The Shaming of the Evangelical Church, Part I

Dear Friends,

This is part one of a three part series on, “The Shaming of the Evangelical Church.” Currently, I’m filming a “teaser” for our upcoming feature film (we pray!), Mr. Unknown, and it is occupying much of my attention for the next two weeks. Drawing upon what I view as an authoritative source, I would encourage you to familiarize yourself (if you’ve not done so already) with the trans industry that has lied about “gender affirming care,” a massive deceit that has put thousands of our children at risk.

All of this, of course, is having a profoundly schismatic effect on the Church and its para-church ministries. The DEI movement is propagandizing our evangelical colleges and universities around the country, frequently using Ibram X. Kendi’s book, How to be An Antiracsist, as a primary, foundational text, which unapologetically draws upon the the trans experience as crucial to the understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusion, highlighting its “intersectionality” to all other oppressed and marginalized groups within the LGBTQIA+ community. I know, I’ve written about this before, but developing trends remain unchallenged. Many in the secular culture are speaking out forcefully against this great deceit. It is past time for the Church to add its voice en masse. And so…

Pressing On,

D. Paul

---

The Shaming of the Evangelical Church, Part I

Race and gender activists are intimidating and shaming the evangelical church into a mindless submission, substituting the core of our faith and its foundation, Jesus Christ her Lord, with a new Pharisaism of platitudes and pop-psychology.

Imagine the disappointment when I read that Point Loma Nazarene University was making DEI training sessions this year mandatory for its professors. It’s all quite understandable on one level: as empathic Christians, we respond positively to the affirming, pleasant-meaning words—diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Church is a “big tent,” we say, with “…the earth and the fulness thereof…the Lords,” and like Christ himself, we are “…not wanting anyone to perish….” Steeped in these good intentions, with doses of blissful ignorance and woke politics thrown in, we have inhaled the aromatic but toxic ether of these race and gender purveyors, who the secular culture is now exposing as irresponsible hucksters (Ibram X. Kendi being a prime example), spewing their agenda-driven agitprop with little concern for what is good, what is true, and what is the actual, factual, scientific data. DEI training and gender affirming care, my friends, have become big business, and the mercenaries of propaganda are out in full force, available to the highest bidder. Sadly, Point Loma has taken the bait.

For the doubters among us, I refer you to an excellent essay on Substack by Andrew Sullivan (andrewsullivan@substack.com), posted on his THE WEEKY DISH, October 18, entitled, Rachel Levine Must Resign, A case study in politics and ideology overruling science. With children as victims. As a provocative thinker and prolific writer (formerly with New York Magazine), Mr. Sullivan’s observations on the trans movement are spot on.

WPATH (the World Professional Association for Transgender Health) knows full well that their transing of children has little to no medical evidence behind it. So when Johns Hopkins presented the review, WPATH instantly buried it…. Other contributors drew on their experiences as expert witnesses to suggest removing “language such as ‘insufficient evidence,’ ‘limited data,’ etc.’ that could ‘empower’ groups ‘trying to claim that gender-affirming interventions are experimental.’ SOC-8 — the latest Standards of Care from WPATH — was therefore knowingly based on concealing the truth, and written for lawsuits, not patients. Not medicine. Ideology.

We now discover, from insurance claims, that at least 14,000 minors have been transed either chemically or surgically in the last five years. At a minimum.

This is not forgivable. It demands accountability. These “doctors” know full well that their experiments have no basis in science, that thousands of gay detransitioners have had their lives and bodies destroyed, and yet continue to experiment on children, without knowing if they are actually trans, of if they are gay, or bi, or autistic, or in a social contagion.

As Sullivan voices the sentiments of the trans propagandists: “We need to lie to keep this transing industry going.” So they continued to deceive distressed parents and children.

Continuing, he writes: It seems to me that a doctor who privately doubts if her child patients can give meaningful consent and operates on them anyway is not a doctor, but a sociopath. She has violated the Hippocratic oath and admitted practicing the equivalent of FGM on children. FGM (female genital mutilation) is illegal in federal law and in 41 states if the girl is under 18. “Gender-affirming” FGM, thanks to Rachel Levine, is fully legal without any lower age limits. (Dr. Rachel Levine is a trans woman serving as the US Assistant Secretary of Health.)

