Evangelical Pastor Says the Church has Become "More Partisan Than Christian"

Tony Evans: The Church has Become More Partisan Than Christian 

"The point is today that the church has lost its uniqueness.  Rather than saving and representing the team in heaven, they have been mimicking the teams of the culture."  Tony Evans to the National African American Fellowship of the Southern Baptist Convention.  

Walking out of a church in the middle of a pastor's sermon was not something I ever expected to do.  But growing up in a small, Southern Baptist church that was a genuine Christian fellowship, and that was centered on things like worship, support for missionary outreach, ministry to members and to the community, education in doctrine and theology, and relationships and fellowship with each other.  Sermons focused the congregation on living according to the values of Christian faith, things like peace, a sense of community, integrity, the pursuit of righteousness in a humble way.  They were inspirational and encouraging.  

For most of the time I was growing up, we had the same pastor.  He was bi-vocational, a university professor who got a seminary education and served for sixteen years as a missionary in West Africa before returning, getting graduate and doctoral degrees in sociology and history.  He made himself available to local Southern Baptist congregations as an interim, and that's how he came to our church.  Once there, even though it was a fifty-mile commute one way, the church decided to make it permanent and he accepted the offer.  Teaching Christ's second great commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself" rather than to indoctrinate your neighbor in right wing politics would get him labelled a liberal these days. 

In a church without formal ritual in its worship, the sermon is the focal point, the proclamation of the word of God and in a Baptist church, the content is always based on a biblical text.  Some pastors follow the Common Lectionary for their sermon texts, some are more expository and their sermons follow the order in one of the gospels.  A sermon interprets the biblical text, explaining its meaning and then makes it relevant by illustrations from experience.  A pastor has to know his congregation and be discerning of their spiritual needs when developing sermon themes and the church's worship has to be spiritually focused to help the congregation connect to God's presence.  Secular political infiltration is a distraction. 

It was not until just prior to the 1992 election that I really started to notice obvious right wing political content in a pastor's sermon. I actually sat down and had a conversation with the pastor about it at one point, a frustrating experience that didn't answer any direct questions.  One Sunday, what would have been unthinkable for my wife and I who were both raised in church, happened.  After a particularly partisan statement in the middle of a sermon, I reached around and gathered my things, leaned over to my wife and said "I'm leaving."  She didn't hesitate, and we both got up and walked out.  

The Intrusion of Right Wing Politics Neutralizes the Spirituality of the Church

There's a spiritual element in a church worship service that is genuine, inspirational and in the vernacular of "church talk" leads worshippers to an encounter with God's presence.  Even in the elements of worship that are symbolic or ritualistic, there's meaning and purpose attached to them.  When something else intrudes into that space, the life goes out of it, making it difficult to focus.  

Tony Evans, in the message cited above, uses texts from Matthew and Peter to describe a church as the "ecclesia", a body made up of those who have faith in Christ in common, and who come together for the specific purpose of being empowered by the spirit for "kingdom" purposes.  Noting that Jesus declared "My kingdom is not of this world," but is a spiritual domain, the intrusion of politics, any politics, removes the elements of the ecclesia.  Church, apart from its mission and purpose, is pointless. 

Maybe that's why so many people are leaving churches, especially Evangelical churches.  Conservative Christians, including Evangelicals, Pentecostals and Charismatics, have been harshly critical of mainline Protestant denominations for years, claiming that theological and social liberalism removed the spiritual elements, and led to declining attendance and membership.  But there is now research which shows that conservative churches are declining at a faster rate than mainline Protestants, to the point where the latter now actually outnumber the former for the first time in decades. 

Evangelicals are loathe to admit that their membership losses may be due to the infiltration of secular, right wing politics, but the declining attendance and membership correspond directly to the intensity of the involvement of churches and church leaders with the GOP.  And yes, the losses have increased since Trumpism became part of the equation.  Resting the right wing political agenda on a politician whose personal life is a total contradiction of the family and Christian values touted by the GOP and taught by the church has been an intolerable infiltration of churches for many Christians.  The Southern Baptist Convention has seen a loss of just under 3 million members since its peak in 2006, 2 million of those in the past six years, 409,000 just this past year.  Across the spectrum of conservative Evangelicalism, prior to COVID, the drop in church membership has been 8 million since 2010, almost 6 million since 2016.  

Apparently, there are still some Christians who don't want to own a politicians adulterous affairs, bribes to porn stars to buy their silence, their incessant lying, including cheating their way to business profiteering, their sexual abuse of women, and their lack of patriotic loyalty to the constitution.  

Nor do I think all Christians buy into the false presumption that the founding fathers intended to establish a "Christian" nation in which Christianity is the "most favored" faith by religious liberty and in which white Christians of European ancestry are chosen to be blessed by decimating native Americans, taking their land and prospering from its resources.  That's also a very popular theme among conservative Evangelicals and especially among the Pentecostal/Charismatic branch of the church.  

"We are actually a church that 's participating in cancel culture," says Evans.  "Because we lead churches and cancel out the word of God by the doctrine of secularism and deciding only when it's convenient to be Christian, not taking a stand with Jesus Christ because we've got these three legislative bodies.  That's why you can have slavery go on and racism and culturalism go on, and this and that and this and that, because its not the final word.  There are two answers to every question:   God's answer and everyone else."  

Amen to that.  And God help us.