Ivory Tower Evangelicals Are Worried - Thoughts on "The Atlantic" Piece (Part 1)

All right, all right, well, first of all, sorry for how I sound, I'm a little bit under the weather, but I definitely wanted to get a video out today.

Before I say anything, let me just say, you know, I hope you had a good Lord's Day yesterday and a good weekend. I had a great weekend.

Actually, on Saturday, we had two people over, two families, me and my wife, and they're both ex -pastors.

Well, actually, one of them's still a pastor, but both of these guys were in churches where they stood up to the

COVID insanity. They said, hey, you know, we shouldn't have mask mandates. We're not allowed to do that, according to the scripture.

We shouldn't have a section for people that are wearing masks and a section for people that are unclean.

Like, we shouldn't have vaccine mandates, and we shouldn't have multiple services, one for the unwashed, one for the washed.

Like, the Bible doesn't let us do any of those things, and they were pushed out of their churches for that, and it was a very, you know, difficult time for them and their families and stuff like that, but the reality is that it's been such a blessing.

God has redeemed it so much, and guys, when you stand up for what the Bible actually says, what

God actually says and the truth of God, it will be difficult for a time, but it's always going to be worth it.

One of these guys recently just passed his ordination exam for the CREC, so that's a win for the kingdom of God, and then the other guy, he's in the process of building a bit of a homestead, so, you know, he's thinking ahead.

He's thinking, okay, well, I've got skills, why don't I, you know, make sure that I can feed my family, and then also, he's thinking, you know, he wants to have some sort of a farm share system for other believers.

I'm already in on that, well, at least I told him I'm in, I haven't made any payments yet, but I'm in.

I mean, chickens, pigs, cows, like the whole nine yards, vegetables, and that's a win for the kingdom of God.

You don't have to be a pastor to be building the kingdom of God, there's so many ways to do it. Excuse me.

But anyway, it's just amazing to be encouraged by their fellowship and their brotherhood and all that kind of thing, just wonderful, absolutely wonderful.

In any case, I saw this article from The Atlantic. Now, I don't read

The Atlantic, obviously, but a lot of the kind of cosmopolitan sort of snooty evangelical types that are very concerned about people like me, they do read

The Atlantic, and it's like their dream come true to ever get published by The Atlantic.

I mean, this is the most cosmopolitan, high society kind of opinion magazine that you could ever be graced to be a part of.

And so anyway, this is a hilarious article, it's really stupid, guys. It's a stupid article, it makes a lot of really stupid points, but this is also,

I think, we can use the words of this article to our strategic advantage, because I think they reveal a little bit about what scares them the most, what keeps them up at night, what they worry about, and what's working, right?

So I think that there's some strategic value to this article. Now, I saw John Harris was doing a two -part response to this, and I commented on his video.

I said, hey, I'm not going to watch this. I'm not going to watch this yet, because I want to go into it fresh. I want to have my own opinions, and I want to see how close our opinions are, because this happens all the time.

Me and John will address the same thing, and we don't coordinate ahead of time what we're going to say, but we end up saying stuff that's so similar.

But we have obviously very different styles, but I just want to see how close our opinions are here, John. So I will watch your video, but just not yet.

Not yet. I'm looking forward to that. I always like hearing what John Harris' take is on stuff like this.

So anyway, this is an article called, The Evangelical Church is Breaking Apart. Man, that sure sounds serious.

That sure sounds serious. Christians must reclaim Jesus from his church.

What is that supposed to mean? It's written by Peter Wenner. I've never heard of him, but that's okay.

And let's just jump right into it, because again, I think that there's a lot of strategic importance to some of the things he reveals here.

There's things that are working that they're upset about. This is a pretty recent article, a few weeks ago,

October 24th. And yeah, let's dive right in to this morsel of,

I don't know what it's a morsel of. Anyway, here's what it says. The election of the elders of an evangelical church is usually an uncontroversial, even unifying event.

Now, let me just stop there for a second. I don't know if that's necessarily true. I've been involved in a few scenarios where elders were highly controversial, things like that.

