Across the tattered landscape of “conservative” Christianity an interesting divide is taking shape. The division mirrors a broader political and cultural schism. The Nationalist-Populist/Globalist-Elitist dynamic has an often ignored religious dimension. The battle between the unwashed hoi polloi and their elitist masters—a division that increasingly defines modern politics- has come to church.
Regrettably, the division between Evangelical elites and pew-sitting deplorables extends far and wide. While secular institutions take up arms to “tear down the patriarchy” and root out “white privilege,” the same conflict rages within the most conservative precincts of the Christian church.
The infection has seeped far beyond the bastions of mainline Protestantism and into denominations such as the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), America’s largest Protestant denomination, which has more than 47,000 congregations.
Post-modern assumptions have been smuggled into conservative churches, denominations and parachurch ministries via the Trojan Horse of “racial reconciliation,” “social justice,” and the #ChurchToo movement. Teaching and doctrine borrowed from Black Liberation Theology, Critical Race Theory and Intersectional Feminism are being proclaimed from pulpits, conference lecterns and the Twitter feeds of Evangelical spokesmen and leaders.
Back in 1995, Samuel Francis prophesied the growing liberalization of traditionally conservative churches and denominations. In an infamous column written for the Washington Times, which led to the loss of his position as a staff columnist, Francis criticized the SBC for approving a resolution apologizing for slavery.
Francis predicted that churches subordinating scripture to liberal morality would accept a “bastardized version of Christian ethics” permeated by the “pseudo-Christian poison of equality.” “Now that they’ve decided to join the parade toward that destination,” wrote Francis, “We can expect them to adopt some even more modern resolutions that will pave the road for them.”
Ever the prophet, Francis’s prediction took roughly twenty years to come to fruition. Aside from a ritual denunciation marking the 150th anniversary of Dred Scott, the SBC avoided racial issues until 2015 when it passed a resolution on “racial reconciliation,” urging affiliated churches and entities to increase representation of non-White leadership.
The goalposts quickly shifted with talk of reconciliation cast aside in favor of more aggressive denunciations of “structural racism” and “White privilege” along with broader attacks on historical symbols and the Dissident Right.
In 2016, the SBC repudiated the display of the Confederate Flag–a rejection of its own founding; in 2017 it denounced the “Alt Right” and “white supremacy,” neither of which were defined nor running rampant in SBC churches; in 2018 SBC organizations held conferences lionizing Martin Luther King Jr.; and in 2019 the convention adopted a resolution endorsing the use of Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality as an analytical tool.
Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public-policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, spent most of 2016 assailing Donald Trump and his voters. Given that 81% of White Evangelicals voted for Trump, this represented an attack on the folks filling Southern Baptist pews and paying his salary through the SBC cooperative program, through which affiliated SBC churches support state convention and SBC missions and ministries.
Moore, who once called Jesus an illegal immigrant, said that Trump was breathing life into the White Supremacist movement. He compared Trump’s clerical supporters to Kool Aid drinking cultists. Describing himself as a survivor of “Bible Belt America,” he called Trump a “Bronze Age warlord” and accused his Christian supporters of worshiping a golden calf.
As looters have burned and pillaged cities and mobs of iconoclasts set upon the cultural legacy of America, SBC leaders bent the knee before Black Lives Matter and poured gasoline on the proverbial fire.
Southern Baptist Convention President J. D. Greear denounced phrases like “all lives matter” saying, “Southern Baptists, we need to say it clearly as a gospel issue: Black lives matter.”
Greear also warned fellow Baptists to refrain from bringing facts to bear on any discussion of “systemic racism.” “Let’s spare each other the quoting of stats right now,” Greear said. Tossing around biblical tropes about “neighbor love” and “weeping with those who weep,” pastors have cancelled data-driven analysis and replaced it wholesale with an empathy cut off from all other virtues.
In an attempt at triangulation and “gospel winsomeness,” Gospel Coalition editor and ERLC communications specialist Joe Carter called Confederate soldiers traitors. He penned a rambling diatribe advocating the removal of Confederate monuments while meekly offering that “reasonable Christians may disagree” as to whether George Washington’s ownership of slaves means that images of the indispensable man should be purged from public life.
