier in the pandemic, as an editor at evangelicalism’s flagship publication, Christianity Today (CT), Stetzer had also penned essays parroting Collins’ arguments on conspiracy theories. Among those he lambasted other believers for entertaining, the hypothesis that the coronavirus had leaked from a Wuhan lab. In a now deleted essay, preserved by Web Archive, Stetzer chided, “If you want to believe that some secret lab created this as a biological weapon, and now everyone is covering that up, I can’t stop you.”

It may seem strange, given the evidence now emerging of NIH-funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, to hear a church leader instruct Christians to “repent” for the sin of discussing the plausible supposition that the virus had escaped from a Chinese laboratory. This is especially true as it doesn’t take any great level of spiritual discernment — just plain common sense — to look at the fact that Covid first emerged in a city with a virology institute that specializes in novel coronaviruses and realize it wasn’t an explanation that should be set aside too easily. But it appears Stetzer was simply following Collins’ lead.

Only two days before Stetzer published his essay, Collins participated in a livestream event, co-hosted by CT. The outlet introduced him as a “follower of Jesus, who affirms the sanctity of human life” despite the fact that Collins is on record stating he does not definitively believe, as most pro-lifers do, that life begins at conception, and his tenure at NIH has been marked by extreme anti-life, pro-LGBT policies. (More on this later).

But the pro-life Christian framing was sure to win Collins a hearing among an audience with deep religious convictions about the evil of abortion. Many likely felt reassured to hear that a likeminded medical expert was representing them in the administration.

During the panel interview, Collins continued to insist that the lab leak theory wasn’t just unlikely but qualified for the dreaded misinformation label. “If you were trying to design a more dangerous coronavirus,” he said, “you would never have designed this one … So I think one can say with great confidence that in this case the bioterrorist was nature … Humans did not make this one. Nature did.”

It was the same message his subordinate, Dr. Anthony Fauci, had been giving to secular news outlets, but Collins was specifically tapped to carry the message to the faithful. As Time Magazine reported in Feb. 2021, “While Fauci has been medicine’s public face, Collins has been hitting the faith-based circuit…and preaching science to believers.”

The editors, writers, and reporters at Christian organizations didn’t question Collins any more than their mainstream counterparts questioned Fauci.

Certainly The Gospel Coalition, a publication largely written for and by pastors, didn’t probe beyond the “facts” Collins’ offered or consider any conflicts of interest the NIH director might have had before publishing several essays that cited him as almost their lone source of information. As with CT, one article by Gospel Coalition editor Joe Carter linked the reasonable hypothesis that the virus might have been human-made with wilder QAnon fantasies. It then lectured readers that spreading such ideas would damage the church’s witness in the world.

Of course, Stetzer and The Gospel Coalition had no way of knowing at that point that Collins and Fauci had already heard from leading U.S. and British scientists who believed the virus had indeed escaped from a Chinese lab. Or that they believed it might be the product of gain-of-function engineering, possibly with funding from the NIH itself. Nor could they have predicted that emails between Collins and Fauci would later show the pair had a habit of turning to friendly media contacts (including, it seems, Christian media contacts) to discredit and suppress opinions they didn’t like, such as questioning Covid’s origins and the wisdom of masks and lockdowns.

What Stetzer and others did know was that one of the most powerful bureaucrats in the world was calling on evangelical leaders to be “ambassadors for truth.” And they were happy to answer that call.

The question was, just how truthful was Collins’ truth?

Evangelicals of a Feather

Stetzer, CT, and The Gospel Coalition were hardly alone in uncritically lending their sway over rank-and-file evangelicals to Collins. The list of Christian leaders who passed the NIH director their mics to preach messages about getting jabs, wearing masks, and accepting the official line on Covid is as long as it is esteemed.

One of the most noteworthy was the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), an organization funded by churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.

While a webinar featuring Collins and then-ERLC-head Russell Moore largely centered, again, on the importance of pastors convincing church members to get vaccinated, the discussion also moved on to the topic of masks. With Moore nodding along, Collins held up a basic, over-the-counter cloth square, “This is not a political statement,” he asserted. “This is not an invasion of your personal freedom…This is a life-saving medical device.”

Even in late 2020, the claim was highly debatable among medical experts. As hematologist-oncologist Vinay Prasad wrote in City Journal this month, public health officials like Collins have had a truth problem over the entire course of Covid, but especially when it comes to masks. “The only published cluster randomized trial of community cloth masking during Covid-19,” Prasad reported, “found that…cloth masks were no better than no masks at all.” [emphasis mine].

At this point, even the CDC is backing away from claims that cloth masks are worth much of anything.

Yet none of the Christian leaders platforming Collins evidently felt it was worth exploring a second opinion. And the list of pastors who were willing to take a bureaucrat’s word that matters that could have been left to Christian liberty were instead tests of one’s love for Jesus goes on.

Former megachurch pastor Tim Keller’s joint interview with Collins included a digression where the pair agreed that churches like John MacArthur’s, which continued to meet in-person despite Covid lockdowns, represented the “bad and ugly” of good, bad, and ugly Christian responses to the virus.

During Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren’s special broadcast with Collins on behalf of Health and Human Services, he mentioned that he and Collins first met when both were speakers for the billionaires and heads of state who gather annually in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. They reconnected recently, Warren revealed, at an “off-the-record” meeting between Collins and “key faith leaders.” Warren did not say, but one can make an educated guess as to who convened that meeting and for what purpose, given the striking similarity of Collins’ appearances alongside all these leading Christian lights.

Once again, Warren and Collins spent their interview jointly lamenting the unlovingness of Christians who question the efficacy of masks, specifically framing it as a matter of obedience to Jesus. “Wearing a mask is the great commandment: love your neighbor as yourself,” the best-selling author of “The Purpose-Driven Life” declared, before going on to specifically argue that religious leaders have an obligation to convince religious people to accept the government’s narratives about Covid.

“Let me just say a word to the priests and pastors and rabbis and other faith leaders,” he said. “This is our job, to deal with these conspiracy issues and things like that…One of the responsibilities of faith leaders is to tell people to…trust the science. They’re not going to put out a vaccine that’s going to hurt people.”

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that government does have a record of putting out vaccines that “hurt people,” is it truly the pastor’s job to tell church members to “trust the science?” Is it a pastor’s job to slyly insult other pastors who chose to handle shutdowns differently, as Warren did when he quipped that his “ego doesn’t require” him to “have a live audience to speak to.”

And still the list goes on.

The same week MacArthur’s church was in the news for resisting California Governor Gavin Newsom orders to keep houses of worship closed, Collins participated in an interview with celebrated theologian N.T. Wright.

During a discussion where the NIH director once again trumpeted the efficacy of cloth masks, the pair warned against conspiracies, mocking “disturbing examples” of churches that continued meeting because they thought “the devil can’t get into my church” or “Jesus is my vaccine.” Lest anyone wonder whether Wright experienced some pause over lending his reputation as a deep Christian thinker to Caesar’s agent, the friends finished with a guitar duet.

Even hipster Christian publications like Relevant, whose readers have likely never heard of Collins, still looked to him as the foundation of their Covid reporting.

Throughout all of it, Collins brought the message to the faithful through their preachers and leaders: “God is calling [Christians] to do the right thing.”

And none of those leaders thought to question whether Collins’ “right thing” and God’s “right thing” must necessarily be the same thing.

Why not? As Warren said of Collins during their interview: “He’s a man you can trust.”

A Man You Can Trust

Perhaps the evangelical elites’ willingness to unhesitatingly credit Collins with unimpeachable honesty has something to do with his rather Mr. Rogers-like appearance and gentle demeanor. The establishment media has compared him to “The Simpson’s” character Ned Flanders, noting that he has a tendency to punctuate his soft speech with exclamations of “oh boy!” and “by golly!”

Going by his concrete record, however, he seems like a strange ambassador to spread the government’s Covid messaging to theologically conservative congregations. Other than his proclamations that he is, himself, a believer, the NIH director espouses nearly no public positions that would mark him out as any different from any extreme Left-wing bureaucrat.

He has not only defended experimentation on fetuses obtained by abortion, he has also directed record-level spending toward it. Among the priorities the NIH has funded under Collins — a University of Pittsburgh experiment that involved grafting infant scalps onto lab rats, as well as projects that relied on the harvested organs of aborted, full-term babies. Some doctors have even charged Collins with giving money to research that required extracting kidneys, ureters, and bladders from living infants.

He further has endorsed unrestricted funding of embryonic stem cell research, personally attending President Obama’s signing of an Executive Order to reverse a previous ban on such expenditures. When Nature magazine asked him about the Trump administration’s decision to shut down fetal cell research, Collins made it clear he disagreed, saying, “I think it’s widely known that the NIH tried to protect the continued use of human fetal tissue. But ultimately, the White House decided otherwise. And we had no choice but to stand down.”

Even when directly asked about how genetic testing has led to the increased killing of Down Syndrome babies in the womb, Collins deflected, telling Beliefnet, “I’m troubled [by] the applications of genetics that are currently possible are oftentimes in the prenatal arena…But, of course, in our current society, people are in a circumstance of being able to take advantage of those technologies.”

When it comes to pushing an agenda of racial quotas and partiality based on skin color, Collins is a member of the Left in good standing, speaking fluently of “structural racism” and “equity” rather than equality. He’s put his money (or, rather, taxpayer money) where his mouth is, implementing new policies that require scientists seeking NIH grants to pass diversity, equity, and inclusion tests in order to qualify.

