When the church goes bad - News With Views

A lesbian bishop in Sweden made news recently by proposing that a seamen’s mission church in Stockholm remove its cross and other Christian symbols so it could become some kind of “interfaith” prayer room catering to Muslims. I wonder what St. Paul would have thought of a lesbian bishop baldly practicing her sin without a trace of repentance and with the full approval of her church.

The alleged bishop called Muslims “angels,” and so made it clear to the world why the Stockholm Syndrome is called the Stockholm Syndrome. Happily, this particular church is not included in her diocese, so she has no power to force them to take down the cross. But she would if she could.

Here at home, the Presbyterian Church USA, at its annual wing-ding last month, called in a Muslim imam to lead the church delegates in a prayer to Allah, the Muslim deity. Naturally, such a prayer could not be offered up in Jesus’ name. To do that, the PCUSA reasoned, would be an offense to Islam. As to any possible offense to Jesus Christ, the Lord of Lords, the PCUSA is silent.

We’ve seen this pattern before, in both America and Europe: the self-inflicted death of churches.

First the church ordains women to teach and preach. There seems to be no objective reason why this should be wrong, other than that it goes against Paul’s instructions to the early Christian churches—but it rarely turns out as hoped. At any rate, this is usually the first step toward a church’s failure.

Next, invariably, comes a rapidly growing acceptance of assorted sexual “lifestyles.” As one young female pastor said to me, face to face, adultery is “no big deal.” But of course the main business at hand is to “affirm” lesbians and homosexuals in the acting-out of their temptations. What the Bible unambiguously brands as sin is declared to be no sin at all. Seminaries, so-called Bible scholars, and other high-profile churchmen—and churchwomen, even more so—hand down the word: the Bible’s wrong, it ain’t no sin at all!

This is quickly followed by a wide repudiation of God’s whole word on sexual morality, and the only sins that remain condemned are political sins—opposing abortion, supporting Israel, and Climate Change Denial, just to name a few.

The last step is the virtual replacement of orthodox Christian doctrine by substitutes—by false religion. A few years ago it was goddess worship, rejecting Jesus Christ as the atonement for our sins and replacing Him, and God the Father, with “Sophia” and other female idols. But today the in thing for the flatline Protestant churches is Islam. How they’ll please both “gays” and Muslims is anybody’s guess.

In the meantime, if something else comes along that’s even more anti-Christian than Islam, look for them to latch onto that, too.

Now, when we need them most, the churches serve us least. By gluing themselves to whatever the popular culture of this fallen world laps up as hip and cool, they have altogether cast away their moral authority as churches.

They have made themselves irrelevant.

What these churches offer us today is a stealth atheism. They have exchanged religion for a dollar-store “spirituality” that’s no religion at all. “Interfaith” is, in reality, “no faith.” The only way, logically, for all religions to be equally true, for “all paths” to lead to the same destination, is for all of them to have a truth value of zero. That’s what makes it atheism.

Is it any wonder that the people flee these churches? That their membership numbers go down year by year?

Our nooze media rejoice in the growing number of “unchurched” people in the Western world. But these “unchurched” Christians—they are now the Church. They don’t need lesbian bishops, an imam’s prayer to Allah, apostate seminaries, or even the buildings owned by their denominations. By leaving the renegade churches, they themselves become the Church.

And God will hear their prayers, even if they only pray them at home or on the Internet. The Shepherd knows His sheep, and they still hear His voice.

I have discussed these topics, and others, on my blog, http://leeduigon.com, throughout the week. Please stop by and read! All it takes is just one click to get you there.