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. 

Elana Schor wrote an unhelpful article titled “Christianity on Display at the Capitol Riot Sparks New Debate” for the Associated Press (AP) on Thursday. It’s a rambling piece of slumgullion ostensibly on “Christian Nationalism” that throws together equally unhelpful quotes from Christian leaders without once defining Christian Nationalism; or making distinctions between patriotism and “Christian Nationalism”; or between those who merely use Christian rhetoric and true Christ-followers; or between the rioters and the thousands of Americans—including many Christians—who were at the protest but had nothing to do with the riots.

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Elana Schor wrote an unhelpful article titled “Christianity on Display at the Capitol Riot Sparks New Debate” for the Associated Press (AP) on Thursday. It’s an insubstantial dollop of slumgullion ostensibly on “Christian Nationalism” that throws together equally unhelpful quotes from Christian leaders without once defining Christian Nationalism (or nationalism); or making distinctions between patriotism and “Christian Nationalism”; or between those who merely use Christian rhetoric and true Christ-followers; or between the rioters and the thousands of Americans—including many Christians—who were at the protest but had nothing to do with the riot.

Schor cites Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission:

[W]hen [Russell Moore] saw a “Jesus Saves” sign displayed near a gallows built by rioters, “I was enraged to a degree that I haven’t been enraged in memory. This is not only dangerous and unpatriotic but also blasphemous, presenting a picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ that isn’t the gospel and is instead its exact reverse.”

Moore is right, a sign saying “Jesus Saves” displayed near a gallows built by lawless rioters is dangerous and blasphemous. But why does this sign enrage him more than when former constitutional law professor and then-president of the United States Barack Obama cited Scripture as his justification for endorsing the legal recognition of homoerotic unions as marriages? Why does it enrage him more than when self-identifying Christians currently serving in Congress defend the legalized extermination of humans in the womb? Why does the lawless rioters’ signage enrage Moore more than what our elected leaders say and do?

Just calling oneself a Christian no more makes a person a Christian than does a man calling himself a woman make him one.  Scripture teaches that “A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.”

Moore and others claim that the image of Christianity is now marred in the view of leftists, many of whom already hate Christianity and seek its eradication from public life. But is that true? Or are leftists cynically exploiting the indefensible acts of those who falsely claim to be Christ-followers? Are leftists using the signage and rhetoric of anarchists who bear no resemblance to true Christ-followers to further cow cowardly Christians and to turn them against courageous Christians like Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Tom Cotton?

Who is doing more damage to the church (small “c”): the Capitol rioters or the heretical wolves in sheep’s clothing who have infiltrated every denomination and are corrupting doctrine and leading flocks astray, including the Southern Baptist Convention? Some will argue that both groups damage the cause of Christ, which is true, but which should enrage Christians more?

Perhaps leftists hate—not the rioters—but those genuine Christians whom they can now slander by associating them with the acts of anarchists. And perhaps there’s another reason leftists hate genuine Christians.

Jesus forewarned Christians about their fate, but American Christians blinded by the freedom we have long enjoyed, can’t see the hatred Christ foretold even as they are cursed and cancelled:

 If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.  If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

Schor bizarrely writes this in an article ostensibly about Christianity on display at the Capitol riots:

In the video shot by a New Yorker reporter during the siege, the fur-hatted Jacob Chansley—known as the “QAnon shaman” for his alignment with the conspiracy theory as well as his self-described spiritual leanings–delivered a prayer thanking God “for allowing the United States of America to be reborn.” While Chansley spoke, other rioters fell silent in apparent participation.

Jacob Chansley, aka Jake Angeli, was the tattooed, furry-chested, jammy-wearing, buffalo-horn accoutered anarchist who strutted into the Senate chambers with a cocky grin on his face. Why he is included in an article purportedly about Christianity is baffling. If crazy QAnon ideas have infiltrated churches as heretical views of sexuality have, they must be purged. In my experience, however, heretical views of sexuality are far more prevalent in churches than are QAnon ideas and far more dangerous.

Chansley is a “shaman” who follows his own syncretistic religion that includes elements of Eastern mysticism, chakras, auric/planetary frequencies, hallucinogenic drug use, and a weird movement called Ministry of Tomorrow (MOT).

Chansley was first introduced at age 11 to hallucinogenic drugs by his father, which raises an issue few are addressing: the importance of fathers. How many anarchists on the left and right grew up with good fathers in the home?

So, while Chansley may be a Trump-supporter, he is definitely not a typical hardworking conservative Trump supporter or a theologically orthodox Bible-believing Christian. He is, however, definitely a lunatic. The fact that some lunatics support Trump has as little to do with Trump as the fact that there surely are lunatics who support Biden. After all, lunatics and anarchists have to support somebody. Here’s more from Chansley/Angeli, but I don’t recommend wasting your time.

The fact that Chansley “delivered a prayer thanking God” during which “other rioters fell silent” does not mean Chansley is a Christian. Surely Schor knows that Muslims pray, Hindus pray, shamans pray, and Christian heretics pray, and they all think they’re praying to God.

Theologian John Piper offers a helpful explanation of the relationship between the diverse loves of Christians. The first love for Christ-followers must always be for Christ and his kingdom:

[N]ever feel more attached to your fatherland or your tribe or your family or your ethnicity than you do to the people of Christ. Everyone who is in Christ is more closely and permanently united to others in Christ, no matter the other associations, than we are to our nearest fellow citizen or party member or brother or sister or spouse.

But, Piper explains, many of our lesser loves have value too:

God means for us to be enmeshed in this world. We’re “not of the world,” Jesus says, but we are in the world, and we are supposed to be in it. … We may be in a city, a state, a country, and if I ask, “What is patriotism in this enmeshment?” my answer is that patriotism is a kind of love for fatherland — and I mean fatherland in a very general sense. It could be a city (Minneapolis), or a state (Minnesota), or a country (US, Brazil, China, Nigeria), or a tribe (Ojibwe, Navajo, Fulani, Kachin). And that love for these enmeshments, these belongings, is different from the general love that Christians have for everybody or for the whole earth. …

So, it seems to me that this is good, and that the goodness is implied in the Bible, and God created us to be in skin, in languages, in families, in cultures. He doesn’t mean for us to despise our skin or our language or our culture, but rather to be at home in them, and to feel good about them — of course, we have to add — up to a point. They’re all sinful, and so we never give them absolute allegiance. We never cease to be exiles and sojourners, even in our families and tribes and ethnicities — indeed, in our own bodies. …

In the end, Christ has relativized all human allegiances, all human loves. Keeping Christ supreme in our affections makes all our lesser loves better, not worse. Under his flag, it is right to be thankful to God that we have a fatherland, a tribe, a family, an old pair of slippers that just fit right.

The challenge for Christians in this time of turmoil and growing persecution is to hold fast to the whole counsel of God, rooting out heresy of all kinds; to proclaim the whole counsel of God even when the world hates us; and to come alongside those who speak truth in the public square and are mocked for doing so. We have no biblical warrant for speaking truth only when we’re guaranteed doing so will be cost-free.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/audio_Were-the-Capitol-Rioters-Christians.mp3

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The federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has proposed new rules that would end regulations put in place by the Obama Administration that prohibited faith-based child welfare providers from receiving federal funding without abandoning their beliefs.

The current regulations were put in place just after President Obama’s election. They prohibit faith-based institutions that receive federal funds from refusing to place children in homes with unmarried partners, same-sex partners, and same-sex married couples. Illinois also passed such a law in 2011.

Zach Pruitt is senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, a non-profit legal organization that advocates for religious freedom. Pruitt submitted comments supporting the proposed new rules Dec. 19.

