R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 199

To Be Cool or to Be a Church? That is the Question

These days, what passes for important argument or debate takes place on Twitter, and a recent Twitter exchange between two prominent actors has sparked a major controversy.

The exchange took place between Hollywood’s Ellen Page and Chris Pratt. Page tweeted, “If you are a famous actor and you belong to an organization that hates a certain group of people, don’t be surprised if someone simply wonders why it’s not addressed. Being anti LGBTQ is wrong. There aren’t two sides. The damage it caused is severe. Full stop. Sending love to all.” In the tweet, Page specifically indicted Pratt for his membership in what was alleged to be an anti-LGBTQ church. The church in question is Zoe Church, a church in association with the Hillsong movement. There can be no question that Page not only targeted Pratt but took direct aim at any organization or church that holds to anything even remotely connected to a biblically informed sexual ethic.

Pratt responded to Page, stating, “It has recently been suggested that I belonged to a church which hates a certain group of people and is infamously anti LGBTQ. Nothing could be further from the truth. I go to a church that opens their doors to absolutely everyone. Despite what the Bible says about my divorce, my church community was there for me every step of the way, never judging, just gracefully accompanying me on my walk. They helped me tremendously offering their love and support. It is what I have seen them do for others on countless occasions, regardless of sexual orientation, race, or gender. My faith is important to me, but no church defines me or my life, and I’m not a spokesman for any church or any group of people. My values define who I am. We need less hate in this world, not more. I am a man who believes that everyone is entitled to love who they want free from the judgment of their fellow man.”

That last line encapsulates the modern secular orthodoxy – “everyone is entitled to love who they want free from the judgment of their fellow man.”

Pratt’s “defense” of his church also represents the thinnest ecclesiology—a conception of the church severed from the Scriptures. He claims that “no church defines me or my life.” According to the Bible, the church does define us. Whereas Pratt denies that his church defines him, the Scriptures teach that the church founded by Christ is the family of the living God, bought by the blood of Christ, in covenant together for the cause of the Gospel. That is the vision of a biblical church. Such a church, bound together in obedience to Christ, absolutely defines a member’s life.

But Pratt also indicates that his church opens its doors to “absolutely everyone,” and that his church in no way holds to an anti-LGBTQ agenda. Which is it? Does his church, as Page claimed, teach the sinfulness of homosexuality or not? Does it uphold marriage as a union between one man and one woman or not? To answer these questions, you have to go back to 1983.

Hillsong was formed in that year as a charismatic church in New South Wales, Australia. Founded by Brian Houston and his wife Bobbie, the church grew in worldwide influence, most famously for its music. People from around the world sing Hillsong music and the movement’s worship style is now found world-wide. What began as a charismatic church in Australia now claims over 100,000 people attending weekly services in Australia, London, New York, and Los Angeles. In 2014, Michael Paulson of The New York Times wrote an article that attempted to introduce and interpret Hillsong to a secular audience in Manhattan. The headline of the article read, “Megachurch with a Beat Lures a Young Flock.”

The article described Carl Lentz, the pastor of the New York-based Hillsong location. The article cited other religious leaders who criticized the church for its thin theology. I was quoted in the article saying, “It’s a prosperity movement for the millennials in which the polyester and middle-class associations of Oral Roberts have given way to ripped jeans and sophisticated rock music.” I went on to charge Hillsong with the minimization of the Gospel and a diffused presentation of spirituality.

Over the last 5 years, the teaching of the church has grown even more opaque. It continues to minimize essential truths of the Gospel and surrenders to the growing tides of secularism. To what, then, could Ellen Page’s tweet refer when she charged the church with anti-LGBTQ teachings? In 2015, the founder of Hillsong, Brian Houston, said, “We do not affirm a gay lifestyle. And because of this, we do not knowingly have actively gay people in positions of leadership, either paid or unpaid.” He went on to affirm that Hillsong welcomed gay people in the church but that they could not serve in leadership roles.