So I'm not so sure how true that is, but I just thought that was kind of a funny way to start. But this summer at an influential mega church in Northern Virginia, something went badly wrong.

A trio of elders didn't receive 75 % of the vote, the threshold necessary to be installed.

A small group of people inside and outside this church coordinated a divisive effort to use disinformation in order to persuade others to vote down these men as part of a broader effort to take control of this church.

David Platt, a 43 -year -old minister of McLean Bible Church and best -selling author, charged in a July 4th sermon.

Platt said church members had been misled, having been told, among other things, that three individuals nominated to be elders would advocate selling the church building to Muslims, who would convert it into a mosque.

In a second vote on July 18th, all three nominations cleared the threshold, but that hardly resolved the conflict.

Members of the church filed a lawsuit claiming that the conduct of the election violated the church constitution.

Platt, who was theologically conservative, had been accused in the months before the vote by a small but zealous group of his church, within his church, of wokeness and being left of center, of pushing a social justice agenda and promoting critical race theory, and of attempting to purge conservative members.

A Facebook page and a right -wing website have targeted Platt and his leadership. For his part, Platt, speaking to his congregation, described an email that was circulating, claiming

NBC is no longer McLean Bible Church, that it's now Melanin Bible Church.

All right, let's just stop there for example. So the case study here is McLean Bible Church, which is so hilarious because, you know, you've watched the channel, you've seen some of the documentation that people have provided me, and just, so this is such a tiny little part of the story here, so obviously you can see right off the bat that the

Atlantic, it has an agenda. Now, if you're reading the Atlantic in a serious way, and you don't know that they have an agenda, then you're just the most naive person alive.

So of course they have an agenda, but if you're in the know, you know that this is not a proper framing of what happened at McLean Bible Church.

But you see, the Atlantic is not written to you and me. The Atlantic is not written to people who spend their time hunting or fishing or, you know, growing crops.

The Atlantic is written to cosmopolitan types, men who, you know, likely carry, you know, purses and stuff like that.

Like, that's who the Atlantic is written to. It's written to high society, you know, high net income, high net worth, like those kinds of individuals, or those who aspire to be that, you know, they have a nice flat in New York or something like that.

That's who the Atlantic is written to. So he doesn't have to worry that anyone's going to fact check this.

But what you can see, though, how they're trying to scare the readers of Atlantic is, well, these are some conservative men, and they're being accused of not being conservative.

They're being accused of wokeness. And so here's the thing, guys, like, they're writing an article about this because they know that it's working.

Things are being revealed about the reality of the conservative Bible teachers, theologically conservative people, that actually really aren't all that conservative, and it's working, and so they're trying to sound the alarm here.

We gotta rally our, you know, skinny jeans brothers, and we're gonna get to work here. So right off the bat, you can see there's a fear being pushed here.

And this is so funny, NBC is no longer McLean Bible Church. Now it's Melanin. So they're still, like, their only line of defense here is they're still calling people racist, and they haven't figured out that that doesn't work anymore.

Like, this is just so revealing. They've got nothing else. Like, their guns are filled with blanks.

They've got nothing. The only thing they can do is call you a racist, and call you a racist in the most stupidest of ways, because obviously, this was a joke.

What they're trying to get across is, without saying it, of course, because the Atlantic, you know, these people are spineless in general.

What they're trying to say is someone wrote a letter that said, well, there's just too many blacks around now, and there's too many browns, and now it's become a

Melanin church. All these blacks and browns, we don't like those people. That's what he's trying to get across. But it would actually, that was a joke, because the church has become obsessed with race, obsessed with skin color, obsessed with Melanin.

And that's true. The McLean Bible Church, of course, has become obsessed with skin color and things of that.

They talk about whiteness. They talk about blackness. They talk about all these things, all the things that the whole culture's talking about.

They're not talking about the scriptural things that are actually legitimate regarding ethnicity and things like that.

No, they're actually just using the talking points of CNN and all that. So that's a joke, obviously. But they think that this works.

They think this actually still works. Well, they're going to call everyone racist. And the thing is, I think even the cosmopolitan types are starting to see through the nonsense.

