In the UnFriend Zone

We could care less what the world thinks

“Though there be those that hate her,
and false sons in her pale,
against the foe or traitor
she ever shall prevail.”

The Church’s One Foundation

It’s been a hot minute since the church cared less what the world thinks of us.

(Is that fair statement? If it doesn’t apply to you, perhaps skip to the end.)

For a long time we were liked. The Western church has had a fair stint in the warm glow of societal approval. Through the last couple of generations in America, it was fashionable enough to attend church, or be part of the “religious right”, the “moral majority” or identify as a “values voter”. Washington was happy to hear what evangelical leaders thought of its policies and took note if the church was offended by something it did.

As indifference towards the church increased, cultural engagement tactics were deployed to promote the presence of Christianity, which Aaron Renn points out. Perhaps we thought we were winning souls, mistaking cultural influence for spiritual victories. Our hearts thrilled – at least, just a little – when any Christian artist had a “crossover” hit in the charts, or when some vaguely Christian-adjacent book or movie was discussed around water coolers and mornings shows across America. Who doesn’t like it when their tribe is “seen”? It was enough to feel we were still relevant.

But for all this time, it’s my guess that most of the heavy lifting in favor of Christianity’s popularity was being done by the fading influence of America’s Christian founding. But that is now being pushed aside by the slow avalanche of a woke and secular religion. The 2014 Obergefell decision showed that the public was more than ready to accept a court’s definition of marriage, rather than God’s. And the fallout after Dobbs has revealed that much of America would rather err on the side of a “woman’s autonomy” than take a clear stand on life. The pandemic showed that governments were did not see churches as any different than gyms, schools or skate parks.

Now, we are well and truly ensconced in Renn’s negative world. Openly professing faith or endeavoring to live by your convictions is unlikely to open any doors; in fact it may cost you dearly. Given that the change has been a rapid one, being bumped down the popularity ladder is a hard pill to swallow. It is not nice to be unfriended.

Jesus’ church being at odds with the world is not new, of course. He said we would have tribulation in this world. But it seems that ingrained habits are making it harder to quantify the assault or identify its origin. Being at ease for so long has dulled our perception of the fact that we are still in Babylon. Unlike the early saints, our willingness to let the truth offend sinners, to appear peculiar to those around, or to suffer for our faith has been gathering dust.

However, being beholden to the praise of men is always bound to place the church in a precarious position. It is by means of smooth talk and flattery that deceivers find an audience for their destructive ideas. They’re just here to “start a conversation” or help us “do better”.

Journalist Meghan Basham has been sounding an alarm about the subtle co-opting of the church by progressive activists for some time. Talking about her new book, she says the desire to be liked and rewarded by the culture, to feel like Christians have a seat at the table with the powerful, has left the church unguarded against a lot of progressive nonsense.

Progressive policies have often hit what Basham calls the “evangelical firewall”. The bloc represents around 30% of the U.S. electorate and policy makers know they need to win over at least a portion of it to get their radical ideas across the line. Realizing Christians are driven by deep convictions, Basham says well-funded progressive organizations gave up badgering and shaming the church into conforming to the values of a secularizing culture. Instead they decided to exploit our desire to be liked and be seen to be doing good, even using our own lore against us. Basham goes as far as claiming that schisms over sexuality, marriage and women which have recently rankled or split apart Methodist, Presbyterian and Southern Baptist groups are a direct result of the influence of leftist political organizations.

Writing at Capital Research, Neil Mahgami explains the thinking of a wealthy globalist such as George Soros when surveying the “untapped potential” of the church:

“Consider how much more powerful an explanation of a policy issue becomes, especially with religious audiences, when it can be mated to a faith-based moral narrative. Do not conclude, however, that [George] Soros or the staff of his foundations have a special regard for religious organizations. The latter are mere conveniences, pre-assembled vehicles bearing Soros’s political concerns at top speed down the highways of the democratic process.”

And we seem to fall for the ploy far too often. Basham paints an indicting picture of evangelical leaders¹, only too keen to chase money and influence, allowing worldly ideas to infiltrate their churches. Front organizations (with names such as Peter Drucker or the Clinton Foundation attached) have cleverly disguised themselves as “Christian”, even brazenly adding “evangelical” to their names. These promote #metoo standards of dealing with abuse, diversity quotas, roles for women and setting up task forces to deal with racial grievances, in a campaign of trickle down influence.

Perhaps the “muscular Christianity” of prior generations would have been distracted by an appeal to workaholism, or acetic legalism, or obsession with discipline. After all, every age has a ditch that it is in danger of falling in. But in our feminized age, we are susceptible to a bleeding heart pitch. Progressives can sell their anti-Christian policies because they sound like the loving, fair and compassionate thing. Nobody wants to be called a bigot.

The Marxist edges are rounded off, of course. You won’t hear about government seizing control of production or employing violence for a cause. We might twig if we thought all these disparate messages were actually part of a globalist agenda. But if you listen carefully, you will hear the oppression and justice narratives. All of them designed to turn clear issues like abortion or marriage or sexuality into fuzzy or complicated things, while turning issues of Christian liberty – climate or firearms or immigration – into concrete non-negotiables.

Instead of telling Christians they need to get on board with climate activism, it’s called “creation care”. Affirmation for LGBT identities becomes “pronoun hospitality”. Discussions about race become exhortations to love neighbor and die to self. (Southern Seminary’s former provost says white people will never shake their original sin of racism until they have a resurrected body.) Open border messaging paints Jesus as a refugee. Gun control is framed as a “gospel issue.” And if you’re thinking about consulting the Bible before you vote, you might be a Christian nationalist.

Sunday school kids being taught about their white privilege?