To the most holy of progressive sacred cows — LGBTQ orthodoxy — Collins has been happy to genuflect. Having declared himself an “ally” of the gay and trans movements, he went on to say he “[applauds] the courage and resilience it takes for [LGBTQ] individuals to live openly and authentically” and is “committed to listening, respecting, and supporting [them]” as an “advocate.”

These are not just the empty words of a hapless Christian official saying what he must to survive in a hostile political atmosphere. Collins’ declaration of allyship is deeply reflected in his leadership.

Under his watch, the NIH launched a new initiative to specifically direct funding to “sexual and gender minorities.” On the ground, this has translated to awarding millions in grants to experimental transgender research on minors, like giving opposite-sex hormones to children as young as eight and mastectomies to girls as young as 13. Another project, awarded $8 million in grants, included recruiting teen boys to track their homosexual activities like “condomless anal sex” on an app without their parents’ consent.

Other than his assertions of his personal Christian faith, there is almost no public stance Collins has taken that would mark him out as someone of like mind with the everyday believers to whom he was appealing.

How did Collins overcome all this baggage to become the go-to expert for millions of Christians? With a little help from his friends, who were happy to stand as his character witnesses.

Keller, Warren, Wright, and Stetzer all publicly lauded him as a godly brother.  When presenting Collins to Southern Baptists, Moore gushed over him as the smartest man in a book club he attends that also includes, according to Time Magazine, such luminaries of the “Christiantelligentsia” as The Atlantic’s Pete Wehner and The New York Times’ David Brooks.

In October, even after Collins’ funding of the University of Pittsburgh research had become widely known, Moore continued to burnish his friend’s reputation, saying, “I admire greatly the wisdom, expertise, and, most of all, the Christian humility and grace of Francis Collins.” That same month, influential evangelical pundit David French deemed Collins a “national treasure” and his service in the NIH “faithful.” Former George W. Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson struck the most poetic tone in his effusive praise, claiming that Collins possesses a “restless genius [that] is other-centered” and is a “truth-seeker in the best sense.”

Except, apparently, when those others are aborted infants or gender-confused children and when that truth pertains to lab leaks or gain-of-function funding.

Since news began breaking months ago that Collins and Fauci intentionally used their media connections to conspire to suppress the lab-leak theory, none of the individuals or organizations in this story has corrected their records or asked Collins publicly about his previous statements. Nor have they circled back with him to inquire on record about revelations the NIH funded gain-of-function coronavirus research in Wuhan. They also haven’t questioned him on the increasing scientific consensus that cloth masks were never very useful.

The Daily Wire reached out to Stetzer, Keller, Wright, Warren, Moore, and French to ask if they have changed their views on Collins given recent revelations. None responded.

Francis Collins has been an especially successful envoy for the Biden administration, delivering messages to a mostly-Republican Christian populace who would otherwise be reluctant to hear them. In their presentation of Collins’ expertise, these pastors and leaders suggested that questioning his explanations as to the origins of the virus or the efficacy of masks was not simply a point of disagreement but sinful. This was a charge likely to have a great deal of impact on churchgoers who strive to live lives in accordance with godly standards. Perhaps no other argument could’ve been more persuasive to this demographic.

This does not mean these leaders necessarily knew that the information they were conveying to the broader Christian public could be false, but it does highlight the danger religious leaders face when they’re willing to become mouth organs of the government.

What we do know about Collins and his work with Fauci is that they have shown themselves willing to compromise transparency and truth for PR considerations. Thus, everything they have told the public about the vaccines may be accurate and their message a worthy one for Christians. But their credibility no longer carries much weight. It would’ve been better had the evangelical establishment never platformed Collins at all and shipwrecked their own reputations to showcase their lofty connections to him.

While these evangelical leaders were warning about conspiracy theories, Collins was waging a misinformation campaign himself — one these Christian megaphones helped further.

Why they did it is a question only they can answer. Perhaps in their eagerness to promote vaccines, they weren’t willing to offer any pushback to Collins’ other claims. Certainly, the lure of respect in the halls of power has proved too great a siren call for many a man. Or perhaps it was simply that their friend, the NIH director, called on them for a favor. If so, a friend like Collins deserved much, much more scrutiny.

There’s an instructive moment at the end of Warren‘s interview with Collins. The pastor misquotes Proverbs 4, saying, “Get the facts at any price.”

That, of course, is not what the verse says. It says get wisdom at any price. And it was wisdom that was severely lacking when so many pastors and ministry heads recklessly turned over their platforms, influence, and credibility to a government official who had done little to demonstrate he deserved them.

This article was originally published by The Daily Wire, which is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. 

Yesterday, Joe Biden proclaimed the evacuation from Afghanistan an “extraordinary success” that was executed exactly the way “the mission was designed.”

Meanwhile, the Taliban celebrated this extraordinary success, also known as the Taliban’s humiliation of the most powerful military in history, in the only way tyrannical Muslims know how: through a shocking act of grotesque barbarism that makes civilized people weep—or vomit. They flew a U.S. helicopter from which was dangling a corpse.

Now, false god-serving radicals and other godless regimes that devalue human life are emboldened. And with Biden’s gift of “tens of billions of dollars’ worth” of materiel paid for by American taxpayers, the emboldened terrorists are better equipped to torture and slaughter friends of America and to enslave women and girls.

If we don’t turn our sinking ship of state around—starting now—in preparation for the 2022 midterm elections, what will our military look like in the future. Sure, we’ll have critical race propagandists; atheist chaplains; hormone-doping, cross-sex impersonators; homosexuals; and pregnant fighter pilots, but will we have a few good men?

Will young men enlist if they can’t trust the commander in chief?

Will young men enlist to defend and protect a country that they were indoctrinated to believe is a systemically and irredeemably racist country whose Founders were evil and whose Constitution should be shredded?

Will young men indoctrinated with the leftist belief that America the ugly must be reimagined and deconstructed be willing to say, “This We’ll Defend,” “Always Faithful,” “Not self, but country,” or “Aim High … Fly-Fight-Win”?

Elections have consequences. So too do the ideas driving voting decisions.

Sanctimonious Never-Trumpers like David French, Lincoln Project members, and Christianity Today writers whose flawed moral and political calculus led them to conclude that facilitating the election of a corrupt, senile recluse who supports the destruction of marriage, the legal right to slaughter the unborn at taxpayer expense through all nine months of pregnancy for any or no reason, and the mandatory indoctrination of children and government employees with critical race theory was preferable to Trump with all his acknowledged flaws.

In so doing, they are complicit in the harm that is befalling those Afghans who helped us.

They are complicit in the indoctrination of yet more American children who will be taught the destructive, disunifying view that America and white people are ugly oppressors.

They are complicit in the eradication of childhood innocence, sex-segregated bathrooms, and girls’ sports.

They are complicit in the growing toleration and even celebration of lawlessness. Biden incentivized illegal immigration that has resulted in human suffering far surpassing anything the press savaged the Trump administration for. Under Biden, police departments have been defunded, financially strapped cities permit looting, vagrancy and littering laws are flouted creating unlivable cities, and mandatory COVID restrictions are scorned by the rich and powerful.

Heeding the words of Biden’s pick to be our ambassador to Japan, Rahm-bo Emanuel, who famously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste”—this one, the Chinese Communist Pandemic—leftist government leaders are incrementally paving the way for a de facto social credit system akin to China’s. No vaccine? No job.

Add to that the requirement by Big Business and Big Brother Sister Sibling that employees must refer to colleagues who pretend to be the sex they aren’t by incorrect or silly pronouns and, voilà, America’s Social Credit System.

As lawmakers plunge America further into debt; as the last few coins are emptied from the pockets of Americans to fill the emptied coffers of the government; as First Amendment speech rights and religious liberty are undermined; as parental rights are stripped; and as deviant sexual obsessions grip the hearts, minds, bodies of Americans and the institutions that shape our lives, we have decisions to make. Will we accept the gift of self-government, messy as it is, and use it wisely? Or will we leave it to the foolish and spiritually blind who will greedily grip the gift and then crush it.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/What-Biden-and-Never-Trumpers-Have-Done.mp3

With the disastrous Fall of Saigon Redux—that is, the Fall of Kabul—and the 2022 midterms fast approaching, it seems a good time for a cursory review of the past seven months of Joe Biden’s ill-fated presidency and of 2020 pre-presidential election discussions.

Befuddled Biden and his hapless administration have presided over the epically inept exit from Afghanistan, which is resulting in a humanitarian crisis, has left Afghans who helped the United States at risk, has left U.S. military weapons in the hands of terrorists, has increased the threat of terrorist acts on U.S. soil, has emboldened enemies,and has diminished our allies’ trust in America as a security partner.

The epically disastrous border crisis created by Biden policies and pronouncements dwarfs in magnitude of human suffering and in numbers anything that happened under the Trump administration. If the legacy press included ethical journalists, this would have been front page news every day until the Fall of Kabul. They would be rightly condemning Biden’s housing of children in overcrowded plastic pods, the release of COVID-positive illegals into the U.S., the record-setting number of deaths of immigrants along the Arizona border, the refusal of Biden to allow journalists to witness the housing crisis firsthand, and the failure of Kamala Harris to visit the border communities most affected by the crisis.

Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which incentivizes unemployment through the distribution of “free” money, has stymied an economy that should be surging.

Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement which will result in thousands of lost jobs, and he shut-down the Keystone XL pipeline which has resulted in thousands of lost jobs. The energy independence the Trump administration secured is dwindling, and inflation is increasing.