Demanding a change to the state flag, the Mississippi Baptist Convention made the audacious claim that “the need to change the flag is a matter of discipleship for every follower of Jesus Christ.”
Increasingly, the clergy and those training the coming generation of pastors have embraced emancipatory politics and critical theory turning politics into a Manichean struggle between the “White Patriarchy” and “people of color” and “oppressed” women.
But good men are beginning to rise, shining a light on the infiltration of seminaries and entire denominations by postmodernism and Critical Race Theory. Others are finally beginning to teach their flocks about the poison of Cultural Marxism, identity politics, so-called “White Privilege,” and social justice.
Christians looking to slow the spread of social pathogens wreaking havoc in the body politic should stop tithing to institutions and churches that are taking a hammer to what remains of Western Civilization and the faith that sustains it. Instead, they should give resources, financial and otherwise, to the relative handful of shepherds that have not bent the knee to Baal.
-By Scot Olmstead, a writer from the Bluegrass State
O I’m a good old rebel, now that’s just what I am. For this “fair land of freedom” I do not care at all. I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won, And I don’t want no pardon for anything I done.
That I am Eastern Orthodox is not an accident, for it was not easy to learn such a complex faith that was so foreign to me.
It’s been very very worthwhile, not just because it has nurtured my faith to a degree which I never could have imagined, before I had joined the old church, but, because if I feel I am associated with the only church left that is not out of their minds.
Plainly put, I do not know how Southern Baptists can stand their denomination, but, there again, I do know how they do it, because my wife and I often attend a Whites Only Free Baptist church that is local to us, when we do not wish to make the long drive to an Orthodox Church.
What is it that they, the congregation of this otherwise totally charming Freewill Southern Baptist Church do do?
They act like nothing is going on.
Out of sight, out of mind is the strategy – and, accordingly, the Stars & Stripes flies very prominently outside.
The conservatism of Eastern Orthodoxy is largely a facade. This is especially true of Orthodoxy in the West. For example, Archbishop Elpidophoros recently joined protesters in New York. Commenting on his decision:
“As a person and as an Archbishop, I must tell you that my decision to take part in the peaceful protest march for equality was not just a choice, but my duty as a Christian and as a Greek,” he explained.
“Each of us has our own voice to speak, but when we unite with our fellow citizens, with our fellow human beings, we can create a harmonious whole that will speak to fundamental human values,” he added.
https://orthochristian.com/132099.html
All of this is to say that Eastern Orthodoxy while being charming in some respects, isn’t above the fray.
@Lewis…
“The conservatism of Eastern Orthodoxy is largely a facade.”
That statement, Sir, is wildly inaccurate, and reveals that you know what you read, not what you see in person.
“All of this is to say that Eastern Orthodoxy while being charming in some respects, isn’t above the fray.”
Absolutely right – the Orthodox Church is very definitely NOT above ‘the fray’ ,but stuck in the middle of it, because it is the only institution of the West that has not gone over to the enemy, and, thus, is a target of those who control The West.
That said, some parts of it have gone over, including the Arch-patriarch Bartholomew and numerous clergy of the American Orthodox Church.
We do not belong to them,, however, and, thus ,are not subjected to any balderdash, in any way.
Thank you so very much for chiming in!
Out of all the jurisdictions, the Greeks in America are the ones who are most likely to be converged by SJWs and feminists, even if individual presbyters may be traditional. The SJWs and feminists have control over Greek Orthodox academic institutions and are influential in the archdiocese. The Slavs are generally very conservative. I imagine the Antiochians are in the middle, though the presbyters who represent the Antiochians in mass media seem to be more based than not.
As there is no single American jurisdiction for all of the Eastern Orthodox (thanks mostly to the Greeks who wanted to keep their own money for themselves, or something), don’t take the Greeks to be representative of Orthodoxy in America.