Lobbyists telling Washington that the church supports illegal immigration?

Sermons on climate change?

Not to mention the assault on churches that came in the form of pandemic measures. Again, church leaders allowed NIH director Francis Collins to manipulate the sheep in their care, inviting him into their pulpits and conferences. In a flattery offensive, he assured Christians they had an important role to play in promoting compliance to the covid regime.

High-profile pastors didn’t mind having such a powerful, self-professed Christian share their stage; after all he would lend intellectual heft to our insistence that Christianity is a rational faith. Collins’ evangelical ambassadors urged pastors to get their parishioners to vaccinate, lockdown and call out “misinformation”. “I just tell them, when you get vaccinated, post a picture and say, ‘So thankful I was able to get vaccinated,’” evangelical luminary Ed Stetzer said. “People need to see that it is the reasonable view.”

But that’s just flighty evangelicals, right? They always sail a little too close to the culture for our tastes, eh? Or maybe a few of our mainline Sisters who abandoned their confessions long ago. Or even the radicals who are fomenting change inside the Roman church. Not so. The pressure to drift may look different in our Lutheran churches than in the plexiglass-and-lightshow of big box mega-churchdom, or the Sparkle Creed “queerfully and wonderfully made” cathedrals of liberal progressives, but we are still vulnerable. We like to be liked and we like to be seen to be right.

It’s good that we Lutherans are acutely aware of the burden that a troubled conscience brings and so we have left a lot of these cultural and political issues up to individual folks to decide where they fall. But as Basham and other’s work has shown, the political has become the theological, right under our noses. I doubt there has been a masterful subterfuge against the LC-MS on the part of the Open Society (we are pretty small fry, it’s true), but the people in our pews get these same messages through the talking devices in their homes. If our minds and consciences are not shaped by the Word of God, we are dropping our defenses.

We have been preoccupied with concerns about white supremacists in our midst, while some of our affiliates sure sound like they are keen for the church to adopt worldly ways of thinking and speaking about race. In an interview with Basham, Joy Pullman (an LC-MS journalist) noted that professor Greg Schulz was “drummed out of a Lutheran college” for questioning Marxist curricula, while “racially segregated student unions are available on their campuses.” I find it hard to say if we truly concerned with racism in our churches or more about the bad optics that internet rumors are giving the Synod.

The temptation to be more attractive to the world also hits in more familiar ways. Former LC-MS president, Gerald Kieschnick, recently chastized the Synod for making itself inaccessible and irrelevant. You could be more welcoming (drop that closed communion). You could be more inclusive (tone down that liturgy). You could be less obsessed with the Divine Service. (Oh, you mean Jesus and his gifts?) Pastor Larry Peters responded on Issues Etc, recognizing the urgency we feel to “do something” when we see churches shrinking and closing.

I’m certainly not saying we don’t need to be pleasant – living a quiet and peaceful life is the goal. Nor am I saying that cultural hegemony is a bad thing. We could use more excellent storytelling, more artists making beautiful things, better music, more trustworthy administrators, more just judges, more God-fearing scientists, more community-building entrepreneurs. More Christians standing where God has placed them, whether high or lowly.

But we cannot expect a godless culture to warmly embrace the message of sin and repentance (though it is the one that saves). Nor will they be kind to the heralds who proclaim a holy God who died for them because they were not holy. Decades ago, I remember my vicar friend lamenting the state of his beloved Church of England. Flirting with the idea of watering down the message just to get a hearing for the Gospel was immensely alluring to church leadership. “We’ve gotten tired of being called names; it’s unpleasant to constantly be saying unpleasant things. But we must,” he said. Yes, telling people who believe themselves free to do as they choose that the Way is narrow may result in some blowback.

So, it is slowly sinking in that we are strangers in a strange land and we cannot be comfortable here. Some years ago, Reformed professor Mike Horton wrote about that new reality dawning on much of the church: “It takes a while to get used to one’s marginal status…Sociologist Peter Berger has it, ‘Puerto Ricans, Jews, and Episcopalians each form around 2 percent of the American population. Guess which group does not think of itself as a minority.’”

There will be no quick fix. The glory days are not returning any time soon. It may get darker before that great Day of the Lord. But we must quit trying to gain the approval of men if it means living by lies. That likely means we need to be ready to share resources with brothers and sisters who have lost their livelihoods on account of Christ. It may mean taking flak along with our pastor when he takes a stand. Raising our families consistent with the Word, though people think it “weird”. Stepping up to have a say in how your community is run. And perhaps we could to bicker with each other less.

Saint Athanasius boldy confessed, “If the world is against the truth, then I am against the world.” There is no other way to slice it. Cutting corners just makes more corners and scrimping on the full counsel of God just makes kinda Christians. Pastor Peters said it this way: if [the church] dies out being true, then that is of God. But the good news is that Jesus has promised there would always be a remnant against which, the gates of hell would not be able to prevail.

We have been tasked with holding fast to his Word, in season and out of season; fighting back against the lies of smooth-talking flatterers who bring about division and destruction. To be called friends of Christ – even if it means enmity with this world – means we are part of that great cloud of witnesses already gathered in the age to come. That is a gift.

We confess with Saint Peter:

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

'Mid toil and tribulation,
and tumult of her war,
she waits the consummation
of peace forevermore;
till with the vision glorious
her longing eyes are blest,
and the great church victorious
shall be the church at rest.

1. Some have denied Basham’s claims and say she is unhinged. They seem to be ignoring her main contention. It is not that evangelical leaders and pastors are on the take with progressive billionaires but that their desire for worldly approval means they are susceptible to being manipulated by the first influential voice which gives them attention. The evidence that progressive ideals are slipping into church pews unchallenged is fairly plain.