The frantically pursued $1 trillion infrastructure monstrosity and $3.5 trillion socialist budget resolution will plunge America deeper into the hellhole of debt Democrats (at times aided and abetted by spendthrift Republicans) have dug with their Bagger 288 excavator.

Biden removed the Hyde Amendment from his budget, an amendment which prevented taxpayer-funding of abortions, and he rescinded the Mexico City Policy, which prevented federal dollars from going to foreign non-profit organizations that provide abortions.

While deceitfully promising to be the unity president, Biden has promoted controversial and divisive social policies. He is promoting racism from California to the New York Island by embedding critical race theory in all government agencies. He seeks to end women’s privacy and sports through his support of science-denying “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices. And he endorses “trans”-cultic medical experimentation on children that mutilates healthy bodies in a perverse effort to cosmetically conceal their sex.

Biden is still cheerleading the 800-page Voter Chicanery Law, H.R. 1, which, according to the Heritage Foundation’s  Hans von Spakovsky, “is a dangerous and radical bill”:

It threatens the security, fairness, and integrity of our elections and restricts the First Amendment rights of Americans to freely engage in political speech and activity.

It would force state legislatures to hand over the redistricting process to unaccountable bureaucrats and institutionalizes racial and gender quotas.

It would also implement what amounts to a test to participate in redistricting that violates the associational and religious rights of the public.

And Biden supports the equally dangerous and deceptively named Equality Act, which would require that federal law recognize disordered subjective feelings and deviant behaviors as protected characteristics. Federal law would absurdly recognize homoeroticism and cross-sex masquerading as conditions that must be treated like race and biological sex, which are objective, 100 percent heritable conditions that are in all cases immutable, and carry no behavioral implications. (Troubling side note: The third-ranking U.S. House Republican, Elise Stefanik, chair of the U.S. House Republican Caucus, was one of eight U.S. House Republicans to vote for the Equality Act.)

Here are some questions I posed one month prior to the 2020 presidential election to GOP voters who opposed Trump. As we approach the mid-term elections, perhaps it’s a good time to revisit these questions:

• Do we really want to give more power to corrupt Democrats in Congress or give the presidency to a cognitively impaired recluse?

• Do we want to pay for the slaughter of babies in the womb, including full-term babies?

• Are we so blind we cannot see the danger to the republic posed by the appointment of activist federal judges and Supreme Court Justices who will legislate from the bench?

• Do we want the U.S. Supreme Court packed and the filibuster eliminated?

• Do we want to destroy any hope for school choice, restore federal funding for Critical Race Theory propaganda, and further empower leftist teachers’ unions?

• Do we want to return the U.S. to energy dependence on Middle East oil?

• Do we want taxes raised and businesses regulated into the ground?

• Do we want “free” college for all students, including illegal immigrants?

• Do we want law enforcement “reimagined” and defunded, ICE and the DEA eliminated, and borders opened?

• Do we want all women’s sports, locker rooms, restrooms, prisons, shelters, semi-private hospital rooms, nursing home rooms, and dorm rooms sexually integrated?

• Do we want our First Amendment religious, speech, and assembly rights diminished through the “Equality Act”?

• Do we want government to protect the invasive, tyrannical, leftist behemoth Big Tech?

While Never-Trumpers and Christianity Today focused like laser beams on the morally and intellectually compromised Trump, calling into question the veracity of his claims of being a Christian, they deftly donned their blinders when turning their bobbling heads toward the equally morally and intellectually compromised Biden, whose claims to being a Christian are at least as dubious.

What too often became lost in all the frenzied virtue-signaling and tussling over which man is less worthy of the office was a discussion of whose policies and personnel will best serve the needs of America and Americans. The 2020 presidential election meant not just the replacement of Trump by Grampa Simpson but also the replacement of all members of the Trump administration with the gang that can’t shoot straight.

Remember all this as you make mid-term decisions.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/The-Disastrous-Biden-Administration.mp3

There was a troubling recent story in Christianity Today that reveals many churches are failing the call to be in the world, but not of the world. It seems that most young Evangelical Christians now embrace cohabitation, living together before marriage. Most Evangelicals under the age of 45 have cohabited, or plan to do so in the future, or are open to the possibility.

A 2019 Pew Research survey found that 58 percent of white Evangelicals say they believe that cohabiting is acceptable if a couple plans to marry. In fact, a 2012 survey found that only 41 percent of evangelicals ages 18 to 29 disagreed with the claim that cohabitation was morally acceptable even if the couple had no express intent to marry. In other words, like the Pew survey, this General Social Survey found that 59 percent of Evangelicals were okay with living together for any reason, even if marriage is not imminent or a consideration.

While 84 percent of those with no religious affiliation cohabit before marriage, compared to 54 percent of evangelical protestants, most people who cohabit never make it to the altar. For example, among Evangelicals, only 49 percent ended in marriage. Some research shows that overall, only about 1 in 4 couples who cohabit make it to the altar. For those that do, the news is not much better. Far from being a “trial marriage” their rate of divorce is much higher than those who did not live together before marriage.

There is more than a practical problem here for people of faith. Living together before marriage is not something God approves of according to scripture. This is not an abstract teaching, or something only mentioned in passing. Sexual purity as an expectation, and the importance of marriage, is easily found throughout the Bible and a concept widely held in Christian circles for centuries.

You can read articles about what the Bible says here or here and lists of verses here.

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

It should come as a surprise to no one that the formally Christian childcare agency Bethany Christian Services has fully capitulated to homosexual activists and Big Brother—also known by Jesus as Caesar—in deciding to place children in the homes of homosexuals for fostering and adoption in all 32 states where it operates.

It should come as no surprise because the 77-year-old Bethany Christian Services, “the largest Protestant adoption and foster agency in the United States,” began capitulating several years ago when homosexuals began demanding children from Bethany, first in Philadelphia and then in Michigan.

What might surprise Christians is the sophistry Bethany now employs to rationalize their decision that will inarguably harm children temporally and likely eternally.

In a Christianity Today article on this story, Bethany vice president Nate Bult makes this astonishing claim:

Faith in Jesus is at the core of our mission. But we are not claiming a position on the various doctrinal issues about which Christians of mutual good faith may disagree. … We acknowledge that discussions about doctrine are important, but our sole job is to determine if a family can provide a safe, stable environment for children.

Word to Bult, faith in Jesus should never be separated from the work of Christians. It should inform every decision they make, especially in the kind of work Bethany does. Faith in Jesus requires accepting God’s Word as unalterable, objective, transcendent, eternal truth and includes everything the Bible says about homosexuality, marriage, and raising children.

We learn in God’s holy Word that God destroyed two cities, centrally because of rampant homosexuality. We learn how serious a sin God views homosexuality because he includes it in verses about two other serious sins: bestiality and incest. We learn from Jesus himself that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. We learn that those who engage in homosexuality will not see the kingdom of heaven. And we are commanded to train up our children in the way they should go.

Two men or two women who believe marriage has no intrinsic nature central to which is sexual differentiation and who believe homosexual acts are moral acts cannot possibly raise up a child in the way they should go. In reality, they will raise up children to believe that evil is good. They will teach children the lie that “love is love”—a lie that if affirmed as good and true may cost children their eternal lives.

Doctrinal issues regarding the ontology and teleology of marriage and the morality of homoerotic acts are not issues about which “Christians of mutual good faith” may disagree. They are foundational issues, and those who disagree with theologically orthodox views are apostates or heretics.

Marriage is a picture of Christ—the bridegroom—and the church—his bride. A homoerotic union composed of two people of the same sex suggests that there is no difference in nature or function between Christ and the church, which is a heretical notion.

But no worries to Bethany leaders. They get to keep Caesar’s money if they render unto Caesar what is God’s.

The New York Times reports that Bethany president Chris Palusky claims that Bethany’s decision to place infants and children in the homes of men and women who affirm acts that God detests is consonant with remaining “steadfast” in its “Christian faith” and “furthers” its mission to provide “safe homes” to vulnerable children.

How does Palusky define “safe”? Clearly, the eternal lives of these vulnerable children don’t factor into his understanding of safety. And clearly, raising children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord doesn’t factor into Bethany leaders’ understanding of remaining steadfast in their Christian faith.

Interesting side note about Palusky: He held a senior leadership position with World Vision in 2014 when World Vision announced its controversial decision to hire employees in homosexual relationships. The decision was so controversial, World Vision reversed it in two days. Four years later, in 2018, Palusky unfortunately landed at Bethany Christian Services.

Bethany passed an “inclusivity” policy this past January that omits this position statement in place since 2007:

God’s design for the family is a covenant and lifelong marriage of one man and one woman.

Would an organization that remains steadfast in its Christian faith and whose faith in Jesus remains at it core remove Jesus’ definition of marriage and replace it with a policy that permits children to be placed in the homes of unrepentant homosexuals?

In making its decision to render unto Caesar God’s children and, in practice, to embrace heretical doctrinal positions, did Bethany consult Scripture? Nope. Bethany hired the Barna Group to poll 667 “self-identified” Christians:

Barna found 55% of Christians said either that sexual preference should not determine who can foster or adopt, or that it was better for children to be in an LGBTQ home than in foster care. The survey also found that 76% of self-identified Christians agree, at least somewhat, that it would be better for Christian agencies to comply with government requirements pertaining to the LGBTQ community rather than shut down.

Well, there you have it: a childcare organization at the core of which is purportedly Jesus uses a poll to help determine whether it should place children in the homes of men and women who affirm sin as good.

