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 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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Written by Frederick W. (Rick) Claybrook, Jr.

“Hard cases make bad law,” and national emergencies make hard cases. A notorious example of this maxim is the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to vindicate the claims of West Coast Americans who were put in “assignment” or “assembly centers” en masse during World War II solely because they were of Japanese descent and, thus, inherently had a greater potential for treason and espionage. The Court’s reasoning:

(a) it was a time of national emergency;

(b) judges had to defer to military judgments of danger;

(c) everybody experiences hardships during emergencies; and

(d) the relocation centers weren’t as bad as concentration camps.  Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 219-24 (1944).

The parallel is striking between the rationale of the Court’s decision in Korematsu and the current U.S. Supreme Court justices and lower-court judges who have voted to deny requests by churches and synagogues for relief from COVID-19 restrictions. Those judges reason:

(a) it is a time of a national emergency;

(b) judges have to defer to the judgments of politicians and scientists during this health crisis;

(c) other organizations are experiencing hardships due to shutdowns and are being regulated by restrictions just as great or greater; and

(d) religious adherents really don’t have it so bad, because they can use the internet and TV for their worship.

These parallels are foreboding, but it is encouraging to see a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court justices most recently in R.C. Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo (No. 20A87, Nov. 25, 2020) granting relief to Catholic and Orthodox Jewish congregations from caps on worship imposed in New York. In particular, the majority lanced several underlying assumptions of those unsympathetic to the prior pleas of religious organizations:

• First, constitutional freedoms, including the free exercise of religion, do not take a breather during times of national emergency; as Korematsu teaches by bad example, judges must be just as vigilant in protecting them during such times.

• Second, it is not enough that the state can point to some organizations (e.g., movie houses) on which it has imposed even greater restrictions on meeting than religious houses when it has granted lesser restrictions to many other entities that have no specific constitutional protection (e.g., grocery stores, casinos, wine shops).

• Third, religious worship cannot be minimized as either “unessential” or “individualistic.”

While courts may, and must, scrutinize rationales offered by politicians and scientists when they support restrictions of basic constitutional rights, judges may not define religion in their own image, but, rather, must accept the sincere beliefs of religious adherents that in-person, communal worship is essential to free exercise.

For this reason, the Illinois Family Institute has joined a group of other organizations, including the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Association of Evangelicals, in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal in Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church v. Pritzker. In Elim, the Seventh Circuit, reciting the Korematsu-type reasoning outlined above, upheld a 10-person cap for worship services in a 700-seat auditorium that had no such cap when used for other purposes. (See the legal brief HERE.)

One of the judges granting relief in R.C. Diocese specifically cited Elim with disapproval, and for that reason and others it seems likely that the full Court will agree to hear the case. It is hoped that the full Court, in a precedential opinion, will repudiate the Korematsu line of reasoning and will affirm that religious organizations and their exercise of the faith have special, constitutional protection that recognizes that their faith is communal, not just individualistic; that no greater restrictions can be placed on worship services than on gatherings of any other type, even in a national emergency; and that any such restrictions must be the least restrictive possible in the circumstances.

We are committed to upholding truth while resisting and opposing the rising wave of delusional thinking and tyrannical laws/mandates that have afflicted our state and nation. IFI will continue to provide our supporters with timely alerts, video reports, podcasts, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences, and thought-provoking commentaries—content that is increasingly hard to find.

We encourage you to join us in our efforts. Your support will help us to continue our vital work in 2021. A vigorous defense of biblical truth is needed more than ever in Illinois. 

While theologians Dr. Denny Burk, Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, Dr. John Piper, and Pastor Douglas Wilson say Christians should not use incorrect pronouns when referring to people who pretend to be the sex they aren’t, increasing numbers of purportedly theologically orthodox Christians believe Christians should use them. They believe that refusing to use “preferred pronouns” will result in “trans”-identifying persons severing relationships. And to “woke” theologians and pastors, maintaining relationships supersedes truth.

Christian capitulation to sin will always be accompanied by theological rationalizations that will sound superficially reasonable. In a recent episode of his “Ask Me Anything” podcast, JD Greear, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, proffered such rationalizations as he revealed that he uses incorrect pronouns when referring to “trans”-identifying persons. He argued that his complicity with the false and destructive “trans” ideology constitutes “generosity of spirit,” which he contrasts with “truth-telling.” Greear also claimed that Preston Sprinkle, president of the Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender, does likewise.