“Every child deserves a chance to be raised in a loving home. That’s why ADF supports HHS’s revision of its regulations to allow both secular and faith-based providers to compete for federal grants on an equal footing. Tragically, there are currently over 430,000 children in the foster care system and 125,000 eligible for adoption, and faith-based adoption and foster care providers play an integral role in serving these vulnerable kids.”

Priutt commended HHS for seeking to “protect a diversity of providers to ensure the greatest number of children find a permanent, loving family.” A 2014 study by Barna Research found practicing Christians (5%) are more than twice as likely to adopt than the general (2%) population. Catholics are three times as likely and evangelicals five times as likely to adopt than the average adult.

Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, recently wrote a Wall St. Journal op-ed in support of the rule change. “The foster-care system is burdened, with children who need parents enduring tragically long waits for placement,” Moore wrote. “Genuine civic pluralism means everyone—secularists, atheists and agnostics, along with religious people of all sorts—should care about these children.”

According to HHS, which made the announcement Nov. 1, the new rule would be in accordance with “nondiscrimination provisions passed by Congress and signed into law.” It also puts the agency in compliance with U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding the administration of grant funding.

Progressive groups immediately attacked the announcement. The Human Rights Campaign tweeted Nov. 3rd:

“The Trump-Pence White House has proposed a horrific federal regulation that would permit discrimination across the entire spectrum of @HHSGov programs receiving federal funding.” – @HRC President @AlphonsoDavid https://t.co/I0ik3S4KMo

— Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) November 3, 2019

The time for submitting comments closed Dec. 19 and will now undergo a review period before going into effect. There’s no word on whether any opponents will seek legal action.

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-and, please-

In 1929, Josef Stalin signed a law that dealt a devastating blow to religious freedom in Russia. For most of a century, Russian Christians suffered enormous persecutions for their faith. Some estimates suggest that as many as 20,000,000 Christians may have been martyred in prison camps in the 20^th century for holding to their faith. One historian stated that over 85,000 Russian Orthodox Priests were shot in 1937 alone.

Communism, despite its slogans of equality and social utopia, has never come through on its promises. Stalin’s draconian measures were reaffirmed by Leonid Brezhnev’s updated legislation in 1975. A remnant of faithful underground churches remained active, but experienced severe opposition and punishment.

On November 9, 1989, the unbelievable happened. Two years after Ronald Reagan’s famous, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” speech, the Berlin Wall, separating East and West Germany came down. A new policy of reform and religious liberty was proclaimed in the Soviet Union. And indeed, changes began to happen.

In October of 1990, President Mikhail Gorbachev and RSFSR’s Boris Yeltsin (then chairman of the Russian parliament or Supreme Soviet), both introduced new legislation allowing for an opening of religious freedom and liberty of conscience.

Soon, Christian ministries from the West poured into Russia with evangelism and Christian discipleship tools. We must not be deceived, however, into thinking that everything was rosy. During the Clinton administration, a mass immigration occurred as Christians from Russia poured into the United States seeking asylum for religious persecution.

The KGB was still deeply entrenched in positions of power in Russia. They were just subtler and covert. But nonetheless, an unprecedented access to religious materials and Western media became available, and it seemed the door of communism would never close again on the former USSR.

The Noose is Tightened Again

In 1997, a new law was passed governing religion in Russia, but it gave no definition or description of how religious expression and promotion could be administered. Some local regions had laws restricting open expression, but most areas have been relatively open and unharassed.

However, on July 6, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a controversial anti-terrorism law that infringes on many human rights, including religious freedom. It restricts proselytizing of religion in Russia, and imposes heavy fines for violators. The new law applies to all religious groups except for the Russian Orthodox Church (which many religious groups claim has been under the thumb of the Russian government for many decades).

Under the new law, any promotion of Christian faith, outside of an officially recognized church building, would be considered subversive, and would be faced with a fine of up to $780 for an individual, or $15,000 for an organization. It has been reported that this may apply even to evangelizing in homes or over the internet. Foreign missionaries who violate the ordinance would be deported. According to Christianity Today, “The ‘Yarovaya package,’ requires missionaries to have permits, makes house churches illegal,” among other restrictions.

Placing restrictions on religion by means of amendments to a terrorism bill was a clever move on Putin’s part. Who would want to be seen as standing up for terrorism? And, I’m sure it has been argued, religion, after all, has been the driving force between much of global terrorism. Although this measure has been condemned by religious leaders around the world, it is almost certain that Putin and his henchmen will remain deaf to their concerns.

Coming to America?

For the past half century there has been, in America, an increasing push to privatize religion. The courts have reaffirmed the desires of the ACLU, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, American Atheists, and others, to see all vestiges of public expressions of faith eradicated. What you want to believe in your own personal little heart about God, or the tooth fairy, or whatever you want to call Him or it, is between you and your god. But don’t bring it into the public square.

Systematically, Bible distribution in schools, public displays of the Ten Commandments, nativity scenes on public property, and public prayers in Jesus’ name are all being removed by a left-leaning, black-robed oligarchy.

The New Tolerance

It goes beyond mere privatization, however. Now, there is even a desire to move into the realm of regulating moral conscience. Atheist leader, Richard Dawkins, has suggested that it is child abuse to teach your children to believe the tenets of Christianity as being objectively true.

Many evangelical leaders in America have predicted the coming of religious persecution in America. In his 2014 inauguration speech as President of the National Religious Broadcaster’s convention, Jerry Johnson predicted a move against freedom of speech in Christian broadcasting, on the basis of supposed, “Hate Speech” legislation.

At a national homeschooling leadership conference in Chicago in 2010, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, former pastor of the historic Moody Church in Chicago told the audience they should encourage Christian homeschooling parents they serve to teach their children about the history of religious persecution as a part of their education. Dr. Lutzer has authored a book entitled “When a Nation Forgets God: 7 Lessons We Must Learn from Nazi Germany.” Author and radio host Eric Metaxas describes the book this way: “It clearly and powerfully explains what the parallels are between Germany’s fall from grace and the beginning of our own fall.”

Christian leaders like Dr. Albert Mohler, Russell Moore and others, and even former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scailia have suggested the possible threat to religious liberty posed by the SCOTUS’ decision on same-sex marriage. What happens if a Christian college or seminary is required by law to allow same-sex dating on campus?

We’ve already seen nationally televised court cases regarding Christians who have refused to bake wedding cakes for same-sex couples, or Christian county clerks who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The fact is, it is not enough for atheists, homosexuals, socialists and cultural leftists to have their own freedom and equality to believe whatever they believe (a freedom which most Christians fully support). No, they want to ensure that Christians are not permitted to live out their own faith and convictions without retribution. This is the legacy of the New Tolerance movement. The doors of religious liberty are closing once again in Russia, after a brief twenty-six year limited window. Are the doors of our four-hundred year window of liberty closing? Frankly, that answer will be determined by what this generation of Christians in America does in the next ten years.

By Wallace Henley

“If I could choose one more course for ministry training and preparation, it would be ‘Courageous Leadership’,” says Thom Rainer in a recent Christian Post article.

Rainer, president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention, says that many challenges pastors and churches face now “can only be understood in the context of spiritual warfare” for which many church leaders are “ill-prepared.”

On the other hand, “many younger leaders within the church have grown tired of culture wars and a politicized Christianity,” writes Ray Nothstine in a Christian Post review of Onward: Engaging the Culture Without Losing the Gospel, by another Southern Baptist leader, Russell Moore.