The belief of 507 of 667 self-identified Christians that Bethany should comply with Big Brother, and the belief of 367 of 667 self-identified Christians that it is better for vulnerable children to be raised by homosexuals than by heterosexual foster parents persuaded Bethany leaders of the position they already held.  Perhaps it would have been wiser to poll 667 theologically orthodox, non-apostate Christian pastors on this momentous decision.

A false dichotomy appears to be implicit in the questions posed to the 667 self-identified Christians. The choices available to Bethany are not limited either to capitulating to homosexuals and Caesar or shutting down.

There is a third option available to organizations for whom steadfast faith in and obedience to Jesus Christ is truly central to their mission: They can disengage from Caesar. Bethany could refuse government money and all its attached un-sanctifying, damning strings dangling so temptingly before them.

Enquiring minds want to know if Bethany—fully committed to Christ and his kingdom as it is—will soon place children in the homes of men who pretend to be women? What about in the homes of homosexual “throuples” like the one from San Diego (whose book Amazon is not banning)? This particular “throuple”—three men who fought successfully to have all three of their names listed on their children’s birth certificates—didn’t need to adopt. Instead, they purchased genetic material and rented wombs. But other “throuples,” “quadrouples,” or “septouples” may not have the resources for purchasing genetic material. Will Bethany one day place vulnerable children with such families? If not, why not?

Why not place children in the homes of polyamorists with five adults of assorted biological sexes and sexual interests? If the sex of adopting parents is irrelevant, why is the number of partners relevant? Come to think of it, if love is love, why does blood kinship matter? Why not place children in the homes of brothers in romantic/erotic unions?

While a Barna poll may show over half of self-identifying Christians currently oppose such placements, just wait awhile and poll them again.

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Good job, David French, Ed Stetzer, Christianity Today, Lincoln Project, and other assorted Never-Trumpers. The senile, morally corrupt President-Elect of the once great United States of America just nominated a delusional man with a cross-dressing fetish to be the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. Now decent people won’t be able to teach their young children about our president’s Cabinet. With Dr. Richard “Rachel” Levine‘s appointment will come Big Brother’s prohibition of “misgendering” Levine. In other words, Big Brother and his minions will command all Americans to mis-sex the burly Dr. Levine. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.

Oh, but that’s not all.

Biden has a plan to spread the leftist sexuality ideology within the United States and export it to infinity and beyond. Biden—the self-identifying Catholic—chooses to offend the God he claims to serve rather than offend the gods of homosexuality and “trans”-cultism he actually serves. In terrifying rebellion against God, Biden calls theologically orthodox biblical beliefs about homosexual acts “hatred,” specifically identifying Mike Pence’s beliefs as such.

Further, Biden says, “defeating” those beliefs “is an essential first step” in achieving the leftist goal of full societal approval of homosexuality, which he fallaciously calls “equality.”

Biden has committed to passing the Equality Act, which has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with eradicating First Amendment protections of religious free exercise. Biden has said that through the Equality Act, he will force women’s shelters to house biological men who pretend to be women. Those places where abused women and their children take refuge, often from abusive men, will under Biden, house men.

Biden has committed to reversing the ban on sexual passing in the military. In other words, female soldiers will be forced to bunk and shower with men who pretend to be women, and U.S. taxpayers will be forced to subsidize elective cosmetic procedures and ongoing cross-sex hormone-doping for delusional soldiers.

Biden has committed to forcing Christian adoption and foster care agencies to place children in the homes of homosexuals or lose access to all government funds. In other words, Biden will discriminate based on religion when funding adoption agencies.

Biden has promised that on his first day in office he will require all public schools to allow “trans”-identifying students to have full access to the restrooms, locker rooms, and sports of opposite-sex students. I’m sure that will go over well with Muslim parents.

We can’t forget that Biden has promised to restore funding to America’s abattoirs, Planned Parenthood. With Biden ensconced in the Oval Office, Christians from sea to shining sea will be forced to fund human slaughter. But at least now that the uncouth, boorish Trump is gone, Never-Trumpers will be able to sleep at night.

And this is just the tip of the cold, dark iceberg, Biden and Never-Trumpers kept hidden during the campaign.

Never-Trumpers, besotted with dreams of Downton Abbey’s Lord Grantham (without the white skin, biological sex, or elitist title, of course) running for president, couldn’t abide the coarse, abrasive, pugilistic Trump winning a second term, so they colluded with leftists to kneecap him.

Never mind that Joe Biden is an inveterate liar and plagiarist. Never mind that he inappropriately touches women. Never mind that he has been accused by Jill Biden’s first husband of having an affair with her when Joe’s wife was still alive and Jill Biden was still married. Never mind that he was accused of digitally raping a staffer years ago. Never mind that there is good evidence that Joe and his corrupt son and brother colluded to line their pockets with the filthy lucre of America’s chief enemy. Never mind that with a straight but slightly confused face, he lied during election season, telling voters that he knew nothing about Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings. To Never-Trumpers, Biden’s plans to destroy America are trivialities to be ignored.

While facilitating the election of Joe Biden—a man who will enact policies that destroy the bodies, minds, and hearts of children—apparently has no bearing on our Christian witness, voting for Trump does—or so goes the argument of Ed Stetzer, dean and professor at Wheaton College and contributing editor at Christianity Today.

Stetzer thinks the dim view the world has of evangelicalism has everything to do with gullible, non-thinking, Trump-voting evangelicals. No mention of the hatred the world has for the word of God when it comes to homosexuality and sexual passing.

No mention either of the unconscionable cowardly silence of theologians and pastors who have said next to nothing as the world captured the hearts and minds of children in their own houses of worship and whose silence contributed to the spread of evil so dark and ugly that many evangelicals, when faced with the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, believed rightly that Trump was better.

Trump offered hope to parents who didn’t want their daughters sharing locker rooms with boys. He offered hope that Planned Parenthood would be defunded. He offered hope for a Supreme Court that would protect their religious liberty.

In Stetzer’s myopic view, expressed in a USA Today editorial devoid of nuance, “far too many [evangelicals] failed to live up to their promise of speaking truth to power.” Perhaps. But there are tens of thousands more evangelicals who voted for Trump than there are well-known evangelicals who had access to Trump to speak truth to power, and Stetzer lumps them all together.

What about the well-known evangelicals who have had opportunities for decades to speak truth to power about the poisonous, enslaving “LGBTQ” ideology and have said nothing either to the powerful or publicly. How does Stetzer think the world—whose opinion he seems to care so much about—would think about evangelicalism if every well-known evangelical spoke truth to power publicly about the “trans”-ideology and homosexuality?

Has Stetzer considered that maybe evangelicals wouldn’t have been so attracted to Trump’s muscular rhetoric, if evangelical leaders had not been speaking in such emasculated tones for so many years?

Maybe Stetzer doesn’t know any, but there are scores of evangelicals who see with clarity Trump’s flaws and who worship no political (or evangelical) leader. Those evangelicals were careful to distinguish between Trump the man and the policies of his administration. Given a choice between a corrupt man with terrible policies and a corrupt man with better policies, they chose the latter.

The dark shape of things to come

The 1619 Project has changed the date of America’s founding. All summer, Orwellian monsters—also known as Biden voters—rampaged through our cities, tearing down statutes and demanding that buildings and streets be renamed and artwork replaced. Birth certificates are now legally falsified to indicate a biological male was identified at the time of his birth as female. Birth certificates will now identify a biological woman who was impregnated by a biological man and birthed a baby as the “father.” Within a nanosecond after the announcement by a Hollywood starlet at age 33 that she will henceforth pretend she’s a man, the Internet was scrubbed of any past references to her by female pronouns. Her history was erased.

In the novel 1984, George Orwell wrote,

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

As I wrote several weeks ago, “Leftists See Orwell’s Novel 1984 As a Blueprint for Progress.”

So, tell me again, Mr. French, Mr. Stetzer, and Christianity Today, how exactly does facilitating the election of the patently corrupt Biden who heartily endorses sexual perversion, religious persecution, human slaughter, and the erasure of history enhance the witness of theologically orthodox Christians?

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Good job, David French, Ed Stetzer, Christianity Today, Lincoln Project, and other assorted Never-Trumpers. The senile, morally corrupt President-Elect of the once great United States of America just nominated a delusional man with a cross-dressing fetish to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Now decent people won’t be able to teach their young children about our president’s cabinet. With Dr. Richard “Rachel” Devine‘s appointment will come Big Brother’s prohibition of “misgendering” Devine. In other words, Big Brother and his minions will command all Americans to mis-sex the burly Dr. Devine. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.

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In his recent Christianity Today (CT) blog post, New Testament scholar Scot McKnight defends recently retired CT president Mark Galli’s hubristic diktat about the necessity—in Galli’s view—of Trump’s removal from office:

Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.

Trump’s removal from office would inarguably result in the election of a man or woman who endorses, among other things, human slaughter, the intentional creation of motherless and fatherless children for homosexuals, the chemical sterilization of gender-dysphoric minors, the sexual integration of private spaces, a diminution of religious liberty, and mandatory transpeak (i.e., the mis-sexing of cross-sex impersonators)—facts that cannot be ignored in this discussion.

In his blog post, McKnight tries unsuccessfully to recast Galli’s argument via the creation of a colossal strawman painted with an equally colossal brush. He argues that both support for and opposition to Galli’s argument—which in McKnight’s view was solely a moral judgment wholly devoid of political dimensions—reveals a philosophical commitment to “statism”:

At no time in my life have I seen the church more engaged in politics and more absorbed by a political story. … [M]ake no mistake, the American story is increasingly statism. … [S]tatism entails an inherent belief, either explicit or implicit, in the state. It is a belief that solutions to our biggest problems are found in the state and the Christian’s responsibility from the Left or the Right is to get involved and acquire political power. Statism as I am using it here is the idol of making a human the world’s true ruler. Statism exalts humans and human plans and voting. Statism centers its faith in the future on who rules in D.C. Statism makes government a god. … Those who think the CT editorial meant support for the other party are statists. Those who think it meant support for their party are statists. Neither was the case. It was a moral judgment.