Which shows the problem of Orthodoxy and its intellectual successor, Protestantism. The lack of unity and trust in the vicar of Christ’s authority, means eventually you have SJWs on some churches and hardcore trads in others, but all can remain “Baptist” or “Orthodox” without contradiction nor even infighting. This can keep the peace for a bit, until eventually the differences and heresies pile up as all churches compete with each other; then, each faction is allowed to keep themselves connected to their larger church, irregardless of righteousness, for the sake of “not being authoritarian, like the Catholics with their Romish popery”. Thus you have the situation of today.
True, you might say Catholicism can and has been subverted from within and taken over precisely due to its unity and authority. But, these subverting heresies arose outside Catholicism, and some in the above mentioned denominations too. Besides, in Catholicism there’s been schisms (friendly with sedevacantists, so should know) and councils and persecutions and inner-fighting, and many other events that shook up and fixed the One True Church in the past when needed, without having to disband unity permanently (sedevacantists hope their struggle is temporary, and claim they are justified by canon law, or so they say) or destroy the concept of divine authority (sedevacantists still believe the See of Rome is the authority, just that it is vacant and/or stolen; other denoms don’t believe in a see). Divine authority, and the use of it, are sorely needed now.
Besides, the tradition of authority of Catholicism still holds even more traditional values in some instances, for example Francis may be a 70s prog Jesuit but is still opposed to gender theory. Sadly he cannot see that his abuse of authority decreeing that it’s okay to give sacraments to the divorced and remarried, will generate more misguided teens with gender dysphoria in a couple more fatherless generations.
At any rate, I truly pray Protestant denominations get closer to home, at least in morals, else they will be made to bend the knee. Lest we forget the Apostle, he says we only bend the knee to Christ. Also, since Protestants are prone to revivals, one would hope a good ole one happens – though then again, it would seem that today such a revival might be hijacked by the heretic and/or antiwhite forces, which are joined hand in glove*.
—
*True, the colored can be good Christians just as whites can be terrible ones (allowing for IQ differences in modes of sin too); but also true, whites have been defending and spreading Christendom for longer, and their civilization has been shaped by the Faith for longer, and for the better I reckon. Thus the Lord wants them, and all races and ethnies, to live and have homelands too, as mixed or as pure as they’d like. In fact, considering the location of the Holy See of the Vicar of Christ, you could say He wants the lands of whites to remain important… Including the North American nations (Dixie, New England/Union-America, British Canada, Quebec, you can break them down more if you wanna lol)…
Christ’s sacrifice for our salvation takes precedence over mundane politics. If the SBC under JDG has actually taken this stance (heretofore I have valued his ministry when I have listened to it on MB radio & am shocked if this is true) then it seems to me they are sullying their discipleship. The Gospel of Christ is offered to Black people as freely as it is to all peoples of the world. They don’t get any special coupons or discounts because of their skin color or collective history.
Agreed. Not to mention, the Gospel has elevated all races, obviously while keeping their differences, but bettering them overall. White Christendom surpassed the pagan past, and to this day Muslim white nations trail behind the rest, including ethnically-related neighbors. Black Christendom, even with its differences and heresies (which whites also incur on, save in different ways, due to IQ), also surpasses the ultra-barbarous conditions of pagan Africa. You could even say Asian Christians tend to be more humanistic than the pagan ones, who in spite of high IQ keep falling for crap like the plandemic, or want to replace themselves with robots…
I was once a Southern Baptist…gave up on the SBC years ago, and will never return.
@Anthony…
Even if you did wish to return, Sir, you could not – because there is hardly anything left of ‘The Southern Baptist Denomination’.
Nowadays, it is more aptly dubbed, The Reconstructed Southern Franchise of the new England Congregationalist Puritan Church.
Nothing is “shocking” to me anymore. And certainly no radical thing that happens within the SBC and its affiliates. During the public railroading of Paige Patterson it became perfectly clear to me that this is an organization that has been thoroughly polluted, top-to-bottom, by fanaticism, and is now all but irredeemable. Granted that the fanatics within – the infiltrators – had mostly kept a fairly low profile and put on a good facade prior to that episode, but they were merely awaiting the right moment to present itself to come out of the proverbial closet and show the world who they really are and have been all along, and what they are really all about.
