The Church, Sexual Immorality, and Fake Christianity

Pleased with the efforts of his demonic protégé, Screwtape nevertheless cautioned Wormwood not to waken his waffling churchgoing “patient” to “a sense of his real position.” In chapter XII of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape further warns Wormwood that his patient “must not be allowed to suspect that he is now, however slowly, heading right away from the sun on a line which will carry him into the cold and dark of utmost space.”

Screwtape goes on to contend that the man’s church attendance could even be used as an advantage in their demonic schemes. He explains,

As long as he retains externally the habits of a Christian he can still be made to think of himself as one who has adopted a few new friends and amusements but whose spiritual state is much the same as it was six weeks ago [before he became a Christian]. And while he thinks that, we do not have to contend with the explicit repentance of a definite, fully recognized, sin, but only with his vague, though uneasy, feeling that he hasn’t been doing very well lately.

After all, Screwtape concludes,

It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing…Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

Fewer and fewer Americans these days seem willing “to contend with the explicit repentance of a definite, fully recognized, sin.” Of course, to a great extent, this is because fewer and fewer Americans are able to recognize what is sin—or, many Americans are simply becoming comfortable with their sin and are eagerly strolling along the “gentle slope” to hell.

In a foolish desire to be “relevant” or “tolerant,” churches across the world—especially mainline Protestant churches and the Catholic Church—have abandoned long-heeded truths for heresy. This is especially the case when it comes to matters in the sexual realm.

At this point in the moral wars, if you are a Christian, you almost certainly should well know where your church stands on the issues of homosexuality, same-sex “marriage,” and any other manifestation of sexual immorality. If your church’s position on such grave matters is unclear, you should be asking yourself and your church leadership why this is the case.

If your church is refusing to confront these grave matters bravely and truthfully, you should seek to change that. If they refuse, you should find another body of fellowship. Likewise, if you are a lover of the truth, any church you’ve attended that has already gone the way of the world on homosexuality, marriage, and the like should now be your former church.

In other words, there is a war raging within the church, and it is long past time to choose sides and get in the fight. Decades of fake Christians peddling fake Christianity—along with lazy, ignorant, lukewarm, and sometimes hypocritical congregations—have allowed the moral lines for what was and was not sin in the sexual realm to be blurred or altogether redrawn.

As a result, the battles over sex and sexuality in our culture have largely been lost. A wide array of sexually immoral behaviors is now deemed acceptable by significant portions of our culture. At least sixty percent of Americans view same-sex “marriage,” homosexuality, and fornication (sex outside of marriage) as morally acceptable. Our courts, corporations, schools, legislatures, and the like have taken notice. Most every significant institution in the U.S. now widely embraces evil. The church doesn’t seem far behind.

It should come as little surprise that so many who call themselves Christians want to go the way of the world on sexual matters. This is especially true of those under 30. Their teachers, professors, bosses, TV shows, movies, et al fully embrace the perverse LGBT agenda, so why shouldn’t their church? Some church leaders—those unequipped, misled, or with a corporate (as opposed to a biblical) mindset who hope that surrender on sex will grow their numbers—have agreed.

The sexual morality presented by Christianity stands in stark contrast to the sexual immorality proffered by the perverse LGBT agenda. In spite of the clear and unmistakable message of Scripture and centuries of church teachings on sex, family, and marriage, there is a growing movement among Christians to ignore or flat out deny what God has long said on these grave matters. As the body of Christ is supposed to be the first and last line of defense with such spiritual darkness, this capitulation has led to increased battle grounds in this war.

As many of us well know, these battles are all around us: in bakeries, flower shops, adoption agencies, track meets, libraries, the military, schools (see here for a shocking list of the perversions occurring in k-12 government schools), and yes, tragically, even in the church (Catholic, Protestant, and “born-again” former Presidents who teach Sunday school). Thus, whether we desire it or not, whether we are engaged or not, almost every single American has already been touched by this war.

Though many of us are now witnessing things we formerly thought sheer nonsense or impossible—and horrific—as with most things in the human condition, what we Christians are facing today in the sexual realm is not as new as it may seem. The scourge of sexual immorality that is so pervasive in the “City of Man” has long plagued God’s people.

Since very near the beginning of time human beings have sought to shed the tenets of our Creator and go our own way. This is especially true when it comes to our sexuality. Much of the history of ancient Israel, as described by the Old Testament, included the struggle of the Jewish people with idolatry, false gods, and sexual immorality. Whether Baal, Ashtoreth, Molech, or any other such demons, the people of God were often led into obscene sexual activities, along with other vile wickedness such as human—including infant—sacrifice (which some of today’s liberals defend).

In spite of the widespread embrace of the left’s lies on sex, as was the case with Israel, a remnant of truth-tellers will remain. The size of that remnant will, to a great extent, be determined by the willingness of the church to fight for the truth. Those who’ve made a god of sex already own the Democrat Party, Hollywood, social media, the drive-by media, the government schools, and so on. We can’t afford to give away any more ground, certainly not within the church.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2018, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

How to Kill Christianity

Much has been made of the recent Pew poll that highlights America’s religious landscape. What has drawn the most attention is the apparent decline of Christianity in the U.S. “The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining,” began the piece. Many liberals took gleeful notice. The Institute on Religion and Democracy’s Mark Tooley noted, “Secularists and their fellow travelers are ecstatic. The secular utopia about which John Lennon crooned is impending. Christianity is finally dying!”