Before going further, I want to note that several of the quotes cited by Greear and to which I will be responding appear to be wrongly attributed by Greear to Sprinkle. These incorrectly attributed quotes come instead from a paper by Gregory Coles who identifies as a “celibate, gay Christian” and is part of the celibate, “gay” Christian movement criticized by many, including Denny Burk who wrote this about Coles’ memoir:

Coles seems to equate differences about homosexual immorality with differences that Christians have about second order doctrines. But how can homosexual immorality be treated in this way when the Bible says that those who commit such deeds do not inherit the kingdom of God.

Coles doesn’t merely say Christians may use incorrect pronouns. In his paper titled, “What Pronouns Should Christians Use for Transgender People,” which is littered with PC language created by the “LGBTQ” community to advance its ideology, Coles argues Christians should use incorrect pronouns:

… [T]he most biblical response to transgender people’s pronouns is a posture of unequivocal pronoun hospitality. That is, I believe that all Christians can and should use pronouns that reflect the expressed gender identities of transgender people, regardless of our views about gender identity ethics. If a person identifies herself to you as “she,” I hope you will consider it an act of Christ-like love to call her “she” out of respect, whether or not you believe that the way she expresses her gender identity is honoring to God.

Astonishingly, Coles grounds his defense of appeasement “Christ-like pronoun hospitality” in this passage from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians:

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

Coles applies this passage to the current pronoun mandates, appealing also to “respect” to justify appeasement:

When we apply Paul’s linguistic approach to the pronouns we use about transgender people, I believe we arrive at a posture of pronoun hospitality: a willingness to accommodate the pronouns of our transgender neighbors regardless of our own views about the Christian ethics of gender identity. That is, when we order our language toward making sure that the truth of the gospel can be heard in an understandable way by those around us, we are compelled to use pronouns in a way that effectively communicates our respect for transgender people, even if we still believe that followers of Jesus are called to express their gender identity in accordance with their appointed sex.

If, instead of referring to “our own views about the Christian ethics of gender identity,” Coles had referred to “the truth of Christian ethics regarding gender identity,” the problem with his worldview would become clearer. Imagine a Christian saying, “We should be willing to use the pronouns of our transgender neighbors regardless of the truth of Christian ethics regarding gender identity.”

Does the anger of “trans”-cultists toward Christians who refuse to mis-sex people signify lack of understanding or does it signal rebellion? Is it an act of respect to concede to demands to call someone something that is an integral part of an ideology that denies reality, affirms sin as good, and grievously harms both individuals and society?  Can true respect—like true biblical love—ever entail denial or even the appearance of denial of another person’s embodiment as male or female?

Coles’ interpretation of the passage in Corinthians is at odds with that of theologian Thomas Schreiner:

Cultural flexibility, however, is not infinitely elastic. For instance, Paul does not compromise on moral norms or on fundamental truths of the gospel.

Theologian Paul E. Garland shares a similar understanding:

[Paul] does not think that fundamental and distinctive Christian demands are negotiable depending on the circumstances. He did not eat idol food in order to become “as one  without the law to those without the law.” He did not tone down his assault on idolatry to avoid offending idolaters or curry favor with them. His accommodation has nothing to do with watering down the gospel message, soft-pedaling its ethical demands.

Evidently, Coles doesn’t view Genesis 1:27 (“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”) or Deuteronomy 22:5 (“A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.) as fundamental, distinctive, and non-negotiable.

It should trouble Coles, Greear, and Sprinkle that they are participants in what New Testament scholar N.T. Wright describes as a new and damaging incarnation of the heresy of Gnosticism:

The confusion about gender identity is a modern, and now internet-fueled, form of the ancient philosophy of Gnosticism. The Gnostic, one who “knows”, has discovered the secret of “who I really am”, behind the deceptive outward appearance. … This involves denying the goodness, or even the ultimate reality, of the natural world. Nature, however, tends to strike back, with the likely victims in this case being vulnerable and impressionable youngsters who, as confused adults, will pay the price for their elders’ fashionable fantasies.