Belatedly jumping on the trans bandwagon, the liberal activists within the evangelical church may not be sociopaths, but they are overly zealous in their ambition to transform a Wesleyan, holiness church into their own vision of an enlightened, “affirming church.” In 2023, over ninety unhappy and unfulfilled Nazarenes contributed to a book entitled, Why The Church Of The Nazarene Should Be Fully LGBTQ+ Affirming, with Thomas Jay Oord and Alexa Oord its two editors. Their Introduction clearly states their purpose and the dramatic personae behind it:

“…the essays published here are diverse. Some are written by queer people…Some essay writers are parents, siblings, or allies of LGBTQ+ people…Some contributors to this book are pastors, scholars, or leaders in the church. They believe the denomination needs to change its views on human sexuality and the way it treats those who support queer people. Some of these writers call for…impunity for those who think current Manual statements fail to reflect well the love of Jesus. In other essays, scholars explain why scripture, theology, and history support a fully affirming LGBTQ+ position…. They mean they fully affirm people with LGBTQ+ identities, orientation, and desires. The denomination’s current statement on human sexuality does not reflect well the love Jesus calls his followers to express…. A peculiarly loving God loves peculiar people of all varieties and wants us to do the same. This love means full acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, their identities, orientations, and healthy sexual expressions.”

Well, there you have it, my brothers and sisters in Christ. No need for us to “ponder anew the things God can do.” As Jon Middendorf, Senior Pastor at the Oklahoma City First Church of the Nazarene, writes on the back jacket cover: “In that spirit of helpful inclusiveness, these writers dream of a tent large enough to house differences. May we learn again the power of dignity, inclusion, diversity, and love.” Yet again, the platitudinous language taken right out of the DEI playbook. And, though we are encouraged by Nazarene Elder, Rev Bruce Barnard, to let the “emotion” of these essays “soak in” and are assured by the editors that “This book fundamentally changes the conversation,” there are no references, arguments, or contrasting scholarly voices offered to counter the emotive, “fully affirming” arguments that we are asked by the authors and its editors to accept as the true Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Here is one among many mistakes that the people of God need not make: “Fully affirming” is a thoughtless cliche in itself, neither appropriate for medical establishments nor federal prisons, let alone the Church of Jesus Christ. And the public is waking up to this reality, here and in liberal Europe: when a supposedly trans teenager asks for life-altering gender surgery or puberty blockers to stop his or her young body from making sex hormones, there is nothing truly “affirming” to that adolescent in supporting their pubescent wishes; when a male prisoner arbitrarily changes his gender identification and demands the accompanying surgery, and then asks to be sent to a woman’s prison, there is nothing “affirming” in doing that to the female prisoners who may experience rape by a lying opportunist; and when a trans woman asks the church board for permission to lead the church’s youth group, there is nothing “affirming” in granting “him now her” permission at the peril of our precious young people who are often preyed upon by individuals confused by their own sexual identity.

While the Oords maintain they don’t believe in an “anything goes” sexuality, it has been my experience after decades in the progressive Episcopal Church that this “…full acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, their identities, orientations, and healthy sexual expressions” often lead to an “anything goes” ethos, conflicting with Scripture and the core doctrines of the Church. And while those in the LGBTQIA+ community should never be ridiculed or vilified, yes, loved, even as a redemptive Christ loves them, it is not the Church’s calling to proselytize its version of a loving Jesus that “fully affirms” all “identities, orientations, and (so called) healthy sexual expressions.”

If one demands such “full affirmation,” it may be time to switch churches, which is what one of the authors of our emotive tome did, John Wakefield, a 2006 graduate of Olivet Nazarene University, who earned his MDiv from Nazarene Theological Seminary in 2023. It’s not taken brother Wakefield long to travel to more welcoming pastures, currently serving at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Charlotte as Director of Youth Ministries and Parish Communications. Yes, it is a big, church tent, and we need not demand that all churches be “fully affirming” clones of one another to satiate our personal demands.

Ah, that the evangelical church had the frankness of Andrew Sullivan, who writes: “I look around what was once my community and see such incredible cowardice and indoctrination that it makes me despair at what we have become.”

Well, we need not despair, dear friends. But, with Scripture and the Holy Spirit as our guides, let us press on, yes, demanding that the Church remain the Church with “the faith once delivered to the saints,” and “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive” (Ephesians 4:14 KJB).

^Amen

PS: Keep the faith and don’t forget to vote!