Now, they don't really have a whole lot to gain to really join the fight on the good guy side.

But I think that even the cosmopolitan readers of the Atlantic understand that this is stupid, guys.

It's like, obviously, they're not really racist here. They're just complaining about the wokeness that's actually real.

Anyway, let's continue. So anyway, it's a funny case study, because obviously he leaves out all of the details which, you know, mitigate whatever he's charging here.

What happened at McLean Bible Church is happening all over the evangelical world. I agree. Influential leaders such as theologian

Russell Moore and Bible teacher Beth Moore felt compelled to leave the Southern Baptist Convention.

Both were targeted by right -wing elements within the SBC. The Christian Post, an online evangelical newspaper, published an op -ed by one of its contributors criticizing religious conservatives like Platt, Russell Moore, Beth Moore, and Ed Stetzer, the executive director of Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, as, quote, progressive

Christian figures who commonly champion leftist ideology. In a matter of months, four pastors resigned from Bethlehem Baptist Church, a flagship church in Minneapolis.

One of those pastors, Brian Pickering, cited mistreatment by elders, dominating leadership, bullying, spiritual abuse, and toxic culture.

Wow! Toxic culture! I mean, that's the worst kind of culture you can imagine. Political conflicts are hardly the whole reason for the turmoil, but according to news accounts, they played a significant role, particularly on matters having to do with race.

So you see, they're hitting that drumbeat. These are religious conservatives. How could they say they're leftists?

Progressive Christian figures. I mean, Russell Moore, David Platt, these are the stalwart conservatives.

Yeah, sure, I know Beth Moore is preaching even though the Bible says that she should not, but she's a stalwart conservative.

I think they think if they say it enough that it's going to be true. Guys, the jig is up. The Atlantic, guys, the jig is up.

We know that Russell Moore is a lifelong Democrat. We know that he's involved in these socialist kind of programs where there's some dark money involved allegedly.

We know all about this stuff now, and you can't trick us anymore. You might be able to trick some at the

Atlantic, but I don't think you're really going to even be able to trick them very much longer. You see, but the thing is, they wrote this article, and it's a fearful article.

This is fear porn. You know what I mean? This is fear porn. I mean, they think that people are going to rush to the defense of Russell Moore.

I mean, yeah, sure, some of his lackeys will, but most people understand that he's a weasel.

You know what I mean? Most people understand that Beth Moore is a little crazy. They understand these things, and Platt, he's just a shady character in my opinion, and Ed Stetzer.

I mean, has anyone ever liked Ed Stetzer? I don't know. I don't know, but anyway, let's continue.

Quote, nearly everyone tells me that there is at the very least a small group in nearly every evangelical church complaining, agitating against teaching or policies that aren't sufficiently conservative or anti -woke, a pastor and prominent figure within evangelical world told me.

Listen to this one, ready? This is a quotation. There's a small group of, at least in every church, of conservative evangelicals that aren't happy with the obsession with race and this kind of thing, and he's a prominent pastor.

He's prominent, but listen, like others with whom I spoke with about this topic, he requested anonymity in order to speak candidly.

It's everywhere, and here's where we start to see that our strategies here are actually working.

Like, this man is scared to put his name on a very mild thing to say.

I mean, this is nothing that serious here, but he's like, he can't even put his name on it.

He's embarrassed because he understands that the reality is that these people are not in line with the

Scripture, and if he's going to be allowing them to come in, people are going to start to look at him and say, okay, well hold on a second.

Are you on the side of truth, or are you on the side of CNN? Let's figure this one out, Mr. Pastor Who Only Will Speak Anonymously.

My goodness, if this is the truth, guys, this is the thing that I think this article shows us. We are dominating this conversation right now.

Dominating it. Because the thing is, these are pastors who have no spine.

They won't put their name on things that they're claiming are the truth. If you won't put your name on that, and you call yourself a prominent figure, a pastor, a prominent pastor, and you won't put your name on a small little comment that's not really that controversial,

I mean, this is definitely true. There's a group in probably every legitimate church that's like, well wait, hold on a second.