To bolster his position, Coles points to Christianity Today (CT), which has now regrettably adopted secular journalistic practices, using incorrect pronouns for cross-sex passers.

A 2015 article by Dr. Mark Yarhouse in CT provides evidence that both CT and Yarhouse have capitulated to the wicked and deceitful “trans” ideology. Yarhouse writes,

I still recall one of my first meetings with Sara. Sara is a Christian who was born male and named Sawyer by her [sic] parents. As an adult, Sawyer transitioned to female.

Sara would say transitioning—adopting a cross-gender identity—took 25 years. It began with facing the conflict she [sic] experienced between her [sic] biology and anatomy as male, and her [sic] inward experience as female.

With absolute certainty, Sprinkle offers this dire warning about refusal to participate in the “trans” lie:

“If you want to immediately cut off a relationship with somebody, which is ending all opportunity to embody and share Jesus with the person, then don’t use the pronouns they want you to use. It is an immediate relational killer.”

He is saying that if unbelievers lost in spiritual darkness will become so angry at the refusal of Christians to participate in their reality-denying, body- and soul-destroying fiction that they sever relationships, Christians should capitulate. This position will result in an enfeebled relinquishment of culture-making to sinners lost in darkness.

The homosexual and “trans” communities use language as a tool to transform culture. They redefine words, emptying them of their former meanings, and invent new words that embody subversive and false assumptions. They become enraged at anyone who refuses to yield to their language diktats, and then some faith leaders say, “If we refuse to use their language, we kill relationships thereby killing our ability to witness.” What a diminished view of God’s sovereignty such a position reveals.

Moreover, enraged responses to encounters with truth sometimes signify the pricking of a conscience. Sometimes a respectful demurral from participating in serious sin is a seed planted. The ethics of speech are not determined by the subjective response of hearers of that speech. The ethics are determined by the content (i.e., is it true) and the delivery (i.e., is it civil).

Coles repeatedly appeals to the feelings of “trans”-identifying persons as determinative of the terms Christians should use. If, Coles argues, “trans”-identifying persons feel—or claim to feel—“shamed, invisible, sidelined, defiled, invalidated, microaggressed, disappeared, or leprous,” Christians should use whatever pronouns these people prefer, or we destroy our witness.

Is there any evidence that Jesus engaged in such “relational/missional” evangelism or fretted about how sinners would feel if he refused to affirm the sin they engaged in or placed at the center of their identities? When he encountered the rich, young ruler; the woman caught in adultery; or Zacchaeus, the tax collector, how long did Jesus dally in relationships before he told them to repent of their sins?

If refusing to concede through our language that a biological man is a woman makes such a man feel “defiled” or “microaggressed,” imagine if he had been part of the multitude that John the Baptist called a brood of vipers.

Dr. Gagnon, author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Text and Hermeneutics, makes clear what Greear’s, Coles’, and Sprinkle’s purported hospitality and respect signify:

It is not an act of “hospitality” or “respect” to the offender to use fake pronouns and proper names but rather (1) a scandal to the “weak” and young in the church and a rightful violation of conscience for many that will lead many to stumble to their ruin; (2) an accommodation to sin that God finds utterly abhorrent, to say nothing of the fact that it is an egregious lie; and (3) a complicity in the offender’s self-dishonoring, self-degrading, and self-demeaning behavior that does him or her (and the grieving ex-spouse and children, if there are any) no favor because it can get the person in question excluded from the kingdom of God.

What’s next? Treating as a married couple an incestuous union involving a man and his mother, allegedly as a show of hospitality and respect? Is that what Paul would have done at Corinth? Addressing the man and his stepmother as “husband” and “wife” so as to extend “hospitality” and “respect”? What kind of revisionist lunacy is this? Paul would not have taken this approach even for those who don’t profess to be believers.

Attorney, journalist, senior editor at the recently launched political website The Dispatch, and Christian, David French exposes the error in manipulative tactics used to shame Christians into rhetorical concessions to the destructive “trans” ideology:

When I use a male pronoun to describe Chelsea Manning, I’m not trolling. I’m not being a jerk. I’m not trying to make anyone angry. I’m simply telling the truth. I’m reflecting biological reality, and I’m referring to the created order as outlined in Genesis 1 — “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Nor is this a matter of “manners.” I’ve encountered many well-meaning people who’ve told me that I should acquiesce to new pronouns because it’s the polite thing to do. I want to avoid hurting feelings, don’t I? I want to treat someone the way I’d like to be treated, right? What’s the harm in a little white lie?