Nevertheless, Thom Rainer says “Courageous Leadership” should be taught because of the “dramatic shifts in culture, most of them adversarial to biblical Christianity.”

Some churches under the pressures of social upheaval do indeed “grow tired” and withdraw from cultural and political engagement. They claim their relationship to society is to be almost exclusively pastoral, nurturing those who come “in”. To go “out” in confronting cultural tides “adversarial to biblical Christianity” through the prophetic ministry is not part of the self-assumed identity of such churches. They often seclude themselves in pietistic fortresses.

John Milton’s words, in Areopagitica, come to mind: “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heap.”

Prophetic ministry is the “dusty heap” of Elijah confronting the prophets of Baal, the institutional guardians of Jezebel’s palace. The prophetic church is an Amos or Jeremiah in its culture, overcoming its timidity, addressing governing powers and people alike with tear-soaked truth.

Contemporary society’s craziness calls for much pastoral ministry, but not to the exclusion of the prophetic voice. If Rainer is right — and he is — what modern society needs from the Church is the hard facts about values, and the biblically revealed Judeo-Christian worldview that establishes orderly, peaceful, free and prosperous societies.

Why, then, do many churches shrink from confronting cultural and social institutions and their powers, including the political sphere?

A look at six types of relatively non-engaging churches, gives some clues:

The Marginalized Church — This is the church that accepts marginalization by the culture and its institutions. In fact, such a church desires to be marginalized because it is then off the hook and can avoid threats to it’s cloistered pietism.

The Muzzled Church — Such churches muzzle themselves in the face of an adversarial culture to protect their own institutional survival and societal benefits. They tailor-make a non-confrontational theology.

The Myopic Church — This is the church that simply does not understand the expanse of Christ’s Kingdom. It focuses mainly on the eschatological hope and engages little with existential need. Such a church would not understand Abraham Kuyper’s observation that “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!”

The Mouthpiece Church — These are churches that buy into the values of popular culture, viewing it as more authoritative than the Bible itself. One thinks of the official German Church under Hitler, resisted by Bonhoeffer and his allies, as well as much of the American southern church during slavery who wrenched the Bible into grotesque shapes to justify its culture, as well as churches today that hop on every cultural bandwagon that passes it by.

The Me-Church — The me-centered consumerist church relishes prophecy as long as it forecasts health, wealth, happiness and well-being. It rarely confronts people and institutions with the prophetic call to biblical values and repentance because this disrupts its comfort.

The Me-Too Church — This is the “stylistic” church that looks at the culture, and says, “me-too!” It is the church whose pastors shock with gutter-words from contemporary lingo, whose “worship” is primarily performance characterized by unsingable, theologically starved, but very professional music. This church’s identity is more in the culture than in Christ, and so it finds very little in the world to confront.

The contemporary battle for the world’s soul and survival is spiritual and theological. The struggle for the West and Judeo-Christian Civilization is a battle for values. To sever America’s founding principles from the biblical stream from which they emerged separates the contemporary nation from its very history.

I admit this is personal for me. Had it not been for church leaders who dared to work both pastorally and prophetically in the political sphere where I labored forty years ago I might not be writing these lines or working in a church today.

I am glad Christian leaders in Washington challenged the values both of the 1970s culture and the delusions of Washington and its institutions of power. They had a transforming impact on a starry-eyed junior aide trying to hold on to his critical capacities midst the pressures of the Nixon White House.

None of those leaders had given up on the culture wars. They refused to stop reminding society of the need for recovering values that created a nation that gave freedom to the church and prosperity for its global mission. They pastored me but they also blasted me with prophetic truth.

The church now must do the full work of “shepherding” — both feeding and nurturing the flock pastorally, and warning and guiding prophetically.

This is no time to give in to our weariness with engagement with the culture — including the political sphere.

This article was originally posted on ChristianPost.com 

By Samuel Smith

Christian ethicist Russell Moore has said that congregations too afraid of being political to speak out against acts of immorality, like abortion, are similar to churches in the 1800s that remained silent on the issue of slavery.

As the featured speaker at the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s fifth annual Diane Knippers memorial lecture, Moore, the president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, criticized mainstream Christian congregations that have relaxed their teachings on key issues of sexual morality and other social issues in order to blend in with the “ambient culture” and appeal to today’s society.

Moore explained that religious conservatives need to “preserve” the biblical truth for future generations. Although secular society likes to claim that Christian conservatives are on the “wrong side of history,” Moore told the audience that Christian conservatives should not be afraid to have their biblical convictions conflict with mainstream society and that they should really embrace the distinctive Christian message.

“It’s a recipe for death, precisely for the same reasons that Jesus is speaking to Pilate about a Kingdom that does not originate from the world. Christianity always thrives the best when we have a distinctive word and a distinctive word that is rooted in a specific view of authority. Jesus said, ‘I have come to bear witness for the truth.'”

“The arguments that we see happening right now over issues of human sexuality are not really about human sexuality,” Moore continued. “These are debates of apostolic authority.”

Despite the fact that religious conservative views on issues like gay marriage and abortion directly conflict with the views of a secular world, Moore assured that the historic Christian message has always conflicted with the world’s understanding.

Although many congregations in the last 50 years have altered their views and teachings to accommodate the modern worldviews, Moore warned that churches that have historically distanced themselves from the biblical truth eventually failed to exist.

“The miraculous was startling in the first century and in every other century, so the churches who discarded it no longer had anything distinctive to say and withered and died into obscurity,” Moore stated. “The churches who were willing to speak with a voice of authority about resurrection, the coming of Christ, supernatural regeneration by the Holy Spirit are the churches who had a witness to be able to bring forward.”

Moore further argued that secularism is not the world’s final “stopping point.”

“Secularism is just a stop along the path,” Moore said. “We must have a distinctive word in terms of claim to authority, and we must be willing to bear witness. We must be a conversionist people, which means that if we truly believe that the spirit of God is able to transform someone from sinner to saint, we will be the people who will not hesitate to speak the truth and to speak what often will be unpopular truths.”

Churches have long been responsible for speaking the unpopular truths on social issues, not just in today’s world where abortion and gay marriage are the hotly contested subjects, Moore said.

“The churches in 1845 Georgia that did not speak to slavery, were speaking to slavery,” Moore said. “If you stand in the pulpit and call people to repentance for drunkenness and sexual immorality, but you do not call them to repentance for man-stealing and kidnapping and pretending to own another human being, you have spoken to that issue by saying that it will not be something for which one must give an account at the judgement.”

“The churches in 1925 Mississippi that spoke about drunkenness and adultery, but did not speak about lynching, were speaking to lynching,” Moore continued. “They were baptizing the status quo by not calling people to repentance for a grave sin against God and against a neighbor.”

“The churches in 21st century America that do not speak to the personhood of the unborn are speaking to the personhood of the unborn by baptizing the status quo and leaving consciences that are wounded and in need of Gospel liberation exactly where they are under accusation, rather than freeing them with a witness that is thought to be political.”

This article was originally posted at ChristianPost.com

In recent years, leaders in the Southern Baptist denomination have been among the most stalwart and unequivocal faith leaders on the issues of homosexuality and gender dysphoria. In particular, Dr. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, have demonstrated exemplary courage, wisdom, and grace in addressing the pagan sexuality that threatens to destroy the family, children’s rights, public education, church unity, and constitutional protections. Unfortunately, in the past year, both Mohler and Moore as well as Southern Baptist theologian Denny Burk have made statements that harm the cause of truth and, if not clarified or corrected, undermine the credibility of their leadership.

