This past year has brought me a few significant personal losses. No literal deaths, but there have been deaths of relationships—one intentional, because of its persistent destructive toxicity, and several unintentional. It is to one of these unintentional personal losses to which I wish to speak to illuminate a movement of thought which led a friend, for some 18 or so years, of mine to unfriend me because I would not bow to the Christian Right, to Trump and his Party. Some of his last words to me were that my ‘mind was not submitted to God.’ My rebellion against the voice of God was evidently set in concrete and so my friend was going to ‘turn elsewhere.’ I now search for the motive which would drive people apart in the holy defense of an obviously very bad man. My personal separation is surely just one out of millions and seems to be accelerating as battle lines are drawn. Was my friend’s separation from this unsubmitted rebel morally justified for the greater good? I wonder as well if it is true, as certain people keep telling me, that commitment to relationship trumps conviction to truth? I’m having a hard time believing this…
This ‘friend’ of whom I speak has always been a charismatic. I was raised in that environment and understand the mindset even though I’m admittedly very skeptical, even hostile, towards charismatic ‘revelation.’ We still met periodically, getting our families together for a BBQ; we’d meet for lunch and talk about our lives, wives, kids, problems, and theology. I never pulled punches; I thought we had a true friendship where we could be honest with each other, tolerating each other’s differences. With the rise of Trump, his efforts to convert me started to become sharper and more insistent. I never softened though; we’ve survived differences before. I told him exactly why I didn’t believe the Trump Prophecies, and why the Christian Right is toxic using Scripture, historical arguments from reason and experience, and growing evidence gathered by social scientists. My language was direct and sometimes harsh. (In the Old Testament the language of the prophets was very direct and harsh against injustice and dishonesty as well.) He kept telling me that I could be a tremendous asset to their organization even though I kept telling him I didn’t believe in that organization. I read the various books (David Barton and other leaders in the Christian Right) he gave me. I even went to one of his political meetings to demonstrate that I wasn’t afraid to go. (There was little debate or reflection; the leader mostly just issued marching orders to the troops.) None-the-less my friend kept hoping (and praying) that I would eventually submit to what he said was the will of God. I’ll say up front that I won’t because I don’t believe he is hearing from God; and I’m going to explain why I don’t believe his claim.
There is no way, knowing from Scripture what God thinks about injustice and dishonesty, that God would tell anyone to support an obviously ends-justifies-the-means movement which would have us defending a textbook narcissist and sociopath (among other things) as our only hope for restoring the fortunes and blessings of the United States and Israel. I refuse to agree with today’s Christian Right leaders who, along with Trump, are openly using language which suggests that being inclined to the political left (which in my case means being inclined towards personal liberty and responsibility and hostile towards authoritarianism, trust in a particular personality to ‘save’ America, and the politics which are driven by stoking fear and resentment) means that the ‘lefty’ must be hostile to God and religion. I will continue to argue that one doesn’t have to conform to certain cultural norms (conservativism,) understanding (patriotism,) or political persuasion (Republican) to be a Christian.
After the law was fulfilled (Matthew 5:17,) we were left with a call to a common humanity to worship God ‘in spirit and in truth’ (John 4:23); this includes loving one another (Romans 13:8-10.) We witness by carrying each other’s burdens (Galatians 6:2) and by rejoicing in the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6.) We witness by upholding goodness, excellence, and justice as we defend the weak from oppression (Isaiah 1:17; Philippians 4:8; James 1:27.) Christians are called to persuade (1 Peter 3:15) and to serve as examples (1 Peter 2: 11-12) as our witness to the world. I see no justification in the New Covenant for Christians to even desire to take over the government and reinstate of kind of Christian Theocracy to use force—which is what government is—to ‘witness’ by changing culture to whatever we think (God tells us through some spiritual authority) it ought to be.
God has the power to make us all behave; why doesn’t He? This should be very telling; as ‘imitators of God’ (Ephesians 5:1) we should think long and hard about the use of force to make people behave in a godly manner. Have we once again forgotten that good behavior cannot save us anyway? Seeking reform by means acquiring political power only corrupts us because of what we have to do to attain political power–corruption stains our witness. It is a noble goal to influence culture to be more truthful, just, and loving, but we should do so by personally standing for truth, justice, and charity ourselves. But that is the harder path isn’t it?
