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by Michael Clary
October 18, 2026

It was simultaneously the most helpful and most controversial sermon I’d ever preached.

In the fall of 2021, Critical Race Theory (CRT) was a trending cultural topic. To ordinary Christians, this sounded like a debate topic in the community college faculty lounge. But in reality, it was a dangerous idea spreading throughout the evangelical world and leading many astray.1

So I preached a sermon about it, explaining what it is, where it came from, and why Christians should reject it. I worked hard to be objective, fair-minded, and even-handed. No mustard or angry rhetoric, just the facts.

I received more positive feedback about that sermon than any other I had ever preached. Not only the “good sermon, pastor” comments on the way out the door, but emails of gratitude, handwritten thank you cards, and lengthy letters from people I’d never met who watched it online.

At the same time, I also received a critical email from a few church leaders that accused me of “preaching politics,” though I said nothing about politicians, elections, or parties. They said this since CRT was a cultural issue being debated in the political arena. Some of these leaders were committed to a no-politics-in-the-pulpit policy, which rendered most hot-button cultural issues off-limits.

But I had a sneaking suspicion that they really meant no conservative politics in the pulpit.

A year later, that suspicion was confirmed when I preached another sermon opposing various Biden-era COVID vaccine mandates. Those mandates violated the consciences of several of my members, and our own doctrinal confession affirms liberty of conscience. Further, journalist Megan Basham had published a bombshell report called “How The Federal Government Used Evangelical Leaders To Spread Covid Propaganda” earlier that year, which documented how federal officials enlisted evangelical leaders to promote the vaccine.

Yet after that sermon, one of my leaders accused me of misusing scripture to advance a political agenda. Ironically, he wanted our church to take a politically charged position in support of vaccine mandates.

This made the issue clear to me. These leaders did not object to left-leaning political positions, only conservative ones. All these leaders have since moved on to other churches, and this is no longer an issue at my church.

You might assume that these leaders were committed leftists, but that’s not true. Their progressive sympathies came from misguided pietism, the belief that Christians should stay above-the-fray, keep their hands clean, avoid controversy, and focus their public messaging on soul-winning. By their reasoning, signaling sympathy with the left could help us reach more unbelievers with the gospel.

A recent post on X captured a similar sentiment.

Our chief aim should be to glorify God and share the Gospel with the lost! It’s that simple. Jesus never once attempted to change culture. He came to save his elect. That’s it . . . So . . . Love God. Love your wife. Love your kids. Love others. Paul never tried to change politics. Peter never tried to change politics. Nope, not even Jesus. The Christian walk is NOT about changing America. Jesus doesn’t want us getting caught up in fruitless endeavors.

That sounds quite humble and godly, doesn’t it? But if every Christian in America adopted that posture, Christians would abandon the political arena entirely. No Christians would seek public office. We would focus exclusively on our homes, families, and churches, while leaving all the school boards, sheriff’s departments, courtrooms, and city councils to be run by unbelievers.

There would be no Christians fighting for just laws and righteous leaders, because those things are “fruitless endeavors.” When Christians abandon the public square, we surrender it to whoever is willing to occupy those roles. And at present, we’re seeing growing numbers of atheists, secularists, LGBTQ activists, socialists, Hindus, and Muslims running for office — and winning.

Is Christ honored by simply letting them win?

The Myth of the Neutral Pulpit

Here’s the challenge we face in our day. As an increasing number of moral issues have been deemed “political,” the pastors who address them with clarity and conviction will be accused of preaching politics. But the pastor who avoids these issues for the sake of unity will leave his people ill-equipped regarding some of the most urgent issues of our day. And if a pastor won’t speak up because he’s afraid of being political, Satan will politicize everything until he won’t speak at all.

Political issues aren’t going away. If anything, they’re increasing, because cultural customs and mediating institutions have failed, leading to everything being politicized. As families and churches have failed to shape our common understanding of the good, the state steps in to fill the void. Political issues are moral issues, and moral issues are spiritual issues. Therefore, pastors must address them if they are to be faithful to God and helpful to their flocks.

Further, political issues are natural to what it means to be human. In modern times, political issues are collisions of fundamentally irreconcilable worldviews. In the not-too-distant past, ordinary political disagreements were about tax rates or trade policy. In our day, Democrats and Republicans cannot agree over the definition of a woman. Some believe abortion is murder; others believe it is a woman’s right.

Should pastors not provide biblical instruction on these matters? Can two church members merely “agree to disagree” about such morally urgent matters? These aren’t differences about the church’s carpet color. These are questions about nature and reality itself. A pastor who faithfully preaches Genesis 1 will end up sounding political, whether he intends to or not. Churches end up doing “at the movies” sermon series instead.

The Poison Is In the -ism

To get things moving in the right direction again, we need to recover true piety—an ancient idea that has been forgotten in our day. I distinguish true piety from pietism, which overemphasizes immaterial/spiritual realities at the expense of material/physical realities. A pietistic man might say, “Let’s focus on soul-winning and not get entangled in worldly affairs.” A truly pious man, however, can share the gospel while also being involved in the civil realm.