When did you turn into a Marxist? You know what I mean? Hold on a second. Why are you teaching things about race that aren't in the

Bible? Of course there should be. I mean, we should be happy that there's a crowd in every single church that's thinking those things.

Because listen, Paul didn't get upset with the Bereans when they checked out the Bible to make sure that Paul was right about the

Bible. Paul commended them. He commended them. Maybe I'm confusing my story, but they were commended in the

Scriptures, let's say. I can't remember if it was Paul that commended them, but the Scripture commends them. It said the

Bereans were more noble. They didn't just take his word for it. They checked the Scriptures. And what's happening here is this anonymous wimp of a pastor.

Let's just face it. He's a wimp. This anonymous pastor is like, I can't believe, can you believe it?

There's a group in every single church. This is the horror that they just don't take our word for it when we say that just whiteness is wicked.

It's just whiteness is the problem. Why evangelicalism? It's like, they don't just take our word. They look at the Scripture and they're like, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, pastor.

Yeah, you said this about whiteness. That doesn't seem to be legitimate. That's partial, man.

Partiality is something you shouldn't be engaging in. But so can you explain yourself? Like, oh man, those agitators, those

Bereans, man, they're just agitators. They're divisive. I can't believe it.

Man, you could see the attitude. It's like the attitude here, the Scripture presents this attitude that the preacher is not above authority.

They're not above any kind of criticism. That's not what the Scripture teaches. The Scripture commends those who seek the real authority, the words of God, to make sure that the man who's coming saying he's preaching the word of God is actually preaching the word of God.

The Bible commends that kind of behavior. And you can see that those, the Atlantic, and those who would run to the

Atlantic to tell their sad story anonymously, they don't see it that way.

They see themselves as up here and they can't be refuted. They can't be disputed.

They can't be questioned because those people, the unwashed, they're down here. I mean, those

Bereans, those filthy Bereans, that's the attitude. It's this elitist nonsense.

They won't put their name on it either. And that's the thing. Like, look, there are good reasons to be anonymous.

Don't get me wrong. There are good reasons to be anonymous. But the reality is, if you're a pastor, I mean,

I can't even for the life of me figure out why you'd want to be anonymous.

If you're supposedly supposed to be standing for the truth, you're not supposed to be apologizing for God's truth.

You're not supposed to be limp -wristed about God's truth. You're supposed to be firm, firm in your faith.

If you're not firm in faith, you won't be firm at all. And so you'll run to the Atlantic and anonymously, oh, it's so hard to be a pastor.

By the way, this article, it's like the worst or best, however you want to see it, poor me, it's hard to be a pastor article

I've ever seen. You know, you guys watch this channel, you know that I have no patience for that poor me routine.

It's hard to be a pastor. Everybody's job is hard, right? We get it. The last person that should be poor me -ing is the one who's preaching the words of God and who's doing the ministry of God.

That's the last person who should be doing the poor me routine. But by the way, the poor me routine, it shouldn't be done by anybody.

Grow a pair, grow up, get a spine, and get to work. My goodness. My goodness.

Let's continue. Getting heated here, bro. This is a good way to start the week.

Michael O. Emerson, a sociology professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told me that he and his research team have spent the past three years studying race and Christianity.

Oh, wow. I mean, thank goodness nobody's been doing that. So grateful for Michael O.

Emerson. My goodness. The divisions and conflicts we found are intense, easily more intense than I have seen in my 25 years of studying the topic, he told me.

What this adds up to, he said, is an emerging day of reckoning within the church. I believe that.

I believe there is a day of reckoning coming, and I don't think it's going to be pretty. He continues, The aggressive, disruptive, and unforgiving mindset that characterizes so much of our politics has found a home in many evangelical churches.

I'm sorry, American churches. As a person of the Christian faith who has spent most of my adult life attending evangelical churches,

I wanted to understand the splintering of churches, communities, and relationships. I reached out to dozens of pastors, theologians, academics, and historians, as well as a seminary president and people involved in campus ministry, all voiced concern.

I understand why, because, yeah, well, we'll continue. We'll talk about it. The coronavirus pandemic, of course, has placed religious communities under extraordinary strain.