McKnight’s strawman is constructed out of a dollop of redefinition, a smidge of ambiguity, and a dearth of nuance. Take special note of McKnight’s critical admission: “Statism as I am using it here” (emphasis added).

The church has always been deeply involved in political issues that are at their core, biblical. That’s why the church was involved in the abolitionist movement and the Civil Rights Movement, both of which created hostility and division within the country.

Statism is typically defined as “centralized government administration and control of social and economic affairs.” As such, deep concern by conservative Christians about the expansion of government, its encroachment into spheres of life where it doesn’t belong, and its promotion of evil as good is not tantamount to “statism.” In fact, such concerns and efforts to participate in the project of self-government to remedy these offenses against truth and liberty are the antithesis of “statism.” The desire to reduce the size and scope of government, to protect human life, and to strengthen support for the First Amendment so as to allow individuals, families, and churches to flourish cannot rationally be conceived of as “statism.”

While the belief that Galli’s editorial “meant support for the other party” may have been wrong, such a belief is not proof of statism. Moreover, while Trump’s removal from office may or may not signify support for the other party, it certainly means the other party will have even more opportunity to harm individuals, the family, and the church.

McKnight implies that Christians believe solutions to all our biggest problems are found in the state, whereas many Christians have more reasonable beliefs. They believe that elected leaders can pass policies and laws, make judicial appointments, and issue executive orders that embody and reflect either good or evil, truth or falsehood, wisdom or foolishness, and that either contribute to or undermine human flourishing.

They value religious liberty and speech rights. They seek justice for humans in the womb. And they are deeply thankful for the blessing of self-government that the oppressed from all around the world come to America to enjoy. And yes, they feel passionate about these issues, which, while political, are first and foremost, biblical, which makes their moral judgments sound.

But apparently McKnight sees the passionate desire of Christians to elect leaders who will protect humans in the womb, women in the locker room, and religious liberty as an idolatrous quest for power and proof of statist drives. Did he feel that way about William Wilberforce’s tireless efforts to end the slave trade in England or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s divisive efforts to end the egregious violations of the civil rights of African Americans?

Paul teaches that “there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” So, who is the authority God has instituted here in America? We, the people, are. Christians who feel passionately about the importance of exercising the blessing of self-government through voting and who believe a flawed man who has implemented policy decisions wiser than the ones his opponents would implement are not making an idol of him or exalting human plans. They are properly exercising their authority instituted by God.

Mcknight also believes that “progressive” Christian Randall Balmer was right when he asserted that

Christianity operates best from the margins of power, not in its center. Too many today think the solutions to our problems are anchored to the one leading the White House.

I’m not sure who Balmer and McKnight hang out with because no Christian I know believes that “the solutions to our problems are anchored to the one leading the White House”—at least not all the solutions to all our problems.

Many Christians believe, however, that some of the solutions to some of our problems can be remedied by elected government leaders, including, of course, the president. Do Balmer and McKnight believe no solution to any problem can be found in the decisions of our president?

While many Christians supported candidates other than Trump during the primary, when the General Election arrived, the choices were between two morally flawed candidates—one of whom offered some glimmer of hope for decisions that would contribute to human flourishing. That candidate—Donald Trump—has made judicial appointments, issued executive orders, and implemented policy decisions that have surprised many conservatives—decisions for which they are thankful.

Appreciation for these good decisions no more constitutes “wholesale evangelical support” for Trump than presumably CT’s support for the work of Karl Barth constitutes wholesale support for this deeply sinful man.

In a 2017 article about Thomas Jefferson’s affair with his slave and theologian Karl Barth’s decades long affair with his assistant, whom he brought to live in his home despite the pain it caused his wife, Mark Galli wrote,

In light of these profound contradictions, what are we to do with the messages of each of these men? Does their behavior tarnish their ideas? … I don’t think so. … Like many, I’ve long hoped to find a heroic human figure whom I can admire unflinchingly. But time and again, I’ve had to discover there is no such person. Well, except the one known as the True Man, who dialectically enough has been known to use ignoble things to shine forth his glory.

Are Donald Trump’s achievements commensurate with those of Thomas Jefferson or Karl Barth? No, but that’s irrelevant to the arguments of Galli, and presumably Dalrymple and McKnight. Their arguments concern whether it is moral for Christians to vote for a morally flawed candidate with better policies than his opponent, and whether admiration for the good policies he has effected constitutes idolatry.

Balmer wants Christians to be marginalized except when he doesn’t. Balmer waxes enthusiastic about times when Christians “set the social and political agenda” for the country:

For years, I have argued in books, articles, op-eds and even a couple of documentaries that evangelicalism, in contrast to the Religious Right, has a long and distinguished history. Evangelicals set the social and political agenda for much of the 19th century. They advocated for the poor and the rights of workers to organize. They supported prison reform and public education. They enlisted in peace crusades and supported women’s equality, including voting rights.

Apparently, Balmer wants Christians on the margins of power only when he disagrees with their social and political agenda.

Still reeling from the 2016 election, Randall Balmer confesses,

I should be over it by now, but I confess that the number 81 continues to haunt me. Following the shock of Election Day 2016, the further news that 81% of white evangelicals supported Donald Trump was devastating to me personally. These were the same people who had been telling us for the past four decades that they were devoted to “family values,” but then they pivoted and, without hint of irony or apology, cast their votes for a twice-divorced, self-confessed sexual predator. … I was, well, devastated.

Here’s what Dr. King, a profligate philanderer—whom CT, with no hint of irony or apology, celebrates—said about Christians and political power:

I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between … the sacred and the secular.

…

There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. …  Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.

It’s a good thing the early Christians Dr. King described didn’t allow the “reputation” of the church to determine their actions.

McKnight, perhaps accurately, prophesies what Christianity “Tomorrow” will look like:

Evangelicalism … is shifting. … Christianity will be a justice-oriented evangelicalism.

Unlike many evangelicals, McKnight finds such a shift to be a good thing, citing favorably new CT president Timothy Dalrymple’s vision for both CT and evangelicalism:

Out of love for Jesus and his church, not for political partisanship or intellectual elitism, this is why we feel compelled to say that the alliance of American evangelicalism with this presidency has wrought enormous damage to Christian witness. It has alienated many of our children and grandchildren. It has harmed African American, Hispanic American, and Asian American brothers and sisters. And it has undercut the efforts of countless missionaries who labor in the far fields of the Lord. While the Trump administration may be well regarded in some countries, in many more the perception of wholesale evangelical support for the administration has made toxic the reputation of the Bride of Christ.

…

[Trump] is a symptom of a sickness that began before him, which is the hyper-politicization of the American church. This is a danger for all of us, wherever we fall on the political spectrum. Jesus said we should give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. With profound love and respect, we ask our brothers and sisters in Christ to consider whether they have given to Caesar what belongs only to God: their unconditional loyalty.

Some thoughts on Dalrymple’s thoughts:

• It’s out of love for Jesus and his church, not for political partisanship, that many Christians feel compelled to support President Trump. It’s out of their deep desire to protect those who are knitted together in their mothers’ wombs that many in the 81% that give Randall Balmer the heebie-jeebies feel compelled to support this presidency. It is out of love for God who created man male and female that Christians support Trump. Are those idolatrous statist desires?

• Has Trump’s presidency harmed African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian American brothers and sisters? How so? What’s Dalrymple’s evidence?

• For McKnight to cite Dalrymple’s concern for the “reputation of the Bride of Christ” is ironic because McKnight doesn’t view marriage —the earthly picture of Christ, the Bridegroom, and his church, the Bride of Christ—as an essential Christian creed:

The issue is that essentials of the faith and theological robustness speak to the Christian creeds and not to anything about marriage.  

In contrast, Professor Anthony Esolen, writing in Touchstone Magazine, says this about marriage:

The marriage of man and woman is an image of Christ’s union with his bride the Church (Eph.5:32, Rev. 21:20), and that is meant as no mere poetry. The madness of our time would reduce the Bible’s most exalted revelation of the nature of the divine image in man and of the union of God with man to a figure of speech.

Of course, it’s possible to believe the historical understanding of marriage is non-essential and still be concerned about the reputation of the bride of Christ in the world, but Dalrymple’s assertion and McKnight’s admiration for it raises the question, does the world hate evangelicals more for their support—often grudging—of President Trump or for their support for marriage as intrinsically and unalterably the union of one man—the earthly representation of Christ—and one woman—the earthly representation of the church? (If marriage is the picture of Christ and the church, what does same-sex “marriage” mean other than that there is no distinction in nature or function between Christ and the church? And how would that implicit claim be non-essential?)

• Since the alienation of children and grandchildren is offered as justification for abandonment of Trump in favor of morally flawed candidates who endorse evil policies, what do McKnight, Dalrymple, and Galli make of Jesus’ words from Matthew 10:

Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. … Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. ³⁶ And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.

Now that’s some serious familial alienation Jesus has promised us.

Will McKnight, Dalrymple, and CT reject the non-essential understanding of marriage if it makes “toxic” the reputation of evangelicals in the world? Will they reject the non-essential biblically based understanding of marriage if it alienates many of our children and grandchildren?