Then, in 2017, with LGBTQ issues boiling over into the culture, Carl Lentz of the New York congregation missed several opportunities to clearly express his views on homosexuality. In an interview with CNN, he gave a non-answer, stating, “It’s not our place to tell anyone how they should live. That’s their journey.” That statement amounts to nothing less than an abdication of biblical Christianity. Lentz described the church as body with no authority, no responsibility to summon its members to Christian discipleship. Jesus commissioned his disciples to establish a church of obedient followers—sons and daughters of the living God who would devote their lives to the glory of Christ and his kingdom.

Discipleship to Christ makes objective demands on conduct, virtue, and morality. God revealed in Holy Scripture his commands to his people, and God calls his children to live in obedience to his commands and statues. Moreover, as the Apostle John wrote, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” [1 John 5:3]

Where you find a church, you find a community of believers striving for holy obedience to God. Conversely, a church that doesn’t tell people how to live in obedience to Christ isn’t a church at all.

When so called churches blur the lines on the authority of Scripture and surrender core theological commitments, they will slowly but surely give way to the pressures of modernity. Hillsong is trying to represent a new inoffensive and hip Christianity, but it’s teaching and messaging on LGBTQ issues will be offensive to anyone who takes a closer look. Hillsong gives a wink and a nod to the sexual revolution and fails to instruct its members on what the Bible says.

Something far more important underlines the controversy between Ellen Page, Christ Pratt, and Hillsong church. This issue isn’t about Page, Pratt, or Hillsong—it’s about you, me, and our churches. Every church will soon stand trial in the high courts of modernity. The secular storm will leave no place to hide. Hillsong gave its answer: it would rather be cool than convictional. The nod towards cultural relevance leads to theological confusion—a deliberately marketed confusion.

The controversy coming out of Los Angeles is yet another rather rude awakening for those who want a church that is simultaneously cool and Christian. That possibility evaporated long ago, when the culture decided that biblical Christianity is decidedly uncool. So, which will it be? That is the question.

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Friday, Feb. 15, 2019

Grandstanding from left in New York scares off Amazon. What does this tell us about capitalism?New York Times (Shane Goldmacher) — Amazon’s Exit Forces a Reckoning for N.Y. Political Leaders

To be cool or to be a church? A secular culture forces churches to choose when it comes to biblical sexuality

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Messianic Politics on Display: The Green New Deal and the New Political Order

Since her election to congress last November, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has broken the traditional mold of a freshman legislator in Congress. Freshmen rarely make the headlines. They generally do not sponsor legislation, and they carry little influence, even if they caucus with the majority party. Ocasio-Cortez, however, might be one of the most influential Democrats in the entire nation because of what she represents: a young, vocal, social-media savvy political operative who knows how to push her party towards the far left of American politics. The centerpiece of her rise to prominence is the “Green New Deal.”

Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey sponsor this sweeping resolution that would, indeed, involve a lot of green—not just ecological but financial. This proposed legislation encompasses environmental changes coupled with economic and financial policy initiatives. Indeed, the entire purpose of this bill aims to drag the Democratic party to the far left of the political spectrum. The “Green New Deal” abounds with radical proposals about the future of the United States, but it also raises questions about whether politicians really mean what they say when they speak to the American people.

On its face, the resolution redounds with impossible, impractical, and grossly generalized policy proposals that would have massive consequences on American public life. It includes a 10-year commitment to convert 100% of power demands in the United States to clean, renewable sources. It mandates upgrading all existing buildings in the country to meet energy efficient requirements. It aims to make air-travel obsolete by expanding high-speed rail. It promises millions of new jobs, guaranteed health care, and a sustainable family wage—all of that in the matter of a decade. This is no “Green New Deal.” It marks an entirely new conception of the American government and way of life. It takes up proposals that have been a part of the climate change and energy discussion in the U.S. and then launches into an imaginary world in which a new age of liberal miracles arrives just in time to save humanity.

Reporting for the New York Times, Lisa Friedman and Glenn Thrush wrote, “Liberal Democrats put flesh on their Green New Deal slogan with a sweeping resolution intended to redefine the national debate on climate change.” They go on to write that “the resolution has more breadth than detail and is so ambitious that Republican’s greeted it with derision. Its legislative prospects are bleak in the foreseeable future. Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has no plan to bring the resolution in its current form to the floor for a vote.”