Of course, this is far from the case, as Tooley later reveals. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, points out that it’s not Christianity that’s dying, but rather “near Christianity” that is teetering. “Good riddance,” Moore concludes.

The denominations that have lost the most “near Christians” are Catholic and Mainline Protestant. According to the Washington Times, “for every person who joined the Roman Catholic Church, six others were departing.” Additionally, in the last 50 years, the proportion of Americans belonging to one of the “Seven Sisters of Mainline Protestantism” has plummeted from one in six, to one in sixteen.

From the Anglicans at Jamestown, to the Pilgrims at Plymouth, and the Puritans at Massachusetts Bay, virtually all of the Mainline Protestant churches in the U.S. can trace their roots to those who literally founded America. The principles of American democracy were born in Mainline churches. The revivals during the Great Awakening were preached by men from Mainline churches. Many of the first colleges and universities in the U.S. were founded by Mainline churches. What’s more, eight of the first fourteen U.S. Presidents were Episcopalian. The spiritual and political roots of America are deeply embedded in Mainline Protestantism. What a tragic fall!

So this begs the question, why have the Catholic Church and Mainline Protestantism seen such a collapse? Moore reveals the answer when he notes that, what the Pew poll really reveals is that we have “fewer incognito atheists” in America. “Those who don’t believe can say so—and still find spouses, get jobs, volunteer with the PTA, and even run for office. This is good news because the kind of ‘Christianity’ that is a means to an end—even if that end is ‘traditional family values’—is what J. Gresham Machen rightly called ‘liberalism,’ and it is an entirely different religion from the apostolic faith handed down by Jesus Christ.”

Of course it would be the denominations most infected with liberalism (Is there anything liberalism can’t corrupt?) that have seen the greatest decline. As Tooley put it, “Mainline Protestantism lost its way when it forgot how to balance being American and being Christian, choosing American individualism and self-made spirituality over classical Christianity. Nearly all mainline seminaries had embraced modernism by the 1920s, rejecting the supernatural in favor of metaphorized faith integrated with sociology and political revolution.”

Such watered-down theology has produced ear-ticklers like John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gene Robinson, and the like, along with heretical nonsense such as the Jesus Seminar. For decades men (and women) like Spong and Borg made quite a name for themselves by rejecting the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus, His atoning death and resurrection, every miracle recorded in the New Testament, and so on. In other words, in a tragic attempt to make themselves “relevant,” such men and women rejected virtually every tenet of the Christian faith, all the while still calling themselves “Christians.”

Unsurprisingly, it’s heretics such as these who’ve overseen such a precipitous decline in their denominations. After all, who wants to attend a church that rejects the supernatural and offers little more than worn-out platitudes and self-help advice? Who wants to attend a church that doesn’t talk about the forgiveness of sin (much less the existence of sin) and the hope of eternal life? Instead of pointing people to eternal truths, these liberal congregations have concerned themselves with “social activism.”

To a significant extent, the same thing has happened to the Catholic Church in the U.S. Though the American Catholic Church, unlike most of her liberal Protestant counterparts, has (for the most part) opposed abortion, same-sex “marriage,” and the rest of the radical sexual agenda of the left, sadly many Catholics have been all too willing to use big government activism as a substitute for charity.

As Paul Rahe put it, many years ago the Catholic Church in America “fell prey to a conceit that had long before ensnared a great many mainstream Protestants in the United States – the notion that public provision is somehow akin to charity – and so they fostered state paternalism and undermined what they professed to teach: that charity is an individual responsibility and that it is appropriate that the laity join together under the leadership of the Church to alleviate the suffering of the poor.”

Additionally, rabid anti-death penalty advocate Sister Helen Prejean, the inspiration of the Susan Sarandon movie “Dead Man Walking,” is doing little for the cause of “individual responsibility.” In an attempt to help Dzhokhar Tsarnaev escape the ultimate responsibility for his murderous crimes, Sister Prejean testified last week in the penalty phase of the notorious Boston Bomber.

In spite of the lack of any public expression of remorse, Prejean testified that she felt that Tsarnaev was “genuinely sorry” for his crimes. Like her Catholic cohorts who advocate for the likes of Obamacare, Prejean mistakes “state paternalism” for true charity. (Nothing says “state paternalism” like clothing, housing, and feeding a mass murderer for decades.) Again, borrowing from Mark Tooley, “Was she concerned more about his eternal soul, or his physical life, and her political cause? Let’s pray the former, but the latter seems likelier. If indeed the latter, Sister Prejean is an archetype for the modern church’s indifference to eternity, and judgment, in favor of therapeutic protection and affirmation.”

Sister Prejean is a great illustration of why the Catholic Church in the U.S. is in steep decline. Just as with its promotion of government healthcare, or a litany of other programs that push state paternalism over personal responsibility, for decades now the Catholic Church in America has shown “indifference” toward eternity and judgement. Thus, anyone fervently seeking the truth on such matters is drawn elsewhere.

By and large, the churches that are growing in the U.S. are those that unapologetically present the truth. Of course, a large or a growing church isn’t always a measure of a healthy and holy church, but when one is sincerely seeking the spiritual truths that we all at one time or another crave, most of us “seekers” know the truth when we hear it and see it. This doesn’t mean that the majority of us will embrace such truths. Jesus Himself warned us that this would not be the case.

Don’t be surprised to see the decline of Christianity continue. As it becomes more difficult and dangerous to be a follower of Christ, more and more people are going to find the “wide road” described by Jesus quite appealing. This is especially the case when so-called “Christians” are pointing the way.

(See this column on American Thinker.)

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com