In choosing the easier path of using collective power to change the world, we’ve since been led into committing ourselves to a man we believe, as we’ve been trained, is the chosen one thus we’ve placed our hopes in political power wielded by a few men as they are supported by an easily manipulated, morally lazy mass of fearful and resentful people. We must all now abide the open obstruction of the truth and the perversion of justice; we must embrace the cruelty, resentment, and division fostered by our chosen one to protect our prophetic investment. Heaven forbid we should have to admit we were wrong! Later historians will not be kind to us.
Wannabe theocrats cite Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2: 13-17 as proof of their position for the use of force. There are many fine libertarian arguments out there which show Romans 13 to not divinely authorize either Christian authoritarianism or blind trust in government power. I’m not going to duplicate those arguments here but simply say that the authoritarian camp’s citation of the above texts to show divine sanction to grab authority in the name of God ignores the obvious political/cultural differences between then and now. Democracy didn’t exist, that short-lived experiment died hundreds of years before. The Roman Republic was dead as well as all effective power had been gathered to and by the Emperor Augustus many decades before Paul wrote his epistles. The people didn’t vote; power was obtained by heredity, conquest, appointment, and intrigue. Of course, the political process and authority was in God’s hands from the perspective of the early Christians and they were not called to fight for and/or maneuver themselves into political power. The political landscape has since dramatically changed; the ordinary person (or group) can now enter and participate in the political process. Our own will now enters the equation. How do we know if some course of action is God’s Will or merely our own? Should we now say if we should become successful in asserting our collective will to gain political power, that such success should signify divine blessing upon those gains since we believe God is in control of history? I think not.
Those in the ‘Christian Right’ are taking advantage of an evolving movement of thought to create a series of cooperating top-down organizations. There are many moving pieces on the board, and the ideological shift to make these accumulations of power possible did not happen overnight. In years past, most American Christians were pre-millennialist as it was popularized decades ago by books such as ‘The Late, Great Planet Earth’ and the ‘Left Behind’ series which, in short, had the Christians ‘raptured’ (removed) from the world to which the Anti-Christ would rise and consolidate the world under his rule. Jesus would eventually return, defeat the Anti-Christ at the battle of Armageddon, and set up an earthly throne in Jerusalem to rule on earth for a thousand years. The various speculated timelines of event (commonly known as the 7-year Tribulation) were numerous, and all the predictions made were wrong—most were based around the rebirth of the nation of Israel in 1948. Since it has been better than 70 years since 1948, the ‘generation’ piece of the prophetic puzzle has become untenably long and so the ‘industry’ has had to adjust. The nation of Israel is still the center of end-times speculation since it is such a unifying belief for American Evangelicals, yet the return of Christ is said to be now dependent upon Christians accomplishing some number of political goals in order to prepare the way for that return. There is nothing in the Bible which clearly teaches this; so we invent ways of elevating ourselves above the idea of static Biblical authority and a closed Canon to create men (and women) who carry authority to speak of God’s current Will and develop the means of getting the common Protestant to accept this authority.
This is nothing new. Joseph Smith back in the 1830’s for example, had a series of visions which taught him that Christendom had been getting it wrong for two thousand years and that God had chosen Joe to restore the church to what it should have been all along. Mormonism was born as they received a seemingly endless supply of new revelations and scriptures as God evidently keeps changing His mind about things as time and history march on. The President of the Church, as counseled by the Quorum of the Twelve, now issues regular updates on what the current Will of God is today for the Mormon to then follow in obedience.
Similarly, a (now deceased) theologian by the name of C. Peter Wagner helped develop a ‘new’ theological and prophetic framework for the merger between church and state by (among many things) making a case for the need of fresh words for a new world—these words from God will be given by living people who hold the title of ‘Apostle’ or ‘Prophet;’ Wagner called this new movement of God’s the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR.)