There is a level of political irony in that last sentence—the Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, refuses to bring the “New Green Deal” up for a vote, while the conservative Republican and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promises that the Senate will hold a vote. Where Pelosi must balance the liberal wing of her party with the members who describe the “Green Deal” as nuts, McConnell has made a politically masterful move by forcing the Democrats in the Senate, especially Democratic Senators running for President, to put their vote where their mouth is—to cast an official vote rather than pay lip service to a radical liberal agenda.

Indeed, every major Democratic candidate for President who has a seat in the United States Senate has come out in favor of the “Green New Deal.” The political vector of the Democratic party continually presses towards a moral liberal and increasingly socialist agenda. The energy swirling in the Democratic party flows from the more liberal and populist ideology that arose during the 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary between Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. As a result, the new wave of Democratic contenders for the White House, in an attempt to tap into that liberal fervor, have pledged their support to liberal policies like the “New Green Deal.” Now, however, with an impending vote orchestrated by McConnell, these Democrats have a conundrum on their hands of epic proportions. It’s one thing to say they support this New Deal; it’s another thing altogether to voice that support in a vote—a vote for an outlandish, irresponsible, proposal that not even Nancy Pelosi wants to touch in the House.

The irony only continued when the Senate sponsor of the “Green New Deal,” Edward Markey, complained about McConnell’s plan to bring this legislation up for a vote. This might be the first time in American politics where the sponsor of a bill complains that his proposed bill is to be put up for debate and a vote.

Political hilarity and irony aside, Markey’s complaint about a vote for his bill reveals the underlying absurdity of “Green New Deal.” Markey decries McConnell’s move as legislative sabotage. When it’s sabotage to adopt your own legislation, maybe you didn’t mean the proposals in the first place. What turned out to be legislative conviction was only political grandstanding.

Grandstanding puts it lightly. Democrats know that this legislation has no path to law—it cannot happen, nor will it ever happen. It is not just economically impossible, it is technologically impossible. Even if Democrats gain control of the entire government in 2020, it will not pass. It is a political stunt. The entire American economy with all its trillions of dollars could not afford the “Green New Deal.” The Democrats proposed this grand, green deal only to toss raw meat to their base for the upcoming elections and, perhaps more importantly, to shift the entire political climate of the nation—to make the radical and disastrous policies of this legislation normal and reasonable in the public eye.

As Ross Douthat put it in his opinion piece in the New York Times, “The core conservative suspicion is that when liberals talk about the dire threat of global warming, they’re actually seizing opportunistically on the issue to justify, well, full socialism, the seizure of the economy’s commanding heights in order to implement the most left-wing possible agenda.” As Douthat concluded, the “Green New Deal” is actually a bold admission of that charge. Indeed, this “Green New Deal” aims not at revolution of ecological policy, but an entire reorientation of America’s economic ideology.

But the most significant remark made by Senator Markey as he proposed the legislation as this: “We will save all of creation by engaging in massive job creation.”

Seriously, this bill will “save all of creation.” If nothing else, what we see here is messianic politics. The Green New Deal calls for peace on earth, healing humanity, freeing indigenous peoples, stopping population loss from rural areas, and guaranteeing a well paying job, health care, and the arrival of full “economic security for all people of the United States.” As if any bill, any government act, or any government on earth, could do that.

The Christian worldview provides a more comprehensive and lasting promise for the care of creation. God entrusted mankind with the solemn stewardship of the environment. From the Garden of Eden to our present moment in history, God summons his people to care for the world and all God’s creatures. Stewardship of creation implies the existence of a Creator and that our dominion over the creation was no evolutionary accident. He granted mankind responsibility and dominion over the earth—a dominion that requires carefulness, not recklessness. It also requires honesty.

No doubt, this political debate has only just begun. The breakneck speed of American politics leaves little room to catch a breath, much less think about these important issues facing the nation. The gloves are on, the battle lines drawn, and Christians must vigilantly profess the biblical worldview that can answer and lead us through moral and political quandaries of the day.

This article draws from the February 14th edition of The Briefing. To listen to the full episode, click here. To subscribe to The Briefing–Dr. Mohler’s daily podcast that serves as an analysis of news and events–click here. 

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What is the Sin that Leads to Death?