Everyone in America has felt its effects. For many Christians, it's been a bar to gathering and worshiping together, sharing communion and performing baptisms, and saying common prayers, and participating in rituals and liturgy.

Not being in community destabilized what has long been a core sense of Christian identity.

By the way, guys, let's take a step out of the article for a second. I have no idea if the author is actually a believer or not, but for us believers, this is the

Lord's doing. You understand? This is the Lord's doing. The Lord has done this.

I think God is doing so much work right now revealing who's who and what's what, and He did it at the key time, right?

There was already all this animosity and all this false teaching in the church and all of that, and then

He brings this coronavirus to bear, and whether or not it's a real disease, whatever, that's irrelevant, because God's active in everything here.

So He brings this to bear, and then the fault lines are just so clear now, and it's like all the woke churches are also, they don't want to meet for worship, they don't want to have communion because it's too risky, they can't sing songs, and it's not exactly perfect, but if you had the

Venn diagrams of the two groups, it's almost identical to the woke churches versus non -woke churches.

Not exactly, but it's amazing how clear God has made this, and it's just like, look, if you're a pastor and you're not laying hands on the sick and having worship the way

God has commanded you to have worship, without partiality, without this, like, it's clear who's obeying

Christ here, and who's just doing whatever the culture tells them. It's no accident that the culture is totally woke, and the culture totally wants you to do everything the

CDC says. It's no accident that the same pastors that are totally woke are also wanting you to do everything the

CDC says. That's no accident. God has been so merciful to us, guys. This is one of the conversations

I had this weekend, just how merciful God has been to us to reveal to us in such a clear way who's who, who's real, who's just a hireling.

By the way, this article goes—accidentally, not intentionally—shows you, like, the prototypical hireling.

It's unreal. But anyway, I don't know if we'll get to it in this video, maybe the second one. But anyway, let's continue. I'm very glad that he brings up the pandemic here, because I think that that was so helpful.

You know, that was so helpful. I mean, he's presenting it as very stressful. Oh, man. Cry me a river.

It's stressful. The pandemic is too—the thing is, like, there's not that many professions that God tells you exactly what to do.

Like, if you're a carpenter, like, God doesn't give you the plans for how to build a table or how to build a chair the right way.

Like, you know, if you're a recruiter like myself, like, he doesn't tell me the exact strategies to find an

Android engineer or whatever it is. Like, he doesn't—but there is one profession where he basically tells you what to do.

Now, he doesn't give you all the details, but he tells you what your job is. He tells you what the outline is, what the skeleton is, and that's pastor.

So, you know, cry me a river. It's hard, but you have the instruction booklet. It's hard because you have to disappoint people.

But the thing is, God tells you what to do. I mean, cry me a river. Seriously. Man. By the way, guys,

I don't want you to think that I don't have sympathy for pastors. I do. It's a hard job. It's a heavy mantle.

I get it. I get it. Nobody wants to disappoint people. Nobody likes confrontation. That's going to come up in a minute.

Me and my Sunday school class talked about confrontation on Sunday. You know, nobody likes it.

But, like, if you're a pastor, like, that's what you signed up for, right? You signed up for being the guy to somehow in a loving way confront people when they need to be confronted.

Like, you signed up for it. And so, like, I'm sorry if I'm not shedding a tear that now you have to deal with confrontation.

I'm not. I'll help you. And I'll pray for you. But I'm not shedding a tear because that's exactly the job that God commands you to do.

You're going to have to be confrontational in certain situations. And this pandemic was the opportunity.

But unfortunately, too many pastors are trying to figure out how to spend their cultural capital with the pandemic.

I mean, it's just like, that didn't come from the Bible. My goodness. Let's continue. All right.

But there's more to fractures than just COVID -19. After all, many of the forces that are splitting churches were in motion well before the pandemic hit.

The pandemic exposed and exacerbated weakness and vulnerabilities, habits of the mind and heart that already existed.

The root of the discord lies in the fact that many Christians have embraced the worst aspects of our culture and our politics.