The NAR has no formal organizational structure or headquarters unlike the Latter Day Saint churches; rather it employs a system of geographically situated ‘Apostles’ (in theory, equal in authority to the original eyewitnesses) and ‘prophets’ who make the general claim that the historical claims made in the Bible are insufficient to witness to today’s world. NAR adherents now embark upon a campaign of ‘signs and wonders’ in which they teach their followers (for money) how to become miracle workers themselves. This approach works for many because it helps alleviate a common angst about our individual insignificance in an increasingly disconnected world giving believers a sense of purpose, importance, and connectedness. The NAR (and the CR which has obvious similar interests) spread their teachings and influence through ‘Christian’ broadcast networks (CBN, TBN, God TV, Bethel TV, etc.…) and the Christian music industry (Bethel and Hillsong) to infiltrate various churches of various denominations. The perceived ‘success’ of these approaches is commonly seen as having the blessing of God upon through the fact of their success thanks to the theology of ‘health-and-wealth’ being previously woven into our brains. Once the music makes its way from the minivan into the church, the sources of that music have at least the implicit approval of the local authorities in that church as being okay. Kids go to the ‘Jesus Culture’ and ‘Bethel Music’ concerts to be introduced to new experientially based theology coming out of Bethel Church in Redding, California to then drag it back their own churches. People start reading Bill Johnson’s (and a plethora of other Apostles) books and the various heresies (including The Passion Translation TPT) make it back to the local congregations. Churches all over the world (knowingly affiliated or not with the NAR movement) are paying millions in royalties to fuel this ideological takeover which includes funding and promoting a completely dishonest ‘translation’ (committee of one ‘Apostle’ Brian Simmons) of the Bible (the TPT upholds post-millennialist NAR theology) which is being incorporated into churches worldwide.
The Seven-Mountain-Mandate (SMM) is a centerpiece of NAR post-millennial eschatology which asserts that Christians must invade the seven cultural spheres of influence (Religion, Family, Education, Government, Media, Arts & Entertainment, and Business.) I should make clear that I have no objections to Christians being in and involved with the ‘seven spheres’ listed above. However, our witness should not depend upon earthly mechanizations of human planned power grabs for the reason that in democratic environments where charismatic ‘revelation’ is commonly accepted, God’s Will becomes easily confused (putting it nicely) with our own. I refuse to believe God would desire to subject the revelation of His Will to the power of human charisma. “‘Not by strength and not by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord who rules over all” (Zechariah 4:6.)
As the Standard (the Bible) is systematically undermined by the assertion that today’s Will of God is being revealed in modern day ‘signs and wonders,’ (i.e. parlor tricks and psychological manipulation from what I’ve seen) there is obvious uncertainty in you personally knowing whether the self-proclaimed Apostle or Prophet is indeed directly hearing from God. In such uncertainty, the ‘faithful’ adherent must place his or her faith under the authority of the Apostle or Prophet—in that case, you are placing your trust of knowing God’s Will into the hands of a mere man (or woman.) This is extremely foolish as it invites both arrogance and error. These ‘Apostles’ claim to hear directly from God—which means, if true, their teachings cannot be questioned. We are now just supposed to accept the ‘word’ from these self-appointed prophets and apostles and place our faith in them as knowing the Will of God as we are comforted by placing power into the hands of the ‘successful;’ i.e. the ones with the ‘magic’ to convince the masses to turn over the goods to them.
Need I quote Scripture on this system, which is at its root authoritarian, arrogant, and inflexible? How about Matthew 23: 1-12 for instance? Those who supposed to speak for God have tied up a very heavy load for Christians to carry—we must now defend at all costs a very immoral man as ‘Apostle’ Lance Wallnau has proclaimed Donald Trump to be the ‘chaos candidate’ who would help us restore this nation to greatness. We sell coins with the image of King Cyrus next to Donald Trump to remind us of his importance in our prayers. We’ve chained ourselves to the fortunes of Trump; this is slavery.
Read 1 Corinthians 3 and see that we are not here to follow men or women, to place our faith and hope in them; but we are to serve, persuade, season, love, and enlighten others within those ‘seven spheres’ of human experience without becoming like them (James 1:27.) We don’t try to control ‘the system’ (and ‘them,’) we just control ourselves, live rightly, and serve as examples. God does the rest.