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Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019

Unbridled liberal ambition: How the ‘Green New Deal’ packages every dream of the American left in one single proposalNew York Times (Lisa Friedman and Glenn Thrush) — Liberal Democrats Formally Call for a ‘Green New Deal,’ Giving Substance to a Rallying Cry

The reality of the ecological crisis and and the rational contours of the Christian worldviewNew York Times (Ross Douthat) — One Cheer for the Green New Deal

Truth, morality, and politics: No matter what our cause, Christians must be people who always affirm the truthWashington Post (Aaron Blake) — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s very bad defense of her falsehoods

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From Two Murder Victims to One: It Didn’t Take Long for New York’s Radical Abortion Bill to Show its Deadly Consequences

The horror of abortion seems to appear daily and in ever deadlier form in the nation’s headlines as states across the country pledge their support for late-term abortion laws. These laws would essentially allow for abortion right up until the moment a child is born. New laws in New York and Rhode Island, as well as proposed legislation in Virginia and Illinois, represent a new chapter in the pro-abortion movement, which endeavors to make the womb the most unsafe place for any baby in the United States. The totality of the English language fails to describe the utterly chilling and abhorrent barbarity of the pro-abortion movement’s agenda.

Pro-choice advocates have typically not openly defended abortion rights during the third-trimester. Nevertheless, the truth was revealed when the pro-abortion movement vociferously opposed even a ban on partial-birth abortion. Most Americans – even most who say they favor some form of abortion rights — maintained that if a baby could survive outside the mother’s womb, protection should be granted.

That has changed. The inevitable outcome of the pro-abortion worldview leads to abortion on demand at any moment of the pregnancy. States should, according to this radical dogma, protect a woman’s right to abort at any time for any reason of her health—health being defined not only as life and death, but emotional and mental. The deadly logic of the pro-abortion movement took an even deadlier turn these past weeks.

The story, however, does not end there. As we will see, the insanity of these new late-term abortion laws has left in their wake moral confusion and degeneracy in the criminal justice system.

In 2004, a jury convicted Scott Peterson for not one, but two murders. Peterson murdered his pregnant wife that also lead to the death of his unborn son, Conner. The indictment and subsequent conviction for two murders meant that, in the public’s eye, the unborn child also counted as a life worthy of the justice system’s protection. The unborn child had been murdered even as his mother was murdered.

Before the ink could dry on New York’s “Reproductive Health Act,” a story appeared in the New York Times that reported, “As Democrats in New York last month celebrated Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s signing of a law expanding abortion rights in the state, anti-abortion campaigners predicted it would eliminate criminal penalties for violence that ends women’s pregnancies. The debate resurfaced over the weekend after the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, cited the new law… as the reason for dropping an abortion charge against a man who the police say fatally stabbed his former girlfriend when she was 14 weeks pregnant.”

The speed of the moral revolution is dizzying—days after the passage of this comprehensive abortion law, the criminal justice system dropped its case to protect the life of the unborn. This culture of death, in the matter of days, has radically redefined the moral compass of the nation.

The “Reproductive Health Act” effectively removed abortion from the state’s penal code. The law, therefore, secures abortion virtually on demand at any moment of pregnancy when it is claimed that the woman’s health is at risk. In other words, a woman can demand an abortion when she fells that the child would disrupt her emotional or mental state.

Furthermore, when New York expunged abortion from the state’s criminal code, it consequently denied the personhood of any human not yet born. No crime could now conceivably exist for killing an unborn baby because New York has revoked humanness from the unborn. Unborn babies are non-persons according to New York. Non-persons can be murdered without any legal consequences, even if the death resulted from the murder of the baby’s own pregnant mother.

The sponsors of the New York legislation attempted to assuage their opponents by assuring them that, under current law, “physical attacks that end pregnancies can be prosecuted as first-degree assault which carries a prison sentence of up to 25 years.” That kind of argument deliberately avoids the crux of the issue and still denies the dignity of an unborn human life. Only the life of the mother matters in New York. Only an assault on her person is of consequence to the moral order of the pro-abortion agenda. An unborn child is not a human and as such, is undeserving of any legal protection.