• Voting for Trump does not demonstrate idolatrous worship of (or “unconditional loyalty” to) him anymore than voting for any of the candidates who heartily endorse human slaughter and soul-destroying sexual immorality would demonstrate “unconditional loyalty” to them.

How would the world respond if evangelicals supported someone as morally degenerate as Pete Buttigieg, whose degeneracy—one could argue—far surpasses Trump’s? The world would rejoice. By currying favor with the world, the church’s “reputation” would shine because the church would now be in the world and of the world. But that shine would not be from the true light of the True Man.

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President Trump is a lightning rod for opinions in American Christianity. As a pastor, I know. Some of my Christian friends love Donald Trump’s personality, while others find it appalling. Some strongly support his policies, while others think he is a tyrant ruining America. Few are unsure about their opinions on Trump.

Last week, Mark Galli shared his opinion about Trump. He spoke not as an individual but as the voice of Christianity Today (CT). He spoke with biblical authority or at least tried to. In Galli’s essay,“Trump should be removed from Office,” he intentionally draws a biblical line in the sand for Christians:

Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.

CT’s call for Trump’s removal is built on three assertions.

1.) The call for removal is not an act of politics but a prudential judgment that seeks to preserve the church’s witness.

2.) President Trump broke the law and needs to be removed because Christians should not support a criminal in office.

3.) President Trump’s moral behavior makes him unfit for the office of the presidency. His removal is an ethical imperative.

The logical conclusion of CT’s article is that “loyalty to God” means Christians must remove the President from office. If not, you are disloyal to God.

Galli writes a poorly argued essay that is more political talking points than Christ in culture. Galli should have never written it, but he did. His editorial causes the very harm from which he seeks to protect Christianity.

Galli couches his assertions in the “reputation of evangelical religion and on the world’s understanding of the gospel.” In other words, support of Trump is anti-Christ. This is a strong accusation against Christians who support Trump’s reelection. It’s no wonder there has been backlash from conservative Christians. The evangelicals-are-stupid trope aligns with a “progressive” narrative that says evangelicals have made a deal with the devil and need enlightenment. This is Never-Trump 2.0.

Galli didn’t write his call for Trump’s supporters to remove the president to protect the church’s witness but to not feel embarrassed by Trump and his supporters. Justice Joseph Story observed in his highly regarded magnum opus on impeachment that,

Many of the offences, which will be charged against public men, will be generated by the heats and animosities of party.

Justice Story is spot on. Impeachment can happen when the person being impeached is despised by his opposing party. President Trump is despised by his opposition but more important, Trump is despised by the elites in the United States. Elites are easy to identify. They’re the ones that snicker at Trump supporters and can’t imagine how anyone could ever support him. Elites are utterly embarrassed that anyone could vote for Trump. They feel he represents everything wrong, backwards, and racist in our country.

CT is striving to be part of, in the words of Matthew Schmitz, the “Evangelical elite.” They are yearning for affirmation from the New York Times and airtime on CNN. This article has done exactly that. This has more to do with social clout than Christianity.

Galli also builds his argument for removal by declaring that the President broke the law:

[T]he facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is … a violation of the Constitution.

Unambiguous means that there is only one way to see it. This is a factually untrue claim concerning Trump’s actions. All the U.S. House Republicans disagree with the assertion made by CT. Annalisa Merelli from Quartz disagrees with Galli’s claim saying, “there is no clear law on the matter.”  Democrat and law professor Alan Dershowitz disagrees as well. The point is that whether Trump broke the law or not is highly ambiguous. By stating as fact—and condescendingly so—what is opinion, Christianity Today aligns with the left’s political machine. CT has provided talking points for those who despise Trump. Go on Twitter and you will see for yourself.

The crux of CT’s argument is that President Trump is the high water mark of presidential immorality, and all Christians must oppose him. Surely Galli understands how ridiculous the claim is that Trump is especially sinful. Here is a look at some of President Trump’s competition–all of whom claimed to be Christians:

President Lyndon Johnson was vulgar, crude, racist, and groped women.

President John F. Kennedy had multiple affairs while in office, worked with mobsters to get elected, and was probably blackmailed as President to award a multi billion dollar federal contract.

President Bill Clinton was credibly accused of groping and/or raping multiple women, had an intern perform a sexual act on him, and lied to Congress about it.

President George W. Bush invaded Iraq on what can kindly be called, spin. At the very least, the Bush administration suffered from confirmation bias. The Bush administration involved the United States in a multi year struggle costing thousands of lives and hundred of billions of dollars on a rush to war.

President Barack Obama rewarded top fundraisers with administration positions. The more money raised, the better chance of getting a position. The positions were given based upon raising money for a campaign not competency. This is called quid pro quo.

The egregious sins of these former presidents do not justify the sins of Trump. Rather, they provide evidence that the reason he is being pursued for removal is not that he is worse but that the opposition thinks there is a chance they can do it. They aren’t removing him because of his immorality but because this is the most effective strategy to neutralize his agenda. If Trump had the command of the legislature like Johnson, or the love of mass culture like Obama, it is very likely this would be a non issue. Impeachment is “political [in] character” according to Justice Story. It’s not about deciding right and wrong. If it were, the judicial branch would make the decision. An impeachment process is the highest form of political theater, and CT appears to be trying to have a starring role.

The real tragedy of CT so blatantly entering into this partisan battle is that now CT has been swallowed up by what Justice Story calls, the “vortex of the political.” Politics saturate our cultural landscape. CT has jumped right into the middle of the chaos and picked up a sword against its own. They aren’t defending Christianity; they are striking at it.

There is a better way. Justice Story speaks about a class of citizens that stays above the fray. He was referring to judges. For Story, judges must be seen, “as impartial and just.” This is because they represent justice–not politics. Democracy fails when the rule of law becomes political. In the same way, the world flourishes when Christian leaders represent Christ. We must be seen concretely living for another world and serving a greater king. We represent Christ not politics. Sadly, CT has forgotten the primacy of Christ. They diminish his glory by lowering themselves into this impeachment farce.

Reverend Billy Graham, as is often the case, is the model of a better way. Graham’s personal convictions were private. In public he (almost) always represented Christ not politicians. He was a pastor to both Democratic and Republican Presidents. He was a non-partisan Christ-follower to the whole nation. He served the country on behalf of Christ. In 2011 reflecting upon his legacy and his occasional missteps into politics he said,

I … would have steered clear of politics. I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to. But looking back, I know I sometimes crossed the line, and I wouldn’t do that now.”

Christianity Today, you are making the very mistake that Rev. Graham regretted at the end of his life. By taking sides on Trump, you weaken your credibility on the very issues that Christians need biblical wisdom on engaging. Abortion, marriage, immigration, race and sexual identity are at the center of American culture. Display Christ here. Otherwise, Christianity is lost at Christianity Today.

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The more you look into the “gay but celibate” movement advancing rapidly into once theologically orthodox Christian churches, the more disheartened you become by church leaders who have been slow to counter it, or worse, are embracing it.

The conservative Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), a small but influential denomination that separated from liberal mainline Presbyterianism in the early 1970s, is at a tipping point because of Revoice, a ministry that claims to be “observing the historic Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality” but whose inaugural conference last summer included workshop titles like “Redeeming Queer Culture: An Adventure.” An ecumenical effort that’s primarily Protestant but open to Catholics, Revoice was not organized by the PCA, but Revoice leaders and supporters include pastors and others in the PCA.

While disavowing homoerotic acts, Revoice leaders sound like secular LGBT activists in portraying “gay Christians” as oppressed minorities who deserve the right to define themselves on their own terms, no matter how bizarre or disruptive to the larger Christian community. In defiance of logic, they celebrate “gay” identity and aspects of “gay” culture while promising never to engage in homoerotic sex.

Revoice conference speaker Eve Tushnet, a Catholic, has written approvingly of celibate “gay Christians” joining the festivities at homosexual pride parades. Her Twitter bio says her “hobbies include sin, confession, and ecstasy.” Even Episcopalians might find it tacky to name sin as a hobby, but apparently, it’s to be cheered as harmless fun by evangelicals if they want to appear sensitive to those struggling with homosexual attraction.

While Revoice primarily promotes “gay but celibate,” some involved in Revoice are in what they call “mixed-orientation marriages.” They are married to someone of the opposite sex, but continue to publicly identify as gay and talk openly about their persistent homosexual desires. In the world of Revoice, this is vulnerability worthy of praise. For others, it is a sickening disregard for marital vows and the respect owed one’s spouse.

Revoice held its second annual conference in early June. So far, the PCA has not disciplined PCA leaders and promoters of Revoice for their role in perversely trying to blend traditional Christian teachings with a worldly LGBT mindset. At its annual general assembly June 25-28 in Dallas, the PCA approved the Nashville Statement as a document of biblical fidelity to share as a discipleship tool. But the statement, released by an evangelical coalition in 2017 to bolster orthodoxy on sexual matters, will likely not be binding within PCA church courts. The PCA at its general assembly also approved a study committee to examine its own confessions as they pertain to sexuality. The Chicago Metro Presbytery was among those asking for a study committee.

If the words “study committee” sound familiar, that’s because the mainline denominations set up study committees when they were hit with debilitating brain fogs about their long-held beliefs related to sex, marriage, and family. They went on to approve homosexual “marriage” and help the culture usher in transgender pronouns and drag queens as children’s entertainment. It’s also noteworthy that on their way to giving full approval to homosexuality and homosexual “marriage,” mainline denominations endorsed “gay but celibate,” including among clergy.