But when your definition of manners requires that I verbally consent to a fundamentally false and important premise, then I dissent. You cannot use my manners to win your culture war. I will speak respectfully, I will never use a pronoun with the intent of causing harm, and if I encounter a person in obvious emotional distress I will choose my words very carefully. But I will not say what I do not believe.

Coles asserts there are two assumptions “about the nature of language” on which Christians who reject “trans” language diktats rely:

Assumption #1: Pronoun gender always and only refers to an individual’s appointed sex.

Assumption #2: When our definitions of words differ from other people’s definitions, “telling the truth” means using our own definitions.

Assumption #2 implicitly rejects the Christian view that objective truth exists. Christians have no obligation to treat assumption #2 as if it’s true. It’s passing strange that a Christian would treat his own definitions of words like “he,” “she,” and “they” as just other assumptions. Coles seems to hold the view that Peter Kreeft disdains when he says the phrase “your truth” is both oxymoronic and moronic.

Burk reveals the sullied underbelly of Coles’ expectation that Christians treat their biblically informed definitions—not as true—but as merely one set of assumptions in the diverse universe of competing assumptions:

So much of the evangelical conversation on these issues has been colonized by secular identity theories. Those theories are premised on an unbiblical anthropology which defines human identity as “what I feel myself to be” rather than “what God designed me to be.” If there is to be a recovery and renewal of Christian conscience on sexuality issues, secular identity theories must give way to God’s design as revealed in nature and scripture.

Coles justifies the redefinition of pronouns by the “trans” cult by arguing—accurately—that language changes, but the reality of linguistic shifts doesn’t mean that Christians should acquiesce to politically driven changes that embody lies and which are increasingly imposed by force.

Greear also quoted conservative theologian Andrew T. Walker’s book God and the Transgender Debate in which Walker says,

“My own position is that if a transgender person comes to your church, it is fine to refer to them by their preferred pronoun.”

Greear failed to include what Walker said in an article published four months after publication of his book:

“Though it is politically incorrect to do so, I will not refer to someone with their desired pronoun in a public venue such as a talk. Those with writing or speaking platforms have an obligation to speak and write truthfully and not kowtow to political correctness or excuse falsehood.”

The abandonment of theological orthodoxy always happens incrementally, as it’s happening today. C. S. Lewis warned of this in The Screwtape Letters in which the senior demon Screwtape writes this to his nephew Wormwood, a Junior Tempter:

My dear Wormwood,

Obviously, you are making excellent progress. My only fear is lest in attempting to hurry the patient you awaken him to a sense of his real position. For you and I, who see that position as it really is, must never forget how totally different it ought to appear to him. We know that we have introduced a change of direction in his course which is already carrying him out of his orbit around the Enemy; but he must be made to imagine that all the choices which have effected this change of course are trivial and revocable. He must not be allowed to suspect that he is now, however slowly, heading right away from the sun on a line which will carry him into the cold and dark of utmost space.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Pronouns_2.mp3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learn more HERE.

Reverend Franklin Graham, the president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, posted a message on Facebook and sent an email to his social media followers requesting they dedicate Sunday, June 2, as a day of prayer for President Donald Trump. Two hundred and fifty Christian leaders quickly responded by signing the proclamation, including three former presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention (the largest Protestant denomination in America) and the general superintendent of the Assemblies of God.

The proclamation reads:

“We the undersigned are calling for June 2 to be a special Day of Prayer for the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, that God would protect, strengthen, embolden, and direct him. We believe our nation is at a crossroads, at a dangerous precipice. The only one who can fix our country’s problems is God Himself, and we pray that God will bless our president and our nation for His glory.”

The full statement can be read on Rev. Graham’s Facebook page. Tens of thousands are expected to answer the call to pray for the president .

In an interview with Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, Graham referred to Trump as “the most Christian-friendly president” in his lifetime. He noted, “I don’t think any president in modern history has come under attack day after day after day by almost all the media. That’s just never happened. And it distracts the president. It weakens our country.”