This in no way detracts from the importance of laws that protect women from violence and assault. The issue is the diabolical avoidance on the matter of the unborn. The moral scheme of the pro-abortion movement has swept the rights of the unborn under the rug—unborn babies are not persons; their lives can be terminated, even up to their due date, without any legal ramifications. The new law was passed in New York, its passage was cheered with loud commotion, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed it proudly into law – and all with deadly deliberateness.

The Christian worldview asserts the sinfulness of all abortion at any point during the pregnancy. The Scriptures proclaim the sanctity of life from fertilization, to birth, and through every phase of life until natural death. Human life is an extension of God’s glorious grace—he has made every single human being in his own image according to the purpose of his will. As the Scriptures say, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139:14).

The pro-abortion movement has sown a culture of death. It attempts to destroy and to deny the sanctity of life and the consequences are now clear to see. This is what happens when a society jettisons the moral code enshrined in every human as an extension of God’s common grace. The news in recent days reveals the inevitable outcome of this culture of death. Unless this march to death is reversed, the headlines will only become more horrifying and even deadlier.

This article draws from the February 13th edition of The Briefing. To listen to the full episode, click here. To subscribe to The Briefing–Dr. Mohler’s daily podcast that serves as an analysis of news and events–click here. 

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Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2019

Are abortion advocates on a slippery slope? What new laws reveal about the widening moral divide in America

Why political pressure is not enough to change biologyUSA Today (Susan Miller) — LGBTQ families are on the cusp of dramatic growth, and millennials lead the way

The tools of a moral revolution: Report card on LGBT issues shames states into ‘progress’USA Today (Jorge Ortiz) — 'Sobering reality': LGBT progress report shows gains, but most states still won't grant rights

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The Power of the Gospel and the Meltdown of Identity Politics

American politics increasingly resembles a soap opera and, at least for now, Virginia has taken center stage. The drama in the state continues to unfold as the Commonwealth’s top three Democrats face pressure to resign. The Governor’s personal yearbook page from medical school contained a racially insensitive photo of a man in blackface shoulder-to-shoulder with a person dressed in Ku Klux Klan regalia. Later, the Governor also admitted to performing in blackface at a party in the 1980s. The Attorney General admitted to wearing blackface at a college party as well. Add to that the now egregious accusations of sexual abuse and rape that swirl around the Lieutenant Governor. The headlines out of Virginia are a dismal drama exacerbated by a recent development in the Democratic Party and driving the cultural Left in America: identity politics.

The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal pointed to the problem with a recent editorial, “The Democrats’ Identity Meltdown.” As the editors remarked, “the furies unleashed are consuming their own.” The editors argue that the Democrats have “unleashed race, gender, sexual orientation and class as the defining issues of American politics.” This emphasis on identity, though welcomed and promoted by leading Democrats, has turned on the party with a vengeance.

Virginia serves as a prime example of the self-destructive nature of identity politics—a political philosophy that expansively designates identity by race, social background, or gender at the expense of other identities. The Democratic Party has entrenched its political ideas in identity, adopting a zero-tolerance policy for certain beliefs and accusations. During the Senate hearings for the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Democrats labeled him unfit for office based on uncorroborated, unverified sexual misconduct. In the view of Senate Democrats, backed up by party outrage, the accusation disqualified Kavanaugh from service on the high court. Now, in Virginia, the tables have turned on the Democrats as one of their own encounters more incriminating accusations. Couple that with the foolish and racist conduct in the college years of the Governor and the Attorney General and it is easy to see that Democrats have backed themselves into a corner thanks to their promotion of identity politics. As the Wall Street Journal noted, “The problem for Democrats is that the ideology of race, gender and class is now so deeply ingrained on the political left that no one dares to challenge it.”

Not everyone, however, joined the editors of the Journal in sounding the alarm against identity politics. Matt Viser and Sean Sullivan of The Washington Post wrote an article headlined: “Different Democratic Controversies, Same Influence: Identity Politics.” The authors make the astonishing claim that “while Republicans believe democrats are going too far in their embrace of identity politics, many in the Democratic Party take pride in the fact that the current field of nearly a dozen presidential candidates includes only one heterosexual white male.”

Just try to imagine any moment in American history when leaders of a major political party would brag that among their leading presidential contenders, only one is a heterosexual white male. Evidently, all three of those words require some apology among Democrats.