The storm in the PCA has become especially fierce because one of its pastors has come out as a celibate “gay Christian.” Greg Johnson hosted the first Revoice conference at his St. Louis church last year but didn’t publicly wear the “gay” label himself until May when he wrote a revealing piece for Christianity Today. At the denomination’s recent general assembly, Johnson took to the floor to deliver a speech, both self-pitying and self-glorifying, in which he denounced Article 7 of the Nashville Statement, which says, “We deny that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.” Johnson, who likened people with homosexual desires to paraplegics and infertile women, said Article 7 “hurts” him. While Johnson has at times described homosexual desires as sinful, these comparisons in his speech underscore a profound lack of consistency and clarity in doing so.

Johnson’s speech was applauded by many at the general assembly and praised by others on social media. Even Denny Burk, a Southern Baptist academic critical of Revoice who overall has written commendably on sexuality from an orthodox perspective, wrote that Johnson “spoke powerfully of his own experience, and I was genuinely moved by what he said.” One thing that has slowed the gears in addressing the “gay but celibate” movement is the insistence of leaders in the evangelical world to give credit where it’s not due. Johnson’s speech was disturbing. It’s genuinely moving when someone fighting unwanted homosexual attraction, or any sinful desire, humbly seeks help at his church to walk closer with God. It’s deeply troubling when a pastor pleads at his church body’s annual meeting for recognition of a sinful identity as part of a divisive movement that threatens a denominational split.

To his credit, Burk identifies where Johnson goes wrong in his interpretation of Article 7:

Adopt means to embrace or endorse. The point of the article is simply to say that it is out of bounds to embrace an understanding of oneself or one’s sin that is at odds with God’s design in creation and redemption. This is not a controversial point, or at least it shouldn’t be among Christians.

Johnson’s own presbytery in Missouri investigated Revoice and released a report shortly before the PCA general assembly with words of caution for the “gay but celibate” ministry. But the report had sharper words for critics for supposedly making snap judgments about Revoice leaders and failing to appreciate the “nuance and complexity” of the issues they raise. The Missouri Presbytery, like the Chicago Metro Presbytery, asked for a denominational study committee. As onlookers wait to see if the PCA will take meaningful action to stamp out the contributions of its leaders to the “gay but celibate” movement, activists with Revoice and similar efforts will undoubtedly march on, pushing into more conservative churches of various affiliations to further desensitize believers to “queer” culture with a Christian spin.

Revoice conference speaker Pieter Valk, an Anglican, is the founder of EQUIP, a Nashville advocacy group whose mission is to “equip the church to better love sexual minorities.” EQUIP wants to remove any shame associated with homosexual lusts and is adamant that homosexual orientation is fixed, holding out no hope for Christians who want to be rid of homosexual desires. On the “Beliefs” page of its website, EQUIP says that “while we affirm and teach from a traditional sexual ethic, we respect all people’s right to follow their own paths.” Not exactly a robust statement of Christian orthodoxy. But it’s in keeping with what others in the “gay but celibate” movement sometimes say. They insist they are against homoerotic sex. But unlike Christians who believe such acts are categorically wrong, they make it sound like this belief is something to be subjectively determined based on the intensity of one’s religious sentiments.

EQUIP has little to say about sin and repentance, except in its shaming of the church for alleged past mistreatment of homosexuals. Its website even suggests a prayer for the church to pray in which the church repents of “destructive theology”:

Most merciful God, we, Christians, confess that we have sinned against you and LGBT+ people in our homophobia, with our destructive theology, and by treating LGBT+ people as problems – by the ways we have actively mistreated LGBT+ people, and by doing nothing to make the Church better for LGBT+ people as ourselves. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved LGBT+ people as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent that our sin has led many LGBT+ people to lose their faith or commit suicide. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that LGBT+ people may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your name. Amen

Even more troubling is the participation of Revoice speakers in LOVEboldly, a Kentucky-based group that reaches out to church staff, including youth pastors, on behalf of both celibate gays and those who see nothing wrong with homoerotic acts. The group promotes “reconciliation and healing” between homosexuals and Christians with traditional beliefs.  The LOVEboldly website explains, “We are deeply persuaded that agreement with one another’s political and theological perspectives on sexuality is not essential for moving towards loving one another boldly.” Imagine if Christian marriage counselors were to partner with an organization that believes adultery and open marriages are acceptable. The sympathy Christians feel for people in difficult marriages would not be seen as justification for linking arms with advocates of views so strikingly at odds with orthodox Christian beliefs.

That the “gay but celibate” movement has made so many inroads with such a morally compromised agenda reflects the degree to which far too many conservative Christians have been emotionally manipulated to see LGBT people as victims who must be treated with special sensitivity, even if that means giving celibate “gay Christians” exemptions to biblical teachings about personal holiness. Well-meaning Christian leaders have wanted to assume that activists have good intentions when they should have been more concerned about protecting their flocks from wolves.

Revoice leaders would have you believe that if it weren’t for them, there would be no one to help Christians with homosexual desires. But that’s far from the truth. Organizations and individuals sympathetic to the challenges posed by homosexual attraction have been around for years to help such Christians. But their message of leaving “gay” identity and culture behind is one many in Revoice want to silence. At the recent Revoice conference, a speaker mocked Rosaria Butterfield, a Christian writer and former lesbian now married to a man. (After getting pushback from some at the conference, the speaker later apologized.) Butterfield is controversial among many Revoice leaders and supporters because she doesn’t believe Christians should embrace a homosexual identity. As Butterfield puts it, “How can any of us fight a sin that we don’t hate?”

The insidious “gay but celibate” movement has started to drown out voices like Butterfield’s because activists have deftly exploited the fears of Christians who don’t want to be called haters. The message of Revoice and similar efforts is tailor-made for people-pleasers who want to be Christian and LGBT-friendly in a way that might lessen cultural pressure to go along with LGBT pride and delay or make unnecessary the taking of a costly stand in defense of orthodox convictions. But going along with the drift in the church on this critical issue is cowardly and unloving. True love rejoices in the truth and the time to stand for truth is now.

IFI Fall Banquet with Franklin Graham!
We are excited to announce that at this year’s IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st.

Learn more HERE.

In stunning semi-secretive decisions motivated by fear of religious persecution, the boards of two major evangelical organizations, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), have voted to pass motions that represent an unacceptable compromise with homosexuals and the science-denying “trans” cult. These two influential organizations passed motions that would ask the government to add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes in federal anti-discrimination law in exchange for religious liberty protections that many people know would merely be stepping stones yanked out from under people of faith eventually.

According to World Magazine, in October, the NAE board unanimously passed its motion, titled “Fairness for All” (first discussed in Christianity Today in 2016), which asks “Congress to consider federal legislation consistent with three principles,” the problematic one which says this:

No one should face violence, harassment, or unjust discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Of course, no one should face violence on the basis of any condition. So far, so good. But the rest of this principle is a theological, philosophical, political, and rhetorical mess. To illuminate the mess, here are a few questions for the Christian leaders who passed motions based on it:

1.) While this compromise may—for a short time—protect Christian colleges and universities, how might the religious liberty of ordinary Christians in, for example, wedding-related businesses, be affected if under federal law, homosexuality becomes a protected class?

2.) How are the terms “harassment” and “unjust discrimination” defined now? Could they be redefined or “expanded” later? Would a refusal to provide goods or services for the unholy occasion of homoerotic faux-marriage constitute unjust discrimination? Would opposition to co-ed restrooms and locker rooms constitute unjust discrimination? Would refusal to use incorrect pronouns when referring to those who masquerade as the opposite sex constitute harassment?

3.) Would those Christian leaders who voted for these motions have done so if, instead of the euphemisms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” in which are embedded false assumptions, the motions had used plain-speaking or even biblical terms? Let’s give the Fairness for All statement above a less-sanitized whirl:

No one should face unjust discrimination on the basis of their volitional choice to exchange natural sexual relations with persons of the opposite sex for unnatural relations with persons of their same sex, or for choosing to appear as the sex they are not.

How would that more accurately phrased statement have sat with the Christian leaders?

4.) Unlike other protected classes that are constituted by objective conditions that are in all cases immutable and carry no behavioral implications (e.g., sex and nation of origin), homosexuality, bisexuality, and opposite-sex impersonation are constituted by subjective and often fluid feelings and volitional acts with moral implications. Therefore, what other conditions similarly constituted will eventually be deemed protected classes? Why should homosexuality be included and polyamory or Genetic Sexual Attraction (aka incest) excluded?

To fully grasp the magnitude of the potential effect of these motions requires knowledge of the size of the organizations that passed them. The NAE “is an association of evangelical denominations, organizations, schools, churches and individuals. The association represents more than 45,000 local churches from nearly 40 different denominations and serves a constituency of millions.”

The CCCU “is a higher education association of more than 180 Christian institutions around the world,” including Bethel University, Calvin College, Colorado Christian University, Dallas Theological University, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Fuller Theological Seminary, Gordon College, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Houghton College, Houston Baptist University, Judson University, Messiah College, Moody Bible Institute, Regent University, Taylor University, The King’s College, Trinity International University, and Wheaton College.

To be clear, we must not assume any of these colleges and universities supported the motion passed by the CCCU board. For example, Dr. Benjamin Merkle, president of New Saint Andrews College, which is a CCCU member, explained that “I’ve registered my opposition to this move, as have several other CCCU presidents.” 

While the CCCU and NAE boards capitulate to the Left’s relentless demand to have disordered sexual desires and deviant sexual behavior deemed conditions worthy of special protections, 75 prominent religious leaders oppose capitulation to such demands.