While quick to point out that his call to prayer isn’t an endorsement of Trump, Graham quoted a scripture verse that calls on Christians to pray for “kings” and all those in authority. He asked his followers to leave a comment on his Facebook page stating that they will pray for the president: “And will you share this on your social media platforms so that we can have as many people as possible praying?” he added.

Graham concluded with a quote from the Apostle Paul:

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

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Written by John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera

Forty years ago, a group of evangelical leaders and scholars took a clear and unapologetic stand on a fundamental tenet of the faith.

This month marks the fortieth anniversary of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which was signed in October of 1978 by more than 200 evangelical leaders, including R.C. Sproul, J.I. Packer, and Francis Schaeffer.

The Chicago Statement was not only a landmark document in evangelical history, it played an important role in the work of the late Chuck Colson and our ongoing work at the Colson Center.

Here’s a bit of history to set the stage. If there was one phrase that summed up the ethos of the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was “Question Authority.” The phrase emerged out of opposition to the Vietnam War and Watergate, but then it spread well beyond the world of politics into various arenas of culture, even into the church.

We know, for example, the story of how liberal “mainline” churches doubted the Bible and its claims of supernatural miracles. But the culture-wide distrust of authority crept into Evangelicalism, as well, which has—given its diversity and independent congregations—kind of always struggled with ecclesial authority.

Phrases such as “Christianity isn’t a religion; it’s a relationship” entered the lexicon and became an excuse for some to radically privatize the faith, to reject historical teaching, and even embrace new ways of reading and interpreting the Bible.

For instance, a survey of students at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the mid-70s found that the longer a student attended the seminary, the less likely he was to agree with the statement “Jesus is the Divine Son of God and I have no doubts about it.”

In 1971, messengers at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting passed a resolution that supported abortion, not only in cases of rape and incest, but also in cases where there is “clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

This was just two years before Roe v. Wade.

I don’t mean to pile on the SBC. First, by no means were they alone… this stuff was in the air. Second, the SBC has since experienced quite a renewal, which is at least partly due to the Chicago Statement.

The Statement was about more than a particular way of reading and interpreting the Bible: It was an unequivocal assertion of biblical authority over the lives of believers and the Church, in an age when all authority was being questioned.

It was an unequivocal assertion that Christianity, while it does involve a relationship with God, is also a “religion,” in the original sense of the Latin word “religio,” which means “bond,” “obligation,” and “reverence.” It’s a faith, in other words, with content, not just a warm fuzzy feeling.

Anyone who followed Chuck Colson can see how he was indebted to this effort. For him, Christianity was objectively true, and that truth could be communicated to others, both inside and outside the Church.

And the primary way God had revealed truth to His Church was the Scriptures. Not personal experience, and certainly not popular intellectual fads.

The need to reassert biblical authority may be more urgent today than it was forty years ago. When we hear things like “the Gospel is about radical inclusivity,” that just means the Gospel is being defined without Scripture. When we hear that “Jesus would’ve baked the cake,” that Jesus is not the Jesus of Scripture.  When we hear, “It’s a relationship, not a religion” still, that often means we are ignoring the significant portions of Scripture that describe the people God is calling out to restore and activate for His Kingdom.

This article originally posted at BreakPoint.org

A majority of Americans including many mainline Christians support legal abortion, but many religious conservatives say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, according to the Pew Research Center.

Those religious conservatives are now hoping that Roe v. Wade will be overturned in light of President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, a practicing Catholic, to the U.S. Supreme Court. They’re optimistic that having a fifth conservative on the bench could lead to a reversal of the 1973 landmark case that made abortion a constitutional right. Kavanaugh gave a speech last year in which he praised former Chief Justice William Rehnquist for dissenting in Roe v. Wade.

A Pew survey last year showed that 57 percent of Americans support legal abortion, while 40 percent believe it should be illegal in most or all cases. A Pew 2014 Religious Landscape Study found that evangelicals tend to oppose legal abortion while people in mainline Protestant churches, as well as Jews, atheists, and agnostics, tend to support it. While Catholics are divided, the Roman Catholic Church continues to speak out against abortion.