There are far deeper issues at stake here. This ideology reduces human beings to a certain set of distinguishable identities that are more prized and valued than other identities—it establishes basic human identity in differences rather than a commonality shared amongst all humankind. Indeed, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, “It’s important that we don’t ignore the power of identity because it is very powerful, especially for women, especially for the rage of women right now.”  Rage is the driving energy of this ideology, and rage is its ultimate conclusion as well.

The embrace of identity politics and intersectionality has devastating consequences on American public life. This political theory magnifies differences and places greater value on individuals who can combine the highest number of benighted and neglected identities. Virtue and the worth of your opinion hinges on what makes you different. Thus, Democrats push their party into identity idolatry—the candidates who can claim as part of their heritage the greatest number of oppressed identities bears more influence and is entitled to speak (or to run for president). Woe unto the lone Democratic presidential candidate with the sign draped around his neck at the first presidential debate among Democrats fighting for the nomination: “White heterosexual male.”

The biblical worldview is the only antidote to identity politics. Intersectionality erodes the bedrock of civil society and dismantles decorum precisely because it is predicated and upon differences. It will only tolerate and celebrate divergence and divisiveness. The Christian worldview, however, offers a powerful response to identity politics. The biblical reply does not deny the reality nor the importance of identities to the human story. It does, however, begin with what unites all humanity—the Imago Dei. The biblical worldview starts in sameness not differences. It grounds the value of an individual in something more transcendent than experience, background, race, or gender; it starts with the image of God that resides in every human being on the planet. Humanity stands united by virtue of our common descent from Adam and Eve. Christians, therefore, do not reject identity politics and intersectionality merely because of its failure as an ideology, but because it denies the common bond that beats in the heart of every human: we are all made in God’s image. That identity is precious, perennial, and most to be cherished.

By the way, this issue helps to underline why biblically committed Christians must point again and again to the common descent of all humanity from Adam and Eve. We all share the same first parents. Modern evolutionary theory denies the very possibility of common descent from a single couple. Ideas have consequences.

Christians must understand and hold fast to the image of God that unites humanity in a common identity. The most important identity for every human is not our own self-prescribed definition based upon their experiences and background, but the identity given to them by the God of the universe. That identity trumps everything else.

Additionally, the biblical argument is not drawn only from Genesis. It reaches not only into the truths of Genesis, but the glories of the New Covenant of redemption inaugurated by Christ.  Jesus Christ is creating a new humanity—a people not of this world but of heaven, a people for God’s pleasure. It is a people made up of every tribe, tongue, people, and language—a citizenry of every ethnicity and race, of every socio-economic background and culture. Its citizenship does not stand on its differences but on our common salvation in Christ. In Christ we find our true identity. Believers in Christ share an eternal and glorious unity in Jesus Christ the Lord—a unity we enter upon faith in Jesus’s perfect sacrifice and atonement for sin

Intersectionality and identity politics breed division. These ideologies atomize society and drive humanity away from its core and essential commonality. This is where Christians must counter with the gospel of Jesus Christ and the authority of Scripture. Only the gospel secures peace and establishes truth. Only the gospel will unite a fractured society. Only the gospel can stem the tide of modernity’s downward spiral into chaos and decay. Identity politics is bad enough in the culture. In the church, it denies the gospel altogether.

Of this, I am certain: At the marriage supper of the Lamb, no one will hold any kind of sign claiming their own identity.

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Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019

Virginia’s soap opera continues: Will the Democrats apply their zero-tolerance policy?Wall Street Journal (Dave Shiflett) — Virginia’s Confederacy of DuncesWall Street Journal (Gerard Baker) — Ralph Northam and the Overlords of Outrage

The new orthodoxy of identity politics: Understanding the consequences of reducing human beings to just one characteristicWall Street Journal (Editorial Board) — The Democrats’ Identity MeltdownWashington Post (Matt Viser and Sean Sullivan) — Different Democratic controversies, same influence: identity politics

The real reason why Christians should reject identity politics

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The Reality of Sexual Abuse Hits Home: What Happened? What Do We Do Now?

A massive investigative report appeared in the Sunday editions of the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. The headline was direct — “20 years, 700 victims: Southern Baptist sexual abuse spreads as leaders resist reforms.”