Since clarity is becoming a rarity, I want to be clear: Mohler, Moore, and Burk all believe that homoerotic activity is a serious sin that Christians are not permitted to engage in or affirm, and that marriage has a nature, central to which is sexual differentiation and without which a union is not a marriage.

Dr. Al Mohler

Dr. Mohler made this comment in 2014 at a conference held by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission:

Now early in this controversy, I felt it quite necessary, in order to make clear the gospel, to deny anything like a sexual orientation. And speaking at an event of the National Association of Evangelicals twenty-something years ago, I made that point. I repent of that.

It was a confusing statement to many, in large part because the press took it out of context, omitting most of what Mohler said about “orientation.” Because the term “sexual orientation” means different things to different groups, it is confusing when a Christian leader like Mohler uses it. It’s even more confusing when the press dishonestly exploits his use of it.

“Sexual orientation” is innocuous if or when it is used as a kind of shorthand term simply to describe a powerful, seemingly intractable feeling or desire that arises non-volitionally. Christians could reasonably appropriate it in this usage to succinctly identify any type of besetting sin. Christians could refer to a “pride orientation,” a “polyamorous orientation,” a “minor-attraction orientation,” a “covetous orientation,” or an “idolatrous orientation.” We could tack “orientation” on to any powerful, deep-seated, unchosen, unwanted predilection to engage in any kind of sin, but Christians commonly don’t because they understand the unbiblical connotations and political implications embedded in the term “sexual orientation.” Dr. Mohler should understand that as well.

“Sexual orientation” is the language of “LGBTQQIAP” activists who more effectively utilize language than do conservatives. Embedded in the term are the arguable assumptions that homosexuality is immutable and innate, and because it’s innate, it’s—in their view—inherently good. Christians, like Mohler, also acknowledge a kind of innateness to homosexuality in the sense that humans have inherent fallen, sin natures and our sinful natures manifest in all kinds of powerful, persistent, unchosen disordered desires including homosexual desires. Here is what Mohler said that the secular press and homosexual activists largely did not report:

Biblical Christians properly resist any suggestion that our will can be totally separated from sexual desire, but we really do understand that the will is not a sufficient explanation for a pattern of sexual attraction. Put simply, most people experiencing a same-sex attraction tell of discovering it within themselves at a very early age, certainly within early puberty. As they experience it, a sexual attraction or interest simply “happens,” and they come to know it.

Given the depth of the Bible’s teachings on sin and this fallen world, this should not surprise us. In some sense, each of us finds within ourselves a pattern of desires — sexual and otherwise — we did not ask for, but for which we are then and now fully responsible. When it comes to a same-sex attraction, the orientation is sinful because it is defined by an improper object — someone of the same sex. 

Christians also believe that the bondage to our innate sinful natures that grips us is broken by the broken body of Christ. Christ frees us for holiness. So the meaning of “orientation” by Christians would be very different from the meaning it holds for homosexual activists.

While the Holy Spirit sanctifies our corrupt natures, conforming us to the image of Christ, complete eradication of some sinful desires may not come until our next life, which leads to another problem with statements from these well-respected Southern Baptist leaders.

Evidently heavily influenced by the work of Heath Lambert, associate professor of Biblical Counseling at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, they are rejecting what they call “secular reparative therapy” as ineffectual for facilitating change in unwanted homoerotic attraction, largely because it does not offer redemption.

Reparative therapy (RT) is a non-coercive form of counseling that helps clients—including minors—who desire to reduce homosexual attraction and explore their “heterosexual potential.”

Here are some of the issues that RT seeks to address:

The RT therapist does not simply accept at a surface level the client’s sexual or romantic feelings and behaviors, but rather, invites him into a non-judgmental inquiry into his deeper motivations. The RT psychotherapist always asks “why” and invites the client to do the same.

The gay-affirmative therapist, however, typically addresses this clinical material regarding homosexual attractions “phenomenologically” (i.e. accepting the attractions at face value without questioning their origins). This is a highly unprofessional omission.

The RT therapist must go much deeper: he recognizes, for example, that a teen may believe he is gay for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with his core sexual identity. His sexual feelings may be rooted in a need for acceptance, approval, of affection from males, or may reflect his loneliness, boredom, or simple curiosity. He may engage in same-sex behavior for adventure, money, peer pressure; or to express hostility against male peers, or general rebellion. He may also find himself reenacting an early trauma of sexual molestation by another male….

A higher-than-average percentage of homosexually oriented men were sexually abused in childhood by an older male. One study found that 46% of homosexual men compared with just 7% of heterosexual males reported homosexual molestation. The same study also found that 22% of lesbians reported homosexual molestation compared with just 1% of heterosexual women (Tomeo, et.al., 2001). In these cases where the person was molested in childhood, homosexual behavior reenacted in adulthood can represent a repetition compulsion.

Indeed, a teenager may become convinced that he is gay through the influence of a persuasive adult– a gay-affirmative therapist, mentor, teacher, or even his own molester. Such influential adults could succeed in swaying an uncertain youth that homosexuality, is for him, simply inevitable.

Homosexual behavior may also reflect some kind of developmental crisis that has evoked insecurities, prompting the fantasy that he can receive protection from a stronger male. Anxieties and insecurities regarding approaching the opposite sex (heterophobia) may also prompt the search for the perceived safety and ease of finding a partner for same-sex behavior.

Environmental factors such as incarceration in a prison, or living in a residential treatment facility where young males sleep together and are isolated from females, may promote same-sex behavior and consequent gay self-labeling. In addition, gay self-identification may represent a political or ideological statement to the world, as seen in radical-feminist lesbianism in the women’s movement.

On Monday, just before the start of the “Homosexuality: Compassion, Care and Counsel for Struggling People” conference, Dr. Mohler made a number of troubling statements to the press, including these unhelpful, confusing, and ill-conceived statements:

We don’t think the main thing that is needed is merely repair but rather redemption.

The Christian Church has sinned against the LGBT community by responding to this challenge in a superficial way….It’s not something that is so simple as converting from homosexual to heterosexual, and from our Gospel-centered theological understanding that would not be sufficient.

[O]ur biblically-informed understanding of sexual orientation will chasten us from having any confidence that there is any rescue from same-sex attraction to be found in any secular approach, therapy, or treatment.

First, a therapeutic protocol need not offer redemption in order to be helpful and healing.

Second, what is Mohler’s evidence for his implicit charge that RT therapists promise conversion from homosexual to heterosexual or that they suggest such a shift is “simple”?

Third, might a deeper understanding of the environmental factors that may contribute to the development of same-sex attraction be helpful even in the absence of complete change in sexual desires and despite the absence of redemption? Is it possible for “secular” counseling like RT to provide such help–help which, like medical interventions for other health issues, is limited in scope?

Russell Moore

Mohler’s anti-reparative therapy sentiment is shared by Russell Moore who in 2014 described RT as “severely counterproductive,” telling the press that “The utopian idea if you come to Christ and if you go through our program, you’re going to be immediately set free from attraction or anything you’re struggling with, I don’t think that’s a Christian idea….”

It’s unfortunate and surprising from a sophisticated thinker like Moore that he chose to  mischaracterize RT by implying that RT therapists promise something they don’t. Proponents of RT do not suggest clients will “be immediately set free from attraction or anything” they’re “struggling with.” In implicitly alleging that they do, Moore is demonstrating either that he woefully ill-informed or that he is dishonest. I hope it’s the former.

Moore demonstrated a similar lack of wisdom at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission conference last year when he offered an intellectually incoherent and theologically baffling response when asked if Christians should attend same-sex anti-weddings. He responded that they should not attend same-sex weddings, but they may attend the after-parties that celebrate anti-weddings, also known as receptions. Say what?