Sixty-six percent of Southern Baptists are opposed to legal abortion, compared to only 8 percent of Unitarian Universalists and 18 percent of Episcopalians. Other religious groups with a high percentage opposed include Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christians affiliated with the Assemblies of God.

In a January 2018 news release, Pew reported:

Among those who do identify with a religion, the majority view about abortion among members of a particular group often mirrors that group’s official policy on abortion. This is the case with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon church) and the Southern Baptist Convention – both churches oppose abortion, as do most members of those churches. And the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Unitarian Universalist Association, and Reform and Conservative Judaism, for example, all support abortion rights, in line with most of their adherents.

There are, however, cases where the views of a church’s members don’t align with its teachings on abortion. For instance, while the Roman Catholic Church is an outspoken critic of abortion, U.S. Catholics were divided on the issue in the 2014 survey, with 48% supportive of legal abortion and 47% opposed.  (See chart HERE.)

In June 2017, the Southern Baptist Convention at its annual meeting denounced Planned Parenthood and called on Congress to fully defund it. The convention passed a resolution that called out the “immoral agenda and practices of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates, especially their role in the unjust killing each year of more than 300,000 precious unborn babies, its use of particularly gruesome illegal abortion methods, and its profiteering from harvesting unborn babies’ tissues and organs.”

By contrast, representatives of mainline denominations have been vocal in support of legal abortion. This past March, 68 faith leaders in Iowa wrote a letter published in the Des Moines Register criticizing a bill in the state legislature that would make it illegal for a woman to get an abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected. The letter said in part:

Every person has the right to their own personal and religious beliefs and to live their life how they determine is best for them. The government does not have the right to infringe on the freedoms or privacy of Iowa women based on those religious beliefs. Every woman deserves to consult her values, faith, and doctor when making a decision about her body and her pregnancy. Any law that strips a woman of her faith and tries instead to legislate her values for her is immoral.

Republican state lawmakers in Iowa were able to pass the fetal heartbeat bill despite objections from Democrats. No Democrats supported the bill. It was signed into law by Republican Governor Kim Reynolds, but a judge blocked it from taking effect July 1 as a result of a lawsuit filed by abortion activists.

The Chicago Tribune has reported that more out-of-state women have been coming to Illinois for abortions because of less restrictive laws compared to those in surrounding states. The overall number of abortions had dropped, however, but is now on the rise, an increase attributed to a state law passed last year that expands taxpayer subsidies for abortions. Under the new law, which took effect January 1, Medicaid recipients and state employees and their dependents covered by state employee insurance can get taxpayer-subsidized abortions.

Read more:  Illinois Taxpayer Funded Abortions Increase at Least 274 Percent in First Six Months of 2018

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It is only because of concerned citizens like you that we are able to continue promoting pro-family values in the Prairie State.

The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention just released a document titled “Here We Stand: An Evangelical Declaration on Marriage,”  signed by scores of religious leaders. It is largely an excellent document that embodies an unequivocal, courageous commitment to truth.

That said, it also makes the troubling claim that Christians ought not be angry: “Outrage and panic are not the responses of those confident in the promises of a reigning Christ Jesus.”

My concern about this may seem an unnecessary quibble, but the notion that Christians ought not feel angry is integral to the serious problem of Christian silence on matters related to homosexuality.

This statement echoes what Trinity Evangelical Divinity School New Testament professor D.A. Carson said in a recent interview with Desiring God: “This is no time for panic, or resentment, and it is certainly no time for hate.”

Clearly, it is no time for panic, and it’s no time for hate if by hate Dr. Carson is referring to hatred of persons.

I think, however, that resentment of injustice and hatred of wickedness are warranted. A fuller, more nuanced discussion would have been helpful in freeing Christians from bondage to a neutered, passionless complaisance regarding a pernicious Court decision that embodies pernicious ideas about marriage and homoeroticism.

The claims about anger expressed in the declaration and articulated by Dr. Carson seem to contradict the views of Leon Podles in an article titled “Unhappy Fault” published in Touchstone Magazine:

[M]any Christians have a false understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative, something that a Christian should not feel.

In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege.

…
Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century….In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.

Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:

A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.

Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: “Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,” wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: “One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.”