This article, the first of three, contains sophisticated investigative journalism as the team of reporters distills harrowing accounts of rampant sexual abuse in the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The article reveals two chilling and horrifying patterns that have plagued the SBC—first, the reality of sexual abuse committed by church leaders and pastors, and second, the unwillingness of churches to investigate the claims made by the victims of sexual abuse. Indeed, the report uncovers many cases where pastors who committed sexual violence left one church only to secure a pastorate in a different church where they continued to carry out such acts.

The report states, “It’s not just a recent problem: In all, since 1998, roughly 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced allegations of sexual misconduct… That includes those who were convicted, credibly accused and successfully sued, and those who confessed or resigned.” The disturbing narrative only increased when the article noted that sexual abusers “left behind more than 700 victims, many of them shunned by their churches, left to themselves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to forgive their abusers or to get abortions.”

The report detailed some 220 offenders who either stand convicted or took plea deals, while dozes of cases await adjudication. The demographic of offenders included pastors, youth ministers, Sunday school teachers, deacons, and church volunteers. Nearly 100 abusers remain behind bars while, as the article highlights, “Scores of others cut deals and served no time. More than 100 are registered sex offenders. Some still work in Southern Baptist churches today.”

A heinous cloud hangs over the SBC. This unchecked pattern of sexual abuse comes like a deluge as scores of churches and denominational structures fail to protect its most vulnerable. Serial sex abusers move from one pulpit or place of ministry to the next and continue to carry out dreadful acts of violence. Ministers of the gospel, entrusted with a sacred duty to care for the people of God in their churches, breach that trust and defame the name of Christ by their actions. These stories of sexual abuse illustrate, in a lamentable way, the barbarity of unrestrained sinful patterns. Indeed, these abusers, caught in the torrent of their rebellion, cunningly hid or minimized their atrocities while churches willfully adopted a policy of ignorance, unwilling to see abuse that stood right before their eyes. They should have seen it. Now, they must see it.

Our first concern must be for the victims. The dark reality of this kind of abuse leads many victims to hide their trauma—they sit silent in their pews while their abusers publicly preach God’s Word. Southern Baptists, indeed, all denominations, must ensure that denominational structures and policies promote safe places for victims to make their abuse known. Failure to do so not only commits gross injustice for the abused but fosters an environment where abusers can continue their acts of sexual violence on other innocent lives. If churches capitulate on this urgent responsibility, they stand culpable for tolerating the cycle of abuse that scandalizes the churches of Christ.

This report raises a myriad of questions. One pressing question centers on the failure of Southern Baptists to see the full, unmitigated atrocity of sexual abuse. Why has there been such failure to see the affect of this predatory behavior? The Scriptures are clear that this kind of behavior in no way marks the people of Jesus Christ.

I would suggest that Southern Baptists, by instinct, have practiced a form of moralism that views sexual misbehavior as an isolated event—deal with it and move on. This simplistic moralism reduces sexual abuse and glosses over the severity of the crime. Sexual abuse is not an isolated act of misbehavior; it leaves in its wake scarred victims as well as malicious victimizers. Abuse of this nature snowballs. What started out as a seemingly harmless lapse in judgment becomes an avalanche of destruction.

In light of this report and the nature of sexual abuse, an independent, third-party investigation is the only credible avenue for any organizations that face the kind of sinful patterns unearthed in this article by the Houston Chronicle. No Christian body, church, or denomination can investigate itself on these terms because such an investigation requires a high level of thoroughness and trustworthiness. Only a third-party investigator can provide that kind of objective analysis.

Furthermore, Southern Baptists find themselves in a precarious pinch because of its core ecclesiology—an ecclesiology that upholds the full autonomy of local congregations. A Southern Baptist church, legally defined, is a church in friendly cooperation with and contributing to the causes of the Southern Baptist Convention. No denominational hierarchy exists that can force local congregations into conformity. The SBC ecclesial structure directly contrasts with the edifice of the Roman Catholic Church.

From a historical perspective, this story highlights the collision between two Baptist realities: the historic Baptist ecclesiology that posits the autonomy of the local church, while at the same time, the prized convention structure of Southern Baptist churches who have, since 1845, worked together and combined their energies to the furtherance of the gospel around the world.