When the Christian faith is politicized, churches become repositories of grace, not of grace, but of grievances.

Places where tribal identities are reinforced, where fears are nurtured, and where aggression and nastiness are sacralized.

The result is not only wounding the nation. It is having a devastating impact on the Christian faith.

Now, there's some to agree with there, and there's some to disagree with there. I agree, though, that many of the worst aspects of our culture are being taught now from the pulpit as if they were good.

So that's why I do my YouTube channel, because I started seeing, oh, wait, Platt started to sound like Joe Scarborough.

Like Russell Moore started to sound like, you know, who's that woman? Mika? Mika?

Russell Moore started to sound like Mika. You know what I mean? Like I started noticing that. And so, yeah, I agree with that.

I don't think I agree in the way he thinks I agree. But this whole thing here is trying to drive a wedge between the

Christian faith and politics. And I've said this many times. How could you be more political than one who says

Jesus Christ is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords? That is a deeply, deeply political statement.

There is no wedge here between faith and politics. Your faith must determine your politics.

It must, because Jesus Christ has commands for his people in every area of their life.

That includes politics. So you better have a holy, righteous, and just politics that comes from the scriptures, that comes from the good and necessary consequence of the scripture, but also is within the confines of the scripture.

Because Jesus Christ is the King. He's the King of all the kings. He's the Lord of all the lords.

That's a political statement. He should be the lawgiver. He should be the one who tells us how to organize our governments and how to organize our law system and how to adjudicate people when they commit crimes and stuff like that.

He's the King of kings, unless we're just saying that because it's a nice thing to put on a coffee mug. Because if that's you, which

I think quite frankly is a lot of the Atlantic readers, that's just a platitude. That's just something you say.

That's a bumper sticker. If that's you, then you're not in the faith. You're not a believer.

In fact, you're an unbeliever if that's you. But the thing is, the Christian faith is a deeply political faith.

Here's what it's not, though. Here's what it's not. It's not partisan. And what I mean by that, when you talk about partisanship, it's like, well, the

Republicans can't do any wrong. Or the Democrats can't do any wrong. The example I like to give of this was a friend of mine that used to be a friend of mine, no longer.

But he was a Jewish guy. He was a Democrat, typical Jewish Democrat. And so I remember he was really against George Bush, George W.

Bush, because of all the wars in Iran, Iraq, whatever it was. I forget where the countries were. Just somewhere in the

Middle East. Very against the wars, because that was the official position at the time. And so Obama gets elected.

And if you remember, one of the first things he did was he extended those wars. He said, oh, yeah, we're going to stay in war.

We're going to win this. And I'll never forget. I went to him and I said, so you support this? And he's like, yeah, oh, yeah, I totally support it.

Barack Obama, I mean, definitely. And I said, but don't you remember when you said that this was the most evilest thing in the world?

And I'll never forget what he told me. I'll never forget. He said this. He looked at me. He was dead serious. He said, well,

Obama must know something that we don't. Obama must know something. See, that's a partisan position.

No matter what the Democrat does, even if it's the very thing you said you hate, because you're a partisan, that's your team, you're going to go with it.

See, that's the difference. Jesus Christ makes political statements. When you say

Christ is king, unless you're just saying it as a platitude, like I think, again, Atlantic subscribers do say it as a platitude, that's a political statement.

But it's not partisan. It's not I'm supporting the Republicans no matter what. It's not I'm supporting the

Democrats regardless. It's not like that. So anyway, let's continue next.

It looks like this is the first section, and we're going to go into this, because I find this article to be so revealing on strategy, what's working, what we should continue doing, where we should double our efforts, where we should enhance the pressure because it's working.

And it shows you the attitude of the people on the other side, the passers on the other side.

They're hirelings in the most definitive sense of the word, and the reality is when they're hirelings, that means that the pressure goes on and they're going to run for the hills.

Guys, we cannot lose this battle because this is a battle over the truth, and we have the truth on our side.

Jesus Christ is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and he will not be defeated. And so this article encourages me so much.

It's so unintentionally funny as well. So let's continue this next time. Thank you so much for watching.