For those of you following the great theological brouhaha of 2022, there is a grand conspiracy against culture wars unfolding before our very eyes. Falwell and all his glory did not see this coming. Schaeffer and all his goatee didn’t see it coming either. Blame these warriors for their inadequacies and I will blame certain T4G characters for all their false comparisons.
The problem is that there are so many fine people saying things that frustrate me that my inner happy-clappy self wishes I could stay away from such entanglings. But, as I write, there are people out there wondering, “But if Ligon Schpunkin’ says it, it can’t be that bad.” And, as Joe Rigney would say, “I sympathize with that!”
Some of these men are men that I respect and find beneficial in some areas and men with whom I have personally interacted in my seminary days, and in my conference-attending days. I should also note that there is not a fabric of malice in these individuals. They desire the good. But, Nancy Pelosi is in the details.
And if you analyze this whole conversation, the thread goes off track at some point and someone needs to interact a little bit so that when records are stored in section 78B of Elon Musk’s Mars units, some curator will be able to observe that not everyone was silent.
The general thesis for those at Lake Wobegon is that there is an increased concern with the politicization of the pulpit. That is, too many people are using the pulpit for political causes. Now, why is such a topic so relevant today?
We should not be naive and act as if we don’t know the source of such antagonism. The man who is about 300 miles south of where I stand here in Florida carries a private tanning booth wherever he goes. But he also had the audacity to elevate the tribalism during his four-year reign. People were mad, in case you forgot. Like, “Mad Max” mad. David French was so upset that he left Fox News and all of the sudden started acting concerned for the environment. To say Trump brought things to the forefront is an understatement. To be more precise, he blew up the underground D.C.’s secret railroad and exposed the lies. Now, I am a Bud-Light critic of Trump and I am eager to not see him run ever again, but let’s remember that this man made the right people upset and there is something to that gift.
So, what’s the concern with political sermons? And why should we be more concerned about “Gospel” preaching? And why doesn’t Tom Brady just retire?
The first sobering note is that a little Kuyper goes a long way. Dichotomizing politics from the Gospel is to play Bart Ehrman with the text and do lots of cutting. It is true that John the Presbyterian would have walked a lot more miles if he weren’t so darn insensitive to Herod’s porn habits. It is also true that the prophets would have been more well-received if they Garfunkled their way through Jerusalem and treated silence as their friend. But, lo, behold, alas, they hated sin…like a lot. They were dramatizers acting out God’s judgment with precision.
Politics can never be divorced from the Gospel because Lordship can never be divorced from Nero. It’s a battle of principles. Or, as Kuyper would say, “It’s Christendom vs. Paganism. If these guys believe that politics–or political things–should not be said from the pulpit, because–to quote Ligon Duncan–we should not give the impression we are supporting one candidate over the other, then we have offered nothing, but sloganizing and we have not helped our people one bit in using their intellectual skills to think more ethically about life.
Perhaps this is the way they want things to be.
Someone told me recently that a fairly “conservative” church they know has around 50% voting Democrats in it. Now, even if he is exaggerating, give or take 20%, that’s still 30% too many Democrats. Biblical preaching doth not produce mild, moderate, or mad liberals. Even if Biden supporters remain in conservative-sounding churches, their bones should shrivel with unhappiness at bibline blood-bought expositions or they should succumb to the reality that preaching produces a conservationist population.
You may ask, “what would create this zenith of plurality in a church?” You guessed it: no politics from the pulpit. So, boys and girls, if you just preach “Gospel” you get a diverse church ranging from wokey-wokey hipsters and Reagan Democrats and some scattered Republicans.
I suspect there are some out there who love this ecclesiastical pie. I despise it. Ministers are not out there to preach symbolic Gospel messages but to flesh out the sacrificial meat of the Gospel. It’s milk+meat=everything. (Let the reader understand).
Concerns about not making the pulpit political can be genuine at times. For instance, if a political leader ever asked whether he can have five minutes of my sermon time, I would kindly tell him to “Get this corn out of my face, and then escort him out.” It’s inconceivable! But if I am preaching through the prophets and Isaiah says some pretty serrated-edge words to the political and religious rulers of the day, I will take the opportunity to make a few salient observations about Disney and Newt Gingrich, ’cause I am an equal opportunity offender.
Therefore, this thread against political opinations from the pulpit is a mute one. And, I must confess, that some of these older statesmen have been far too removed from the day-to-day affairs of normal people to see what is truly going on. We are no longer fighting for the soul of America, we have moved on to fighting for whatever body parts are left. There is no more time for niceties and nuances. Mickey Mouse is now a transgendered orangutan.