This report from the Houston Chronicle, however, magnifies the need for a mechanism that identifies convicted and documented sexual abusers who may be considered for positions of leadership within the churches. Basic tools already exist, like background checks and sex-offender registries. Woe unto the church, ministry, or employer that fails to act and act now. The report resounds with overwhelming evidence: many churches of the SBC have failed, and its leaders must enact a strategy to reverse the tides of abuse in our churches. This strategy involves difficulties, particularly for Southern Baptists who must balance the ecclesiological convictions of the denomination with the moral imperative of halting sexual abuse in its churches. The struggle, however, must be met. Southern Baptists must pursue this predicament with conviction and alacrity. Our faithfulness to the church, to the gospel, and to God depends on our readiness to respond.

Indeed, the SBC has had to deal with similar issues in its history. Certain theological controversies moved the SBC to redefine the essence of its membership and the requirements of churches who cooperate with the SBC. The basic principle is that a church must be “in friendly cooperation with and contributing to the causes” of the convention. The SBC amended its documents in light of the sexual revolution. Thus, a church which affirmed homosexuality could no longer remain “in friendly cooperation with the SBC” and thus removed.  Some state conventions took direct action to excise churches that have demonstrated racism.

Now, it might be that this crisis will foster a new criterion of vital importance for the churches of the SBC—a church that would willingly and knowingly harbor sexual abuse and sexual abusers should not be considered in friendly cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention.

This polity in no way compromises the autonomy of the local church. The SBC, however, has the right to determine the qualifications and standards of its own membership. Thus, the SBC exists as a body of autonomous churches, in friendly cooperation with one another, who hold to the doctrines and moral expectations of Southern Baptists.

And where is the gospel preaching that is bold to declare sin to be sin? Where are the churches that maintain godly order and biblical discipline? How could there be such a toleration of sin?

Another issue Southern Baptist’s must reconsider is the practice of ordination. How does one even become an ordained minister in the SBC? To start, one does not become an ordained minister through the SBC. Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the SBC credentials no one; it licenses no preacher. Ordination as a Southern Baptist minister, rather, flows from the local church—a local congregation assumes the responsibility of ordination.

This marks a crucial point where Baptists have forgotten their ecclesiological roots. In the 19th century, the most famous Baptist preacher of the age was Charles Spurgeon. The “prince of preachers” was not ordained. Like many Baptists of the era, Spurgeon considered formal ordination, beyond prayer and the laying on of hands, as foolish and confusing popery.

Further, Baptists do not believe in any sacrament of ordination. We do not hold to a separate status of ministers—yet, we often allow that mindset to infiltrate our ecclesiology. The “ordained minister” is ordained in so far as he remains faithfully active in ministry under the authority and accountability of the local church that ordained him.

A return to traditional Baptist ecclesiology will resituate the status of an ordained minister in its proper context. No person should simply claim the status of an ordained minister and then hop pulpit to pulpit without any investigation, background check, reference call—or, to move from one place of abuse to another. Southern Baptist ecclesiology demands that local churches hold their ministers to a higher standard—a standard in accordance with the Scriptural qualifications for pastors and ministers of the church. A.T. Robertson, renowned New Testament and Greek scholar of the 20th century, pointed to the “hasty laying on of the hands.” Churches rush to ordain an individual based on emotion or sentiment rather than a true affirmation of fitness for gospel ministry. Lackadaisical ordination will produce doctrinally dubious and morally corrupt pastors. This trend must end and churches must take responsibility for those men they ordain for ministry.

In June of last year, J.D. Greear, the newly elected president of the SBC, appointed a task force dedicated to investigating the issue of sexual abuse in SBC churches. That task force is at work and I pray that they will be filled with God’s wisdom and quickly respond to this crisis. The vulnerable need protection and the victimizers need to be exposed.

The trauma of this story bears tremendous anguish and heartbreak. The SBC and all who love this denomination must pray for faithfulness on this vital issue—our usefulness for the kingdom of Christ hinges on our response to this horrifying reality. To be sure, there must be heartbreak and concern—that is a place to start, but work must be done. A long road lies ahead. For the church, for the gospel, for the glory of God, we must meet this challenge with fullness of conviction and fidelity to Jesus Christ.

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