Aquinas, too, says that “lack of the passion of anger is also a vice” because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil “lacking or weak.” He quotes John Chrysostom: “He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong.”

…

As Gregory the Great said, “Reason opposes evil the more effectively when anger ministers at her side.”

…

Sorrow at evil without anger at evil is a fault….

I’m not alone in my concern about the ERLC’s statement about anger. New Testament scholar Robert A. Gagnon is also troubled:

I believe the unnamed author of the document…erred in claiming that Christians should not express outrage at this decision….When I read the document, this statement jumped out at me more than any other. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one for whom this was the case. Christianity Today highlighted that remark above all others (in apparent approval, unfortunately).

Jesus expressed outrage at sin repeatedly in his ministry (the cleansing of the temple is a fairly concrete case in point). So did John the Baptist (his direct criticism of Herod Antipas for taking his brother’s wife is an obvious instance). So did Paul (I would say that outrage was a hallmark of his comments on tolerance for the incestuous man in 1 Cor 5). So did John of Patmos in Revelation (comparing the Roman Empire and its emperors to a harlot and a disgusting 7-headed beast rising from the sea, a puppet of the dragon that symbolizes Satan; likewise symbolizing the provincial imperial cult leaders as a blasphemous beast rising from the earth).

Friends, if this were the Supreme Court attempting to restore the Dred Scott ruling, would it be unchristian to express “outrage”?…Democracy and liberty in America have been struck the greatest body blow in our lifetime. The action of the five lawless Justices will have enormous negative repercussions for the church corporately and Christians individually. And outrage at egregious immorality is not antithetical to love. This action by the Lawless 5 will harm many, especially those who experience same-sex attractions. We should have a godly outrage toward that.

In my view, although the statement polarizes outrage and faith (implicitly also love), the real polarization is between outrage and “niceness.”

It is troubling to have religious leaders advocating a generalized prohibition of anger. There exists evil in the world about which those who know truth should outrage. God does not enjoin followers of Christ never to feel or express anger. We need to guard how we express anger, and we must  temper anger when excessive. But we ought to feel anger about wickedness that harms those we are commanded to love.

Here are just a few evils that warrant Christian outrage:

• We should feel anger that incipient human lives are being daily snuffed out.
• We should feel anger that judges and lawmakers deem the slaughter of the unborn a “right.”
• We should have felt anger when men, women, and children were bought and sold as chattel during the slave era.
• We should have felt anger when black men were lynched.
• We should have felt anger when Plessy v. Ferguson was passed by another group of feckless justices, reinforcing the practice of treating blacks as inferior to whites.
• We should have felt anger over the imprisonment and extermination of Jews by the Nazis.
• We should feel anger when girls and women today are bought or traded for the twisted pleasure of men.
• We should feel anger when children are abused and adults conceal and facilitate their abuse.
• We should feel anger about the existence of child pornography.
• We should feel anger when teachers introduce our little ones to perversion in our taxpayer-funded schools and call it good.
• We should feel anger when teachers in taxpayer-funded schools teach that all family structures are equally valuable.
• We should feel angry when our laws and policies embody the false and destructive idea that children have no inherent right to both a mother and father.
• We should feel angry over parades that celebrate perversion in our streets and when our elected officials join in the corrupt chorus rejoicing in the normalization of sodomy as an “identity” and non-marital sodomitic unions as “marriages.”
• We should be outraged when public high school “educators” teach the egregiously obscene, pro-homosexual play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes to high school students.

And we should feel outrage that parents of an eight-year-old boy permitted him to cross-dress and “vogue” in the recent New York City “pride” parade after which throngs of adults with darkened minds cackled and shrieked at the tragic spectacle of an exploited little boy in a dress sashaying across a stage.

Perhaps the ERLC marriage declaration needed to be more carefully crafted in order to make a clearer distinction between permissible and warranted righteous wrath and impermissible types of  expressions of anger. Perhaps the writer or writers could have distinguished between bitterness and appropriate anger at evil that harms. Perhaps they should have warned against excessive anger.

With all due deference to men far wiser and knowledgeable than me, I think what America needs right now is righteous anger and fearless, impassioned denunciation of a sexuality and marriage ideology that deprives children of their rights and threatens the temporal and eternal lives of men and women.

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