Most people within the church are lamenting how society is becoming more secular but embrace as the solution to the problem that which I believe is a primary cause. Objective numbers collected by social scientists are confirming a mass exodus. Young people are leaving the church in droves; dare we say ‘signs and wonders’ evangelism is not working? Wouldn’t it just be easier to just easier to blame the Left for failing to submit to God’s authority? There is no room for reflection—God has spoken! (And we do not want to be forced to admit that we’ve been duped by those who claim to speak for God.)
One of the most currently well-established intersections between church and state is the National Prayer Breakfast—a weeklong event which a lobbying group publicly known as ‘The Fellowship’ (Jeff Sessions and Mike Pence are two high ranking member of this group who refer to themselves internally as ‘The Family’) backchannels access (past the bureaucracy of the State Department) to important government officials (including the President) for those willing to pay the price. ‘The Family’ (an extremely powerful organization which operates furtively the rest of the year) rose to prominence thanks to Billy Graham who pressured President Eisenhower to attend the Family’s Prayer Breakfast; every President since has attended as a matter of tradition. The founder of The Family, Abraham Vereide, said that in 1935 God told him that Christians should be going after the ‘key men’ for Christ. In theory, there is nothing wrong with this idea if it is pursued on a personal level; but this means is not okay as it has come to be a ‘pay-to-play’ institutional lobbying event of shameless influence trading. Using channels of government power and skirting the checks and balances of that power to evangelize, not only these various leaders themselves, but also the people who look to them, is corrupt. These men in The Family may honestly think they are working earnestly for Christ, but they forget that there is no Biblical warrant for employing corrupt practices to evangelize; they are violating the command found in James 1:27 as they use corrupt methods to do God’s work. We’ve all forgotten that these governmental/religious alliances and systems of power were referred to as being unholy ‘Beasts’ in St. John’s Apocalypse; yes that’s right–the book of Revelation is hostile towards these kinds of alliances.
Practically speaking, all this religious influence trading in the halls of government is repulsing millions from the real hope of finding grace and forgiveness with Jesus Christ. The complaint oft repeated by Christians is that we are losing our representation and influence in both the culture and in government. I’m afraid this is far from the truth—our influence is loud and clear and this is a big reason why millions are turning away in revulsion. But again, we must believe and continue the program because God has spoken, and we’ve made a commitment. The following paragraphs will show just how low we are willing to sink to keep this commitment.
A few weeks ago, a departing writer for Christianity Today said what he really thought about supporting a ‘grossly immoral’ man. About two hundred big names in the Christian leadership immediately strongly condemned the audacity of the editorial, which called into question the judgement of both Christians and their leadership, and accused the author of damaging the Christian witness of millions. Those ‘big names’ must prove that they really do know God’s Will–there is a lot at stake for them. The price the little guys have to pay for this is to keep waving our flags and thumping our chests as ‘our man’ keeps committing one indecency after another. Ought we blessed as peacemakers (Matthew 5:9) as our man committed an act of war by assassinating a senior leader (admittedly a very bad man hated not only by us but by millions of other people in the Middle East) of a sovereign nation allegedly saving the lives of hundreds of Americans? (The claim of this act’s necessity to ‘keep the peace’ was made without providing evidence of an imminent threat above anything above what he’s been doing for the past couple decades.) We shall now stand patiently by as our man lies and lies about anything and everything in an all-out assault upon the very concept of truth —‘facts’ are all ‘alternative,’ and the news which is hostile to the ‘Chosen One’ is fake. Trump, we are to believe, is the only one telling the truth—everyone else is lying. It appears that a majority of Evangelicals believe that! We will applaud our man’s efforts to undermine our confidence in our intelligence community but our man (and his sycophants) will cite the evidence collected by that same community when it suits our man’s purposes (such as in the above case involving the assassination of a bad man to gin up support from his base.) We will tolerate and justify our man’s repeated flaunting of the law and all the whining about the checks on his power as being offensive to the ‘will of the people’ implying that it is the will of the