A document titled “Preserve Freedom, Reject Coercion” signed by religious leaders including Ryan T. Anderson, Rosaria Butterfield, Charles Chaput, D.A. Carson, Jim Daly, Kevin DeYoung, Tony Evans, Anthony Esolen, Robert A. J. Gagnon, Robert P. George, Timothy George, Franklin Graham, Harry R. Jackson Jr., James Kushiner, John MacArthur, Eric Metaxas, Al Mohler, and John Stonestreet explains why SOGI laws are dangerous:

In recent years, there have been efforts to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classifications in the law—either legislatively or through executive action. These unnecessary proposals, often referred to as SOGI policies, threaten basic freedoms of religion, conscience, speech, and association; violate privacy rights; and expose citizens to significant legal and financial liability for practicing their beliefs in the public square. In recent years, we have seen in particular how these laws are used by the government in an attempt to compel citizens to sacrifice their deepest convictions on marriage and what it means to be male and female….

SOGI laws empower the government to use the force of law to silence or punish Americans who seek to exercise their God-given liberty to peacefully live and work consistent with their convictions. They also create special preference in law for categories based on morally significant choices that profoundly affect human relations and treat reasonable religious and philosophical beliefs as discriminatory. We therefore believe that proposed SOGI laws, including those narrowly crafted, threaten fundamental freedoms, and any ostensible protections for religious liberty appended to such laws are inherently inadequate and unstable.

SOGI laws in all these forms, at the federal, state, and local levels, should be rejected. We join together in signing this letter because of the serious threat that SOGI laws pose to fundamental freedoms guaranteed to every person.

In a recent interview, John Stonestreet used the recent firing of a Virginia high school French teacher for his refusal to use incorrect pronouns when referring to a “trans”-identifying student to illustrate the potential danger SOGI laws pose to Christians in the work place:

Every version of the Fairness for All proposals that I have seen would not help Peter Vlaming at all. In fact, it would put us on the wrong side of that…. Here you have a government employee working at a public school who serves the public interest that has already been defined by Fairness for All and SOGI legislation as including “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as a category of human being, and that basically sets Peter Vlaming up for failure.

It’s astonishing that time and again the experts—people like Ryan Anderson, Anthony Esolen, Robert Gagnon, Robert George, and Doug Wilson—who have been writing presciently for years on cultural/political issues related to disordered sexuality are ignored by those who spend far less time thinking and writing about them.

Shirley Mullen who is president of Houghton College and a member of the NAE Board, wrote that “the most viable political strategy is for comprehensive religious freedom protections to be combined with explicit support for basic human rights for members of the LGBT community.” What are the “human rights” of which members of the “LGBT” community are currently deprived? Near as I can tell, they are deprived of no human or civil rights. (Anticipating an objection, I will add that no man has a human or civil right to access women’s private spaces—not even if he pretends to be a woman.)

On his American Conservative blog, Rod Dreher quotes a pseudonymous friend called “Smith” who has been working behind the scenes for years on the Fairness for All compromise with “LGBT” activists. Smith argues that this compromise is necessary because conservatives—who have lost the cultural battle on sexuality—cannot count on either statutory or judicial protections of their free exercise of religion. But Smith revealed something more troubling:

[T]here really is a question of justice within a pluralistic society that conservative Christians have to face. We may sincerely believe that homosexuality is morally wrong, but at what point does the common good require that we agree that gay people have a right to be wrong?

First, since when do conservatives deny that “gay people have a right to be wrong”?

Second, since Smith isn’t really arguing that the common good demands that conservatives agree that gay people have a right to be wrong, what specifically is it he believes the common good demands of conservatives? In a consistently dismissive tone, Smith suggests that conservatives demonstrate an absolute rigidity but fails to identify the specific ways conservatives are being intolerantly inflexible and in so doing harming the public good. He seems to be suggesting that standing firm against SOGI laws—which put at grave risk religious liberty and constitute complicity with both moral and scientific error—is the issue that threatens the common good and on which we must capitulate compromise.

Smith continues:

If pluralism is about accommodating deep difference—if conservative Evangelicals are going to ask for accommodation of difference, then they can’t turn around and say in every single case when they are asked to accommodate sexual minorities, ‘No, we will fight to the death.’ That’s not pluralism if all you’re doing is protecting your own rights and saying error has no rights when it comes to you. Pluralism has to be seen by others who disagree with you as fair.

Yes, pluralism is about accommodating differences, but there are differences on which accommodation is impermissible for Christians. I doubt Smith would have made such an ambiguous claim about Christians who rigidly refused to compromise on the nature and intrinsic worth of enslaved blacks or who will not accommodate Planned Parenthood’s views of humans in the womb. The nature, meaning, and value of biological sex, marriage, and children’s rights are other issues on which it is impermissible for Christians to compromise, even if that inflexibility results in persecution.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/SOGI_Compromise1.mp3

End-of-Year Challenge

As you may know, thanks to amazingly generous Illinois Family Institute partners, we have an end-of-year matching challenge of $100,000 to help support our ongoing work to educate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.

Please consider helping us reach this goal!  Your tax-deductible contribution will help us stand strong in 2019!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 876
Tinley Park, Illinois 60477

Although the tempest surrounding World Vision’s policy change and abrupt reversal of policy change on hiring men and women in homosexual unions recognized legally as “marriages” has died down, the trickier issue of trust restoration remains.

For many theologically orthodox Catholics and Protestants, trust cannot be restored unless there are leadership changes at World Vision U.S. Those board members who voted to allow the U.S. branch of World Vision to hire men and women in legal homosexual “marriages,” need to resign in order for many Christians to believe that the policy reversal reflects biblical orthodoxy rather than financial considerations.

In addition to the many troubling comments from World Vision U.S. president Richard Stearns in the Christianity Today article that revealed the policy change, subsequent information suggests the need for clearer evidence of path-straightening that will likely come only from board changes.

The Washington Post reports that in 2013 World Vision received $145 million from the federal government, which many fear contributed to the decision to hire “married” homosexuals. Many Christians justifiably fear the corrupting influence of government money on World Vision’s decisions. (Don’t be surprised if homosexual activists now set their sights on World Vision’s government funding, because for them, everything—including the welfare of impoverished children—takes a backseat to normalizing sexual perversion.)

We should be concerned with the effect of de facto government subsidies on not just World Vision but on all churches and parachurch organizations, which in the future will likely be compelled either to lose their tax-exempt status or lose the freedom to teach the whole counsel of God on matters related to homosexuality and gender confusion.

Supporters (and former supporters) of World Vision are also concerned about the theological commitments of board members. Following the reversal of policy, board president Richard Stearns was asked in an interview what “kind of church” he attends and whether his church has shaped his views on same-sex “marriage.” Stearns provided the kind of evasive response one would expect from a politician and the kind of dismissive response one would expect from a theological liberal: “It’s a Presbyterian Church (USA) in the Seattle area, but I don’t want to drag them into this. I’m not telling people where I stand on same-sex marriage because I don’t think it’s relevant.”

The issue of whether same-sex “marriage” can in reality exist is, indeed, relevant to any purportedly Christian organization and it’s at least as relevant to the Christian life as premarital abstinence, which the board saw fit to retain in employment policy even while they jettisoned the requirement regarding homoerotic activity. But it shouldn’t surprise anyone that a member of the notoriously liberal PCUSA church would find the biblical understanding of marriage irrelevant to a Christian organization or Christian mission.

Stearns is not the only PCUSA member on the World Vision board. Dr. Stephen Hayner president of Columbia Theological Seminary, which is a PCUSA seminary, also serves on the board.

In August 2012, the liberal Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia announced that it would “allow same-sex student couples to live in campus housing designated for married students following a year-long effort by gay-rights advocates.”

The new policy states that “’Students, their qualified domestic partners (e.g., those in civil marriages, civil unions, or domestic partnerships as established by the laws of any state, the United States or a foreign jurisdiction), and their children are eligible to live in campus housing.’”

Hayner said this about the housing policy change: “[O]ur community is committed to being a place of open theological and Biblical inquiry and hospitality for all who attend.” I wonder if Hayner believes that “being a place of open theological and biblical inquiry and hospitality” requires the school to allow polyamorists to live in campus housing. Wouldn’t intellectual consistency demand that they be shown the same kind of “hospitality” that homosexuals in legal but ontologically non-existent “marriages” are shown?  

Yet another World Vision board member, Reverend John Crosby, is also member of the liberal PCUSA denomination. His vote in favor of the disastrous and now defunct policy change is curious in that he strongly opposed his denomination’s decision to ordain openly affirming homosexuals three years ago, arguing  that “’We [the Presbyterians] have tried to create such a big tent trying to make everybody happy theologically. I fear the tent has collapsed without a center.’”

Although Crosby opposed his denomination’s decision to ordain homosexual clergy, he voted for World Vision’s anti-biblical policy change, arguing implausibly in Christianity Today that “the issue of theology and how to interpret Scripture should be left to the local church.” Is he actually arguing that theology and how to interpret Scripture on all issues should be left to the local church? If that were the case, then why did World Vision maintain policy regarding abstinence outside of marriage? Shouldn’t theological issues regarding fornication be left to local churches as well?

We can hope and pray for a return to theological orthodoxy and subsequent restoration of public trust in World Vision, but we should also prepare ourselves to witness more apostasy within not only our parachurch organizations but within our churches too. And as individuals we should prepare for the persecution that we are promised will come to those who claim to be cross-bearers.

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done (Matt. 16: 24-27).

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