And then there was the Wall Street Journal article about Moore in which he shared that he meets regularly with a “gay pastor.” Of course, Christians should spend time with sinners as Jesus did, calling them to repentance. But should Christians meet regularly with church leaders who embrace sin and affirm and promote heresy? Would Moore meet regularly with incestuous pastors who embrace, affirm, and promote incest? Aren’t “gay” pastors among the false prophets and ravenous wolves disguised in sheep’s clothing (Matt. 7:15) with whom we should not even eat (1 Cor. 5:11)? If they’re not, who is?

Denny Burk

Dr. Denny Burk admits that he too has “turned away” from RT. As mentioned, Mohler,  Moore, and Burk, have been heavily influenced by Heath Lambert whose reductionist critique of the theories and work of RT Dr. Burk cites as “the most thoroughgoing critique from an evangelical perspective” that Burk has seen.

Lambert first posits that the goal of RT is heterosexuality, which Lambert views as an unbiblical goal: “The Bible never says that heterosexuality, in general terms, is a good thing.” This smacks a bit of Leftist claims that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality.

There are several places in the Bible where we can reasonably infer that heterosexuality is a good thing, including in Song of Songs. As Lambert accurately asserts, the Bible neither commands nor commends heterosexual desire per se, but neither does it condemn it, and the Song of Songs account of marital love surely communicates the  beauty, goodness, and hence desirability of heterosexuality, which is an integral component of marital love.  

Lambert further argues that “Reparative therapists believe that male homosexuality is, in the main, a problem that comes about from a break in the parent-child relationship.” He then claims that because not all men who experience same-sex attraction have had dysfunctional relationships with their fathers and because some men who did have dysfunctional relationships with their fathers don’t experience same-sex attraction, reparative therapy theories are unsound.

But that claim itself seems unsound. Few doubt that many girls who have been molested in childhood become promiscuous. No one doubts the causal effect of molestation even though not all girls who have been molested in childhood become promiscuous and even though some girls who were not molested become promiscuous. Humans are complex critters with complex multi-factorial reasons for their feelings and behaviors.

Are Lambert, Mohler, Moore, and Burk asserting that there are no cases in which attraction to men that becomes sexualized in adolescence results from absent, distant, or abusive relationships with fathers? Would they argue that childhood molestation never results in same-sex attraction? Are they arguing that “secular” counseling can never help identify and heal childhood harm? Do they make this claim about “secular” counseling for other powerful, persistent disordered desires?

Burk rightly claims that “For Christians, the goal of change is holiness not heterosexuality.” But is it wrong to desire and seek both? If heterosexual attraction (and marriage) is good, is it wrong to desire and seek it? And might not the Holy Spirit work through “secular” RT to contribute to either a diminution of homoerotic desire and perhaps the development of opposite-sex desire? It seems that a false and severely counterproductive dichotomy between biblical counseling and RT has taken root among some Southern Baptist academicians.

Conclusion

Dr. Mohler issued yet another apology to homosexuals for the church’s failure to address the sin of homosexuality properly. I wonder if adulterers, zoophiliacs, sibling-lovers, minor-attracted persons, and porn-users are awaiting their apologies. Perhaps Dr. Mohler, Dr. Moore, and Dr. Burk should also consider issuing an apology to RT therapists for misrepresenting their work—work through which many men and women have been helped.

At such a time as this, when truth about sexuality is under siege, our Christian leaders should be much more careful with their rhetoric and thorough in their research or they risk giving aid, comfort, and an unholy, gleeful energy to the enemy.

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Written by Joe Rigney

The next several years are going to be messy for Christians. We already know that some who claim to be within our fold will continue to challenge the historic, orthodox teaching about sexuality, marriage, and the essence of what it means to be made in the image of God. But even those of us who agree that marriage is what the church has always thought it was, will disagree on how best to move forward in a culture hell-bent on denying it.

Case in point: Over at First Things, a premier publication of Christian thought, Ephraim Radner and Christopher Seitz have offered what they refer to as “The Marriage Pledge,” calling clergy of all stripes to no longer sign government documents of civil marriage. To be a “clear witness,” they have decided they “will no longer serve as agents of the state in marriage” because to do so would be to “implicate the Church in a false definition of marriage.”

This is an idea that has been kicked around for some time. Past First Things articles have suggested it, as has my friend S. Michael Craven in his guest contribution to my recent book “Same-Sex Marriage: A Thoughtful Approach to God’s Design for Marriage.” Among those who have signed The Marriage Pledge are the clergy of my own church here in Colorado Springs. And Anne Morse, one of our terrific writers here at the Colson Center, has praised these clergy for distancing themselves from American lawmakers who are “increasingly making nonsense of marriage.”

Because Anne worked closely with Chuck Colson for decades, I hesitate to disagree with her. No doubt, as Anne writes, Chuck “would have been proud of these ministers” and their commitment to stand on their convictions. In that respect, they exemplify at least part of what he hoped to accomplish with the Manhattan Declaration.

However, I do not think that he would have agreed with this pledge. Neither do I.

Before I go into my reasons, let me first clarify that those who disagree on whether or not to sign this Pledge do not disagree about the nature, definition, or importance of marriage. Rather, we disagree about what to do, now that the state has denied the clear definition of marriage.

I should also make clear that I do not think—not in the least—that any clergy who have signed the Pledge, or anyone—like Anne Morse—who thinks clergy should sign, has “compromised” in any way. (And, I hope they do not think that of me or any of others—like Ryan Anderson, Douglas Wilson,Russell Moore, or Edward Peters—who disagree). My own clergy members who signed the pledge, and who have graciously and vigorously engaged with me on this topic, have more than earned their stripes by standing for marriage in a church that famously, over the last several decades, became neo-pagan. They fought hard before re-organizing under a different denominational identity.

No, ours is a disagreement of strategy and timing, not of faithfulness.

There may very well come a time when the church must take this step. It is quite conceivable that church officials will be forced out of the civil marriage business and not even given the option of being an agent of the state. But my view is that we’ll know when that time comes—because we’ll have been forced out. But let them do it to us. Let’s not leave before then.

This conversation reminds me of 2012. Remember when Louis Giglio stepped down from praying at President Barack Obama’s second Inauguration? The four years between the first and second Inaugurations had made quite a difference. Rick Warren was allowed to pray at the first, despite having vocally spoken out for marriage that same year during California’s Proposition 8 battle. But the critics were far less tolerant of Giglio four years later, even though the only evidence they could find of his so-called homophobia was nearly twenty years old. In light of the controversy, Giglio decided to graciously back out.

I think Giglio made a mistake—not because he was gracious, but because he backed out. I think he should have graciously stayed in. There’s a world of difference between being disinvited and backing out, and one can be gracious either way. I understand Giglio’s reasoning, but in a culture that needs to know where the church stands on things like sexuality and marriage and sin and the Gospel, it was the wrong strategy at the wrong time.

In my view, “The Marriage Pledge” commits the same strategic mistake, only on a much larger scale. We may, in fact, get disinvited from marrying people, and perhaps we’ll even be forcibly removed from this part of the public square. But let’s not leave of our own accord. We can be just as gracious one way as the other, with handcuffs or without.

And clergy can still marry people without compromising the biblical view. As Edward Peters notes, there is nothing on a civil marriage license itself that requires clergy to say marriage is something that it is not. But by refusing to proclaim to the state that those the church chooses to marry are indeed married, we are missing an opportunity to proclaim in the public square what marriage, in truth, is. R. R. Reno suggests that by having a separate church wedding and refusing to sign the state’s marriage license, the church is claiming marriage for itself, and we won’t let it be confused with what the state is now calling marriage. Perhaps, but that assumes people are listening. The boy who takes his ball and goes home isn’t playing anymore, and pretty soon is forgotten.