people that he should be free to act as a dictator. (We defend this by saying it is our only path to freedom and ‘greatness’?) We will embrace this unrepentant, uncouth, insecure, lazy, expensive, sociopathic train wreck who refuses to accept counsel (he said it himself it regards to setting foreign policy, ‘I’m the only one that matters’) who will throw anyone under the bus who will not pledge personal loyalty to the most important man in the universe. Even after so many lies, scandals, bullying, and a plethora of embarrassing childish displays of perpetual victimhood (despite having a well-established cult-following willing to drink the Kool-Aid at a moment’s notice,) it appears that three-quarters of American Evangelicals still place our hope in this ‘strong man.’ We Christians have pledged unthinking, unreflective, personal loyalty to this man. Below, we’ll go over a few specific things being said by the faithful about this wonderful human being…
On January 3, 2020, the Evangelicals for Trump coalition had a little get-together at ‘Apostle’ Guillermo Maldonado’s megachurch, El Ray Jesus, in Miami, Florida. In the article that describes this little event, we find out from one parishioner there that writer of the Christianity Today editorial which condemned Trump as ‘grossly immoral’ was a non-believer who is ‘stuck in the past’ and doesn’t see that although Trump is ‘coarse and blunt’ he ‘has a pure heart.’ Another parishioner said of Trump, ‘He’s been the strongest defender of Christianity today. He has a clear stance on abortion and Israel’ and that ‘Everything he stands for is what the Bible says.’ Really? Someone who is inarguably a bald-faced liar of epic proportions, for starters, is pure of heart? And what does Donald Trump stand for? The abundance of his actions scream that he stands for himself; everyone else, excepting perhaps his daughter, is disposable. The statements above are just jaw dropping in the face of all the evidence Donald himself provides out of his own mouth and his twitter account. Truth is dead; and we killed it.
(The words of Friedrich Nietzsche were prescient: ‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?’)
We see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear. A good con man, which Donald is among the best of them, can read his audience for what they want to hear, and speak accordingly; truth does not matter—just establish a new reality using confidence as an authority. That nasty little proclivity ours towards confirmation bias (and laziness) inhibits rational and logical evaluation of what is being said when our bias is being fed as we greedily belly up to the trough. For example, Trump said at the rally, ‘The intolerant left is on a campaign against religion.’ Most of us understand that people are rejecting religion left and right;Trump knows this is a big concern of ours. What we generally do not ask too deeply is why. Here, Trump is telling his supporters that the Christian loss of religious ground is basically his personal enemy’s fault. Since it is accepted that Trump is God’s chosen one, adding two and two gives us the simple answer that any enemy of Trump’s is an enemy of God’s—no painful self-examination is necessary. Scapegoat established. Another interesting thing Trump said at the event was, ‘In America we don’t worship government, we worship God.’ Preach it! We say… But we do not reflect on this sermon because one could come to realize that this statement is actually damning to the whole program of the Christian Right which seeks to gain political power to restore this nation back to its (alleged) Christian founding. I remind you all again that God said, “‘Not by strength and not by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord who rules over all” (Zechariah 4:6.) We’re too impatient for this though; we’re going to grab power to make things happen the way God should have made them happen. Our Will be done…
We have been duped by a small army of men and women who have set themselves above the teachings of the Bible and what it says about how we should be a witness to the world. You’re wrong yet again Donald; here in America we worship ourselves. We do not leave the worries of tomorrow to God as we should and live rightly today. No. We will gain strength and use political power to work ‘God’s Will’ as these ‘Apostles’ tell us we should. Don’t look back; don’t question—full speed ahead.
In conclusion, ‘friend,’ I will not bend the knee to men. I do have much more to say but it should be clear enough from what I’ve said so far that there can be no compromise; the battle lines are drawn—the stakes are too high. I understand that this little essay has a near zero chance of changing anybody’s mind; but I want to make publicly clear that I will never submit to Trump, his Party, or anyone who seeks to empower themselves over me by claiming to speak for God. We are now past reason and so authoritarianism will rise once more as we chant, ‘USA! USA! USA!’ As for me, I will live as a free man; an ‘unsubmitted’ rebel I remain…
Farewell.