The problem with pietistic thinking is the presumption that “spiritual” means “non-physical.” But biblically speaking, to be “spiritual” means to be guided and motivated by the Holy Spirit, obeying God’s commands as revealed in the Bible. The truly spiritual man doesn’t limit his Christian duty to explicitly religious things, like quiet times, prayer lists, and Bible readings (all good things, by the way!), but he seeks to apply his Christian convictions to every area of his life.

The Latin word pietas described the virtue of honoring one’s obligations to God, family, and people. As the ancients understood it, true piety was considered a public virtue, where one looks upward to God, backward to one’s fathers, and forward to one’s children.

We see a good example in Nehemiah 4, where he inspires the workers in Jerusalem to take their shovels in one hand and swords in the other, calling them to “Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes” (Neh. 4:14). Similarly, G. K. Chesterton said we do not fight because we hate what’s in front of us, but because we love what’s behind us.2

But in modern times, piety has lost its public dimension, shrinking our Christian duties to the interior realm while dismissing public concerns as mere worldliness. This is pietism. Thus, a “pietistic” Christian thinks he is more godly by not getting involved in politics, which he dismisses as “worldly.” But in so doing, he surrenders the public square to unbelievers who have no scruples against writing their own morality into law.

Put simply, piety is good, pietism is bad, the poison is in the -ism.3

The Cost of Abandoning the Public Square

As many evangelical Christians have abandoned the public square in recent years, we are grossly underrepresented compared to our significant numbers. Although we make up roughly a quarter of the U.S. population, our bench of political leaders, judges, and public intellectuals is pretty thin. Perhaps this is because we have done what the evangelical elites told us to do: treat power as an idol and view politics as a distraction from “real” kingdom work.

That was a grave mistake. Faithfulness to God requires true piety, which means we must be more political, not less.

Some readers may raise an objection here: Christ gave the church the keys, not the sword, and any pastor who speaks out on political matters has overstepped his office. But when someone charges the pastor to “stay in his lane,” that man or woman is using the Bible to muzzle the Bible. However, if we let Scripture guide all our speech, there are at least two responses to this mistaken objection.

First, Scripture is unavoidably political, so there is no way to faithfully preach the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27) and not end up addressing issues that will be considered political. I’ve heard it said that scripture speaks directly to some things and indirectly to everything else. A faithful pastor should feel free to apply the word of God to many issues that may not be directly addressed in scripture, shining the light of Scripture wherever it is helpful to do so.

Second, the so-called “political issues” of our day are actually worldview questions that will determine the future of our country. Since everything is politicized these days, the pastor who avoids addressing them is outsourcing his duty to the pundits, podcasters, and social media influencers. That isn’t faithful shepherding.

Charles Spurgeon once remarked, “I often hear it said, ‘Do not bring religion into politics.’ This is precisely where it ought to be brought, and set there in the face of all men as on a candlestick.”4 That was true in 1881, and it is still true today. Therefore, the distinction between the keys and the sword should guide how pastors speak, not whether they speak.

Five Things Pastors Should Do

To help pastors recover their prophetic voice in the political arena, I propose the following five things every pastor should do to get started.

First, Pastors Should Preach True Piety

Men of true piety are statesmen, saints who hold strong faith in God and are willing to fight for their families, churches, and communities. Their private piety is marked by a commitment to the scriptures, prayer, their families, and church life. Their public piety is marked by taking personal responsibility to assert God’s righteousness and justice in their communities and country.

In 1 Timothy 2:1–2, Paul gives helpful instruction about praying for civil leaders. He commands us to pray “for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.” When political leaders are doing their job well, it promotes conditions of peace where the Christian faith can thrive and grow. Thus, pious Christians have a stake in politics because good governance preserves our ability to fully live out our Christian convictions.

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This is no different from what the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) affirms in Article XV on the social order. It says, “All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society . . . Every Christian should seek to bring industry, government, and society as a whole under the sway of the principles of righteousness, truth, and brotherly love.”5

Second, Pastors Should Preach as the Conscience of Society

Pastors do this primarily by proclaiming God’s law regarding urgent issues in the culture, giving instruction to civil leaders about their duty to uphold justice and righteousness.

Regarding cultural issues, the Ten Commandments form the bedrock layer of the Bible’s teaching about right and wrong.6 Helpful expositions of God’s law can be found in several of the catechisms, such as the Heidelberg Catechism, the Westminster Larger Catechism, the Baptist Catechism, and Calvin’s Geneva Catechism. These tools are useful to equip a pastor to speak out on moral and cultural issues as each commandment is stated, its obligations and prohibitions explained, and a brief rationale provided.