It could come across from that analogy that I think the state is the one defining the game. Not at all, or at least not any more than players define baseball. Underneath my point is this reality: Marriage is not created by the state, nor is it created by the church. Marriage precedes both church and state, and both are responsible to recognize it wherever it happens. When the church recognizes a marriage, it also proclaims it to the state. This we should continue to do.

By backing out of the civil marriage business, we risk reinforcing the growing opinion that our views on marriage are valid only to us and belong only in the private, religious recesses of our culture. We also risk perpetuating the very troubling myth that marriage is something that government defines, instead of something it recognizes. If we are still in the business, we can remind them. If not, we can’t.

Of course, whether the church can be a legitimate agent of the state without compromise is a valid question. But keep in mind that the church is not an agent of the state per se; it only serves as one in this matter. And don’t agents of the state who demonstrate and proclaim their loyalty to a higher authority have a stronger witness than someone who is not an agent of the state at all?

I’ve already heard of, and even met, several justices of the peace who have either resigned or who now refuse to marry anyone because they may be asked to marry same-sex couples. I understand the dilemma, but to them I say, “Stay in the game! Keep your post, but refuse to render to Caesar authority that does not belong to him. Get fired! Get censured! Get sued! Be nice and kind, but firm; keep the witness as long as you can.”

I realize, of course, that it is easy for me to say this to a justice of the peace from this side of the keyboard. I won’t face that sort of trouble for simply writing a book on the issue. I may get some angry tweets, but that’s not much to worry about. But, with apologies for my cushy position, I still think it’s the right thing to do. It’s what I would try to do if I were in that person’s place.

Clergy members are like justices of the peace, but with a much more protected position because of our religious freedoms, such as they currently are. So they have even more reason to stay in the game. And since the more troubling cultural problem is the precipitous decline of marriage rates in general, taking our exit now would be tantamount to saying that people who really are legitimately married for us are not married for the state.

“But we are marrying them—in a church wedding,” the response might be. True, but because marriage is a creational reality, not a church one, I can’t see how we ought to recognize it in the church while not also proclaiming to the state (and everyone else) that “these two are now one flesh” in a way that others are not. In this way, the church has the unique role of simultaneously being an agent of and a messenger to the state. When it plays this role, it reminds the state of whose world this really is.

Of course, the moment that clergy are asked to marry same-sex couples, they ought flatly to refuse. Period. End of story. And at that point, we’ll have to decide our next step. But let’s not step too soon out of the marriage game happening in the public square.

This brings up two other arguments against “The Marriage Pledge,” neither of which originates with me. First, the document suggests that the couple being married by the church should go off on their own to claim the benefits of civil marriage bestowed by state. But if it is wrong for clergy to be involved with the state on marriage, how is it less wrong for the laity to be involved?

This is a real problem, and creates more problems. For example, if we are to consider church marriage different from civil marriage, by what means will the church enforce its understanding of marriage and divorce to those married by the church? Why should anyone listen?

Even more, if same-sex marriage demands our separation from civil marriage, aren’t we late to the game? Why didn’t we take this step when no-fault divorce made marriage vows a mockery, and children the victim of a parent’s “right to be happy”? Shouldn’t we have done this a long time ago?

Well, we didn’t, and I argue we shouldn’t have. Instead, we should have been more serious about what it means to be married. We should have displayed a little more courage in the matter of whom we married and whom we did not, as well as how we handled those we married that violated their vows. But we didn’t, because that would have “gotten in the way of the Gospel,” or something like that.

In our book “Same-Sex Marriage,” Sean McDowell and I suggest that in this brave new world we’ll need to be more creative. As a model, we point to Daniel, who was faced with two options: Eat the king’s meat or be killed. But Daniel came up with a third option, which allowed him to honor his commitment “not to defile himself with the king’s food” and still stay in the game and influence the power center of Babylon.

Have we really exhausted all of our other options? Have we even thought of all of our options? I don’t think so. Let’s stay in a while longer, pray for strength and wisdom, stand our ground on our convictions, and see what happens. When it’s time to go, we’ll know by the pushy state arm that will be squarely in the center of our backs.

John Stonestreet is a speaker and fellow of the Colson Center and, along with Eric Metaxas, host of BreakPoint Radio.  This article was originally posted at the BreakPoint.org website.

World Vision, a well-known, well-regarded, and well-funded Christian charity has decided to abandon its policy that prohibits the hiring of those who engage in homosexual activity. World Vision U.S. will now hire homosexuals as long as they are in a legal (but false) “marriage.” While allowing employees who affirm homosexuality to work for World Vision, they will continue to prohibit the hiring of those who engage in fornication or adultery despite the fact that adultery is no more serious a sin than is homosexuality.

World Vision president, Richard Stearns, describes this stunning abandonment of biblical truth as “a very narrow policy change…symbolic of… [Christian] unity” and analogous to doctrinal differences over modes of baptism and beliefs on evolution.

The liberal shibboleth of “unity” rears its ugly head again. Unity, however, never trumps truth, and on the issue of homosexual relations, the Bible is unequivocal in its condemnation.

Are different views of homosexual “marriage” analogous to other doctrinal differences?

Both Theologian Russell Moore and Pastor Kevin DeYoung argue against the view that Steans appears to defend. Both argue that homosexual “marriage” is a concept which no church can biblically defend.

Moore illuminates  the gravity of the theological issue that Steans attempts to trivialize by comparing it to other denominational and doctrinal differences:

At stake is the gospel of Jesus Christ. If sexual activity outside of a biblical definition of marriage is morally neutral, then, yes, we should avoid making an issue of it. If, though, what the Bible clearly teaches and what the church has held for 2000 years is true, then refusing to call for repentance is unspeakably cruel and, in fact, devilish.

DeYoung elaborates on this point arguing that there exists no justification for viewing differences on homosexual “marriage” as analogous to denominational disagreements on a host of other issues. In other words, all theological differences are not created equal:

To be sure, like many evangelical parachurch organizations, World Vision allows for diversity in millennial views, sacramental views, soteriological views, and any numbers of doctrinal issues which distinguish denomination from denomination. Stearns would have us believe that homosexuality is just another one of these issues, no different from determining whether the water in baptism can be measured by liters or milliliters. But the analogy does not work. Unlike the differences concerning the mode of baptism, there is no long historical record of the church debating whether men can marry men. In fact, there is no record of the church debating anything of the sort until the last forty or fifty years. And more to the point, there is nothing in the Bible to suggest that getting the mode of baptism wrong puts your eternal soul in jeopardy, when there are plenty of verses to suggest that living in unrepentant sexual sin will do just that (Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Jude 5-7).

What is marriage?

In rationalizing this policy change, Steans digs an even deeper, darker, more tortuous theological hole:

Changing the employee conduct policy to allow someone in a same-sex marriage who is a professed believer in Jesus Christ to work for us makes our policy more consistent with our practice on other divisive issues….It also allows us to treat all of our employees the same way: abstinence outside of marriage, and fidelity within marriage…. This is simply a decision about whether or not you are eligible for employment at World Vision U.S. based on this single issue, and nothing more. (emphasis added)

Nothing more? What else is left once you’ve gutted biblical truth about marriage?  Marriage is not a creation of man to “solemnize” consensual romantic/erotic unions. Marriage is picture of the union between Christ and his bride, the church. Marriage is not a union of two identical partners. It is the union of God and man and reflects the ontological difference between the marriage partners. One would expect World Vision’s leaders to understand better the relationship between earthly marriage–central to which is sexual complementarity–and the gospel story of creation and redemption.

