The Shaming of the Evangelical Church: Part II

Dear Friends,

It’s good to be back with with you on a live podcast! Thanks to the help of several key people, the “teaser” for our feature film, Mr. Unknown, went extremely well, and we’re now in post production, with more details coming your way soon in the next few weeks.

If you’ve not had the opportunity, I hope you can read or listen to the podcast of October 30, “The Shaming of the Evangelical Church: Part I.” Today’s sequel is modest compared to the vast complexity of our subject, but perhaps there will be a thought or two worthy of your consideration.

This Thanksgiving I am grateful for all of you. We started out with half-a-dozen or so listeners and are now heard in twelve countries and can count several hundred who read or listen to “The Church’s One Foundation,” depending upon the subject of the podcast. I am grateful that so many of you have joined as our “free subscribers.”

I’ll try to be good and not eat too much tomorrow. We’ve a dozen family and friends coming over, so it will be a festive time. Here’s…

Wishing You & Yours a Wonderful Thanksgiving!

D. Paul

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The Shaming of the Evangelical Church: Part II

I had an interesting conversation with a trans woman the other day who is a cashier at our local Safeway store. She was irritated by the customer in front of me who had eyed her, she said, suspiciously, with a condescending attitude. From previous conversations, my cashier “friend” is aware that I lived out in CA for thirty-plus years and knows that I’m hardly taken back by her unconventional attire, though she does do her best to give the CA competition a run for its money, wearing long, silky blouses with a décolletage down to her belly button, adorning herself with multiple necklaces, bracelets, and a wide assortment of beaded trinkets.

I casually call her my “friend” because I’ve listened to her laments frequently while checking out, and she appreciates the fact that I’m in the theatre and movie business, having quite a flair for the dramatic herself. I’ve kept concerns about her personal life to a minimum, asking her broad questions—“How is it juggling work in Indianapolis and going to school at Ball State in Muncie,” etc., etc. I did tell her not to fret too much over the man’s negative response to her appearance (did I mention her purple and orange hair?), suggesting to her that many elderly Hoosiers might find her attire “somewhat … outrageous.” The thought of being such an annoyance brought a slight smile to her face, and I thought better of giving her that brief, biblical homily on the “modesty of dress.”

Now, the truth is, I’m not sure if my cashier-friend-in-passing is really trans, and I suspect neither does he, nor she, or whatever his/her current identification might be. Referring back to Andrew Sullivan’s observations from our previous podcast (The Shaming of the Evangelical Church: Part I, October 30), many young people are being classified as trans who previously identified as gay or lesbian, or they’re simply confused—even autistic—inexorably caught up in the contagion of the trans ideology that is all about them. Suddenly, supposed trans people are everywhere, far disproportionate to the small percentage of actual trans individuals who manifest profound gender dysphoria.

Sullivan, a gay man himself, who has written extensively about LGBTQ issues for decades, brings to the discussion a unique perspective, and this “contagious gender confusion” he addresses is one of his main arguments against blindly “affirming” the multiple demands that trans activists are making upon the medical establishment, our schools, the government bureaucracy, and our culture at large (and I would add—the Church). He writes passionately* how Gay kids are now conflated with entirely different groups: children who believe they are the opposite sex, straight kids who call themselves “queer,” an entirely new category of human beings called “nonbinaries,” and a few hundred new “orientations” and “genders” — including eunuchs! All of these kids are now deemed “gender diverse,” essentially living the same “LGBTQIA+” life, defined as being queer and subverting any and all cultural and social norms. Adding to this confusion, the “progressive” pastors and professors within the evangelical church are now shaming us for being unloving Christians, intimidating us into accepting the LGBTQIA+ alphabet soup they are serving. In so doing, they subvert anything resembling the orthodox doctrine of a holiness Church.

Though I disagree with Sullivan on several points, he sees through much of this “confusion” clearly, observing that “The orthodoxy now pushed by the educational establishment, the medical industry, and the federal government is that being a boy or a girl is just a feeling state, and not a biological fact. Your genitals and your chromosomes tell you nothing about your sex. And as children grow up, the doctrine holds, they get to choose their gender, and the number of genders is infinite — and gender is conflated with sex. And then, if their body in puberty begins to look unlike the gender they have previously picked, they can and should change it.” *

According to Sullivan, The price of intersectionality, “queerness,” gender ideology, and alphabet activism (LGBTQIA+), is the health and safety of gay children…. I would add that the price of “intersectionality” is the health and safety of all of our children. Tragically, the DEI Trojan Horse, which emphasizes this intersectionality, has slipped into our churches and schools through the side door, teaching that our sinful natures (meaning, in their lexicon, our racist, homophobic, and transphobic natures) are a permanent human condition, and it is only our daily diligence and our repetitive repentance for our macro and micro transgressions alike that can ultimately save us. It is, my friends, a NEW PHARISAISM, eliminating the atoning efficacy of the cross and replacing the power of the transforming love of the risen Christ with our own legalistic, self-righteous efforts.

To his credit, Sullivan is unequivocal in condemning the devastating results of this “intersectionality” teaching. “History,” he writes, “will be brutal to those responsible. But almost certainly not brutal enough.” The Apostle Paul and Sullivan may have more in common than one would think. Paul, in the bluntness of his rhetoric, takes a backseat to no one in condemning those demanding circumcision, calling them “mutilators of the flesh,” today’s equivalent, I would suggest, to those pastors, educators, counselors, psychologists, and doctors who zealously advocate for “gender affirming care” (a grotesque misnomer), and push life-altering puberty blockers and radical surgery upon thousands of our innocent, precious children. Paul minces no words, words applicable today for those in the Church demanding that we “be fully LGBTQIA+ affirming: “It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you. Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh (Philippians 3:1-2 NIV).

Like Paul, my brothers and sisters in Christ, the preaching and teaching of the Church should be “…to know Christ and the power of his resurrection….” (Philippians 3:10 NIV). It is past time to throw out, as Paul did, all of our “legalistic righteousness” onto the rubbish heap, considering all that we might have “profited” as “loss,” so that we “may gain Christ and be in found in him” (verse 8).

Yesterday, while doing some late Thanksgiving shopping at Safeway, I asked another cashier about my friend, not having seen him in a while. She told me he would soon be returning to work on the weekend shift. Curious about my friend’s biblical name, I looked it up and in the Hebrew it means “rest.” As prompted by the Spirit, I pray over the course of our brief conversations I’ll have an opportunity to tell him of my faith in Christ, and that He stands at the door of his heart, waiting to come in. May he open that door and find his true identity and rest in Him.

Amen

*Gay And Lesbian Independence Day It's becoming clearer and clearer what we have to do to protect gay kids, by Andrew Sullivan (substack), May 17, The Daily Dish.