The heavy-handed influence of unsexed Yankee transplant Karen Swallow-Prior and her ilk is key to understanding how far the SBC had truly fallen prior (no pun intended) to that episode. In an effort and a rush to ‘sieze the moment’ and of course to not let a good crisis go to waste, Ms. Swallow-Prior (she gets compliments for the hyphen!) drafted a letter to the Board of Trustees of Patterson’s Seminary in which she wrote in part,
The doctrines and beliefs that women/people like Karen Swallow-Prior believe in are, in truth, the doctrines of devils and of an heretic. Below is a link to an article containing a short list.
https://pulpitandpen.org/2018/01/31/liberty-university-michael-vick-preach-animal-rights-not-satire/
And please don’t let it be lost on you, dear reader, that this heretical she-devil, Ms. Swallow-Prior, somehow managed to fly mostly under the radar, yet in plain sight, at that bastion of “conservative” Christianity and “equal opportunity employer(™)”, Liberty University, where she taught the doctrines of demons to her students for twenty-one years. This woman is the epitome – the poster girl – of the unsexed, childless, logical product of Women’s Rights Women Dr. Dabney wrote about so long ago. To wit:
And,
@T. Morris…
Thank you for your thoroughly thorough and thoughtful comment.
As a Southern male, it’s hard to evade the notion that much of our society would like me to feel as though I were a used tampon, in need of being discarded.
What really gets me is that they so gleefully target us for obviation, all the while declaring how concerned they are to make everyone feel important!
As to Miss Prior : —— I can only say that it is my belief that those Whites who come to The South, from cities, must live here 30 years before they are allowed to vote, those who come from rural areas 5 years.
That The Supreme Court has ruled anyone can vote within 2 months, and that our states in Dixie allow this, simply blows my mind.
That will give them some time to figure out where they are.
Thanks again!
Dear Ivan,
Thank you, sir, for the compliment, and for taking the time to respond to my comment. I enjoy reading your comments here as well; it’s always nice to know one is not alone in this nutty world we live in – a veritable lunatic asylum, run by the craziest inmates.
You wrote:
Yeah, better writers and thinkers than me (than I) have pointed out the self-contradictory nature and actual insanity of liberalism before and in all manner of ways. But pointing such things out has no effect on liberals because liberals are not rational thinkers. But of course by “everyone,” such people really mean only to include everyone who think and act and conduct themselves according to the prescribed liberal dogma. Which of course means they automatically exclude everyone else as essentially sub-human. The only exception to this is the U.E. – the unprincipled exception, and I’m not especially prepared to get into all that at the moment.
You wrote:
I’d take that. Besides giving them time to figure out where they are – the ones who moved to the South in spite of restrictions on voting – such a policy would also serve as a strong incentive for most to stay where they are, as well as serve as a real prohibition against the insatiable impulse to violate the principle of “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
You wrote:
Well, here again, literally nothing surprises me about how the Supremes rule on this, that or the other. I mean, any body of persons denominated a “court” or whatever else, who deem themselves the “final arbiters” in matters of reserved powers – that is, powers reserved to the states or to the People; who invent Constitutional principles out of thin air (e.g., the doctrine of “Incorporation”); who hold that Congress (meaning the U.S. Congress) has an indisputable authority to “occupy a field and intend a complete ouster” willy nilly, is a body of tyrants and despots literally capable of ruling anything conceivable whenever the notion strikes them. As for Dixian states going along with all of that, and in fact embracing it – well, that’s another matter, but I think it tells us, above all, Yankeeization of our states has been very effective, albeit it took many decades to achieve.
In closing, let me say that I actually intended to be even more thorough in the above comment, but I ran out of time so cut it off short. I’ll try to get back to it later as I’m, once again, running short on time. Thanks again for giving me something to climb on my soap box about. 🙂
@T Morris…
Thank you, Sir, for your many kind words and, as per usual, for your thorough commentary! Even the layout of your comments is excellent!
At this point I have nothing to add, other than the fact I agree with your statements and reflections, which is nothing unusual.
May The Good Lord continue to bless you and yours!
The modern churches worship the Goddess Egalite and her only begotten Son, the holy and sinless Negro.