When Steans says this policy allows World Vision to treat legally “married” homosexual couples the same as married heterosexual couples, he is acceding to the proposition that two men or two women can in reality be married.  But our secular government’s legal recognition of same-sex unions as “marriages” does not marriages make.

Steans should know what John Piper makes clear in a sermon on marriage:

The point is not only that so-called same-sex marriage shouldn’t exist, but that it doesn’t and it can’t. Those who believe that God has spoken to us truthfully in the Bible should not concede that the committed, life-long partnership and sexual relations of two men or two women is marriage. It isn’t.

The Implications of World Vision’s Worldly Change

Kevin DeYoung warns what this “about face” by World Vision portends:

The about face in World Vision’s hiring policy deserves comment both because their reasons for the switch will become terribly common and because the reasons themselves are so terrifically thin. Serving in a mainline denomination, I’ve heard all the assurances and euphemisms before: “We still affirm traditional marriage. We aren’t taking sides. This is only a narrow change. We are trying to find common ground. This is about unity. It’s all about staying on mission.” But of course, there is nothing neutral about the policy at all. The new policy makes no sense if World Vision thinks homosexual behavior is a sin, which is, after all, how it views fornication and adultery. There are no allowances for their employees to solemnize other transgressions of the law of God.

DeYoung asks if the following assertions are true:

Jesus Christ is coming again to judge the living and the dead (Acts 17:31; Rev. 19:11-21). Those who repent of their sins and believe in Christ (Mark 1:15; Acts 2:38; 17:30) and those who overcome (Rev. 21:7) will live forever in eternal bliss with God in his holy heaven (Rev. 21:1-27) through the atoning work of Christ on the cross (Mark 10:45; Rom. 5:1-21; Cor. 5:21). Those who are not born again (John 3:5), do not believe in Christ (John 3:18), and continue to make practice of sinning (1 John 3:4-10) will face eternal punishment and the just wrath of God in hell (John 3:36; 5:29). Among those who will face the second death in the lake that burns with fire are the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, the murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars (Rev. 21:8), and among the sins included in the category of sexual immorality is unrepentant sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex (Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Jude 5-7).

He then asserts that “If the Bible does not teach these things, or if we no longer have the courage to believe them, let us say so openly and make the case why the whole history of the Christian church has been so wrong for so long. But if the Bible does teach the paragraph above, how can we be casual about such a serious matter or think that Jesus would be so indifferent to the celebration of the same?”

Steans claims that World Vision leaders are “not caving to some kind of pressure. We’re not on some slippery slope. There is no lawsuit threatening us. There is no employee group lobbying us….This is not us compromising.” The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.

What to do about current sponsorship

World Vision will lose donors, as it should. For many who are currently sponsoring a needy child, this decision is difficult. The ultimate cause for the suffering of children who lose sponsors rests not, however, with donors who cannot in good conscience support the efforts of an organization that abandons foundational biblical principles, the adherence to which was what led them to support the organization in the first place. The ultimate cause is the foolish decision of World Vision’s leaders.

For those sponsors who decide to cease donating immediately, there are other options, one of which is Compassion International. Compassion International works with impoverished children all around the world and currently, has over 4,500 children in need of support.

Other World Vision sponsors, however, may believe they should complete their sponsorship of a particular child, which ends when the child reaches age 21 or earlier for a variety of reasons. In such cases, IFI recommends informing World Vision that after sponsorship of their current child ends, they will no longer be supporting World Vision.

 Become a monthly supporter of IFI.

Click HERE for more information. 

There is encouraging news to be found in the midst of what is most assuredly a culture darkening and coarsening as it moves away from Christ. It’s difficult to discern the encouraging news because our dominant news disseminators obscure it, but it’s there. Perhaps this glimmer of light is what Russell Moore calls the “prophetic voice” of the church whose contours are illuminated more brightly when the darkness threatens to engulf.

Here’s one of the glimmering tidbits of encouraging news: Former lesbian, atheist, and post-modern feminist professor Rosaria Butterfield spoke recently at a Wheaton College chapel service about her religious conversion and the subsequent (and ongoing) transformation of her life (She is now married with children). If that’s not encouraging enough, at the end of her testimony 2,000 college students gave her a standing ovation. That countercultural event should cause the most dispirited Christians to don their Ray-Bans.

Some Wheaton students who affirm anti-biblical beliefs about homosexuality staged a demonstration outside of the chapel service to protest Butterfield’s invitation. What warranted public notice, however, was not that some current or former Wheaton students who have drunk deeply from the slop trough of cultural relativism would abandon the teachings of Scripture, but that 2,000 young Christians who have been force-fed slop in their television shows, films, advertising, music, newspaper and magazine articles, and public schools would be able still to discern truth.

And perhaps you missed the news about the organization Young Hoosiers for Marriage who earlier this month traveled 100 strong to the Indiana Statehouse to oppose the legal recognition of same-sex unions as marriages. This fledgling organization is composed of college students and young adults “who are committed to rebuilding culture to ensure that children are not intentionally deprived of a mother and a father.”

According to a survey from Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research, these young Hoosiers are not alone. This survey showed that 54 percent of Hoosiers between the ages of 18 to 34 support a proposed Indiana amendment defining marriage as a sexually complementary union.

For conservative Baby Boomers and their elderly parents who find it uncomfortable to express their moral and political beliefs on matters related to homosexuality, imagine how difficult it is for Gen Xers and Millennials.

Baby Boomers who claim a Christian identity may have long ago proved their countercultural bona fides (or boneheadedness) in the service of free love, but they’ve done little to model countercultural courage in the service of truth about sexuality since then. Part of the reason is our own ignorance, part is selfishness (Christian Boomers seem to have little interest in looking honestly at their own acquiescence to or participation in the unbiblical divorce culture or the fornication culture), but the primary reason for our silence is cowardice.

We have modeled cowardly cultural conformity and thus helped create not just the sexual confusion and suffering such confusion entails, but also the oppressive climate our children and grandchildren will now inherit.

The encouraging news is some of our children and grandchildren will stand as watchmen on the walls.  Let’s come alongside them. We owe them that, and we owe Christ so much more.

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of Illinois Family Institute.

Written by Weston Gentry, Christianity Today

Exodus International president Alan Chambers has, in the past week, explained the Orlando-based ministry’s recent U-turn on reparative therapy to everyone from The New York Times to NPR to MSNBC’s Hardball.

And while the organization’s stance remains acceptable to most evangelicals, some scholars fear that Chambers’s theological convictions—sprinkled throughout those interviews—have not.

“It’s not that he is simply not saying the warnings [against homosexual activity] in Scripture. I could live with that,” Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor Robert Gagnon said of Chambers’s recent comments. “It’s that he is saying the exact opposite of what Scripture clearly teaches … . He’s preaching an anti-gospel.”

The theological heresy in question is antinomianism. The term was coined by Martin Luther to refer to those who believe that since faith is sufficient for salvation, Christians are not obligated to keep God’s moral law.

Gagnon, author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice and a plenary speaker at Exodus’s 2009 Freedom Conference, said that a June interview in The Atlantic shows that Chambers’s views have veered. “Some of us choose very different lives than others,” Chambers said of gay Christians in same-sex marriages. “But whatever we choose, it doesn’t remove our relationship with God.”