For example, a pastor should not hesitate to speak against abortion as murder, because it is forbidden by the sixth commandment. A pastor should not hesitate to condemn every form of sexual sin, including pornography, fornication, adultery, homosexuality, transgenderism, and the wickedness of LGBTQ pride which celebrates sins the Bible condemns, because these are all forbidden by the seventh commandment. A pastor may speak against unjust taxation and government corruption, explaining how these are a form of theft forbidden by the eighth commandment (and anathematized as tyranny by 1 Sam. 8 — RDM). Preaching about these issues promotes the public good.

Let me offer a word of caution here. As a general rule, pastors should preach about cultural or political issues when they are relevant to the text they are preaching. Exceptions to this rule may be cultural moments of such great significance that many people expect to hear biblical instruction about it.

For example, many preachers did this after the attacks on September 11, 2001. I did this myself after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. At such times of national crisis, God’s people need their shepherds to connect the world to the Word.

But most of the time, the Word should set the agenda. The pulpit should not be turned into a weekly cultural commentary on whatever is in the news. Doing so undermines the primacy of the Word of God and makes the preacher more of a pundit and less of a prophet.

Someone might say that preaching God’s law can’t change the heart, therefore we should only preach the gospel. But again, such an objection misuses a biblical truth. Preaching God’s law is necessary to establish the reality of sin for which men must repent to be saved. God’s holy law pricks men’s consciences and orients them to what is good and right. Preaching the law alone cannot change the heart, but preaching the law is necessary to demonstrate our need for the gospel, which does change the heart. This is what Paul means by preaching the law “lawfully” (1 Tim. 1:8–11).

Not only that, but changing hearts is not the only thing Christians should care about. The moral law is the unique revelation of God’s standard of righteousness, and it is universally binding on all men. Biblical commandments govern how we treat our neighbors and should be preached, upheld, and enforced, regardless of whether or not an individual is regenerated. We have laws against murder and we punish murderers, irrespective of the state of their souls.

In this way, good laws are necessary for a virtuous citizenry, which is necessary for society to function properly. A just society will uphold the good and punish the wicked (1 Pet. 2:13–14). Deuteronomy 19:19–20 says, “You shall purge the evil from your midst. And the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you.” Put simply, the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. And pastors should not fear preaching the whole counsel of God, laws included.

Even more, because there are Christians who hold the sword and others who need to hold the sword, they need to know what God demands. Therefore, regarding the civil magistrate, Paul calls him “God’s servant for your good” (Rom. 13:4). A “servant” needs to know what the master requires. Whose job is it to inform him? As ministers of the word, pastors are certainly responsible to instruct him (and by extension, everyone else) about the duties of the civil magistrate.

Third, Pastors Should Preach Accurately about Political Parties and their Party Platforms

Both political parties have their problems, but they are not morally equivalent. The 2024 Democratic Party Platform explicitly endorsed abortion through all nine months, transgender interventions for children, and the redefinition of civil rights law to include sexual orientation and gender identity.7 These positions are not merely different from Christianity but are actively hostile to it.

That’s not to say the Republicans are our saviors. When Republicans support evil, pastors should call them out. But the Democratic Party advocates for these evils as stated goals, while the Republican Party opposes them (at least on paper).8 The Democrats’ agenda represents civilizational suicide, and the Republicans are the only viable party standing in their way. A pastor who treats the two parties as morally equivalent for the sake of pulpit decorum is misinforming his people.

Some might object that pastors should not condemn the Democratic Party because it binds the consciences of God’s people in a matter of Christian liberty. Nonsense. Party platforms exist for a reason. They are meant to inform voters about the larger agenda they are supporting when they vote for a particular candidate of that party. Party platforms are used to recruit candidates, enforce voting patterns once in office, and form the consciences of the voters who support them.

In other words, party platforms represent a moral agenda that must be scrutinized in light of Scripture. This is not to say a pastor should tell his people who to vote for. But in 2026, it is pastoral malpractice to simply tell people “vote however you like.” To vote for the Democratic Party means giving the sword of the state to those who favor slaughtering pre-born babies and mutilating children.

Fourth, Pastors Should be Willing to Call out Public Officials for their Sins, by Name, when Necessary

Public sins require public correction. The prophet Nathan confronted King David to his face for adultery and murder (2 Sam. 12). Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar to “break off your sins by practicing righteousness” (Dan. 4:27). John the Baptist told Herod that his marriage was unlawful and he literally lost his head for it (Mark 6:18). The Apostle Paul reasoned with Governor Felix “about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment” (Acts 24:25).

Further, the public official doesn’t need to be present to hear the rebuke, because the rebuke is meant for everyone’s instruction, not just his (or hers). When Jesus made a baldly political statement insulting Herod, calling him “that fox” (Luke 13:32), Herod was not present to hear it. Jesus said it to the Pharisees in the hearing of the disciples which was recorded in Scripture for our benefit. The same principle applies in publicly denouncing the wickedness of civil leaders.

Fifth, Pastors Should Preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Calling Everyone to Repent of All their Sins, both Public and Private

The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 says, “Means and methods used for the improvement of society and the establishment of righteousness among men can be truly and permanently helpful only when they are rooted in the regeneration of the individual by the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ.”9

This sentence indicates the pursuit of two