When asked to clarify whether or not that meant “a person living a gay lifestyle won’t go to hell, as long as he or she accepts Jesus Christ as personal savior,” he replied, “My personal belief is … while behavior matters, those things don’t interrupt someone’s relationship with Christ.” In the course of the interview, Chambers made it clear that he believes that homosexual acts are sinful.

A 35-page response written by Gagnon called into question not only Chambers’s soteriology, but also his ability to continue his 11-plus years of leading Exodus, which boasts some 260 affiliates domestically and internationally.

According to Gagnon, Chambers’s statements unwittingly affirm that active homosexuals need only make an “intellectual assent” or “pray a prayer” to guard against eternal punishment, instead of stipulating the importance of repentance and change.

“I am not saying [Chambers] has to—in a sort of callous, unloving way—shout from the rooftops, ‘You are going to hell,'” said Gagnon. “But he does need to make clear that there are these warnings [against homosexual behavior] in Scripture. It would be unloving and ungracious for him to assure people of things that Scripture does not.”

Echoing the criticisms of “cheap grace” popularized by the late German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gagnon said that Chambers’s remarks “provide assurance to people that all is well when they live a life not led by the power of the Holy Spirit, but are led by the controlling influence of sin.”

“In reality, all is not well,” he said. “[Chambers] unintentionally deceives people into extending this philosophy of ‘cheap grace’ in their life, which puts them at risk of not inheriting the kingdom [of God].”

Defending his public remarks, Chambers told Christianity Today, “If someone tells me that they have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ—in the way I understand it and have experienced it—they still know Jesus regardless of what types of behavior they’ve chosen to be involved in.”

“I don’t know how anyone could call grace cheap when it cost Jesus everything,” said Chambers. “I find it disheartening that we [evangelicals] are so inconsistent and over-focused on one group of people over another. We aren’t talking about this in any other subculture of people except this one [the LGBTQ community].”

Chambers says he isn’t advocating that gay Christians simply “lie down and give up.” The 40-year-old ex-gay husband and father of two maintains that celibacy is a gay Christian’s most biblical option. But he prefers encouraging people to “seek Christ” over “shaming them into a particular set of patterns of behavior.”

“Our focus should never be on how good we do, but on how good God is,” Chambers said. “When we are focused on the truth of his word and the grace that he embodied, I don’t think your life can help but be changed.”

Some critics traced their concerns over Chambers’s soteriology to his home church, Grace Church Orlando. Senior pastor Clark Whitten, who serves as Exodus’s chairman and recently published Pure Grace, could not be reached in time for comment. But he explains on the church’s website that only God can judge those “who say they are Christian yet continue in their sin,” so “the best thing we can do for that person is to keep loving them and telling them about our awesome King who died for them.”

Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, finds Chambers’s motives commendable but his doctrine problematic.

“I can only imagine the sort of situation he finds himself in—trying to speak in a winsome sort of way to people who feel hated by evangelicals,” said Moore. “I just think that he has uploaded some really bad, reactionary tendencies from popular evangelicalism.”

“There is something going on in evangelicalism where everyone is always reacting against whatever error they encountered in childhood,” said Moore. “A lot of people who grew up in legalist, performance-based churches are over-reacting with an antinomian, repentance-lacking gospel.”

“The problem biblically is: legalism sends people to hell and antinomianism sends people to hell,” he said. “Reacting against a hellish-legalism with a hellish-antinomianism is still sending people to hell.”

Unfazed by the accusations of theological error, Chambers addressed his detractors with some pointed words.

“It’s disappointing to see Christians drive personal agendas at the expense of other human beings,” he said. “We’ve received a tremendous response from men and women who are desperate for grace.”

(Read Laurie Higgins’ take on this controversy HERE.)

Originally posted at Christianitytoday.com.

Earlier this week, the presidential inaugural committee announced that President Obama has chosen Richard Blanco to be the 2013 inaugural poet. Blanco, it just so happens, is Hispanic and homosexual. Liberals would label a choice like this “tokenism” if made by a conservative, but let’s  just call it fealty to two of Obama’s critical constituencies.

But that’s not all Obama did this week to pay obeisance to the all-powerful homosexual lobby. He also pressured the evangelical pastor whom he had invited to give the benediction at his inauguration to withdraw.

By now many are aware of what Dr. Al Mohler has colorfully deemed the “Giglio imbroglio.” Rev. Louie Giglio was asked to give the benediction at President Obama’s inauguration as a result of his work to end human trafficking. But yesterday homosexual activists apoplectic over his invitation exposed Giglio’s dark secret, which led the White House to compel him to withdraw from participating in the inaugural ceremony.

And what was Giglio’s sin? His “sin” was preaching a sermon fifteen years ago that expressed theologically orthodox views of homosexuality (gasp). (The more serious issue to the theologically orthodox faith community is why Rev. Giglio has not preached about such an important scriptural issue for  almost two decades, particularly when biblical truth about homosexuality is under sustained assault from virtually every quarter of American public life. And why is he distancing himself now from the words he spoke fifteen years ago?)

Giglio’s compulsory withdrawal wasn’t enough, however, to soothe the savage breasts of homosexual activists—you know, those lovers of tolerance and diversity. The White House had to perform some public penance by tacitly apologizing for ever having invited such a morally flawed man.

Not only has the White House in effect disinvited Giglio, but infamous and unpleasant homosexual activist Wayne Besen has arrogantly demanded that Giglio reveal whether he has “evolved on gay rights.” Dr. Mohler warns us to see to writing on the wall:

The Presidential Inaugural Committee and the White House have now declared historic, biblical Christianity to be out of bounds, casting it off the inaugural program as an embarrassment….[A]nyone who has ever believed that homosexuality is morally problematic in any way must now offer public repentance and evidence of having “evolved” on the question…This is what is now openly demanded of Christians today. If you want to avoid being thrown off the program, you had better learn to evolve fast, and repent in public.

Dr. Russell Moore, Dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, addresses  the serious constitutional issues that this inaugural dust-up reveals:

The statement Giglio made that was so controversial is essentially a near-direct quotation from the Christian Scriptures. Unrepentant homosexuals, Giglio said (as with unrepentant sinners of all kinds) “will not inherit the kingdom of God.” That’s 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. Giglio said, “it’s not easy to change, but it is possible to change.” The Bible says God “commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30), the same gospel, Giglio says, “that I say to you and that you would say to me.”…

When it is now impossible for one who holds to the catholic Christian view of marriage and the gospel to pray at a public event, we have a de facto established state church.  Just as the pre-constitutional Anglican and congregational churches required a license to preach in order to exclude Baptists, the new state church requires a “license” of embracing sexual liberation in all its forms….

Notice that the problem is not that this evangelical wants to “impose his religion” on the rest of society.  The problem is not that he wants to exclude homosexuals or others from the public square or of their civil rights. The problem is that he won’t say that they can go to heaven without repentance. That’s not a civil issue, but a religious test of orthodoxy….

We don’t have a natural right to pray at anyone’s inauguration. But when one is pressured out from a previous invitation because he is too “toxic” for simply mentioning once something universal in the Christian faith, we ought to see what we’re looking at: a state church.

Obama’s unflappably cool demeanor and “can’t we all just get along” rhetoric are exposed for the deceits they are by his relentless in-your-face assault on conservative values and religious liberty. He’s not liberal; he’s radical. And he’s not an irenic unifier; he’s a presumptuous and aggressive divider. He’s now using the ceremonial occasion of his inauguration, which should be a moment of national unity, to slap conservatives in the face—no, make that stomp on their faces with mud-encrusted jack boots.

“Woe to those who call evil good
    and good evil,
who put darkness for light
    and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
    and sweet for bitter!”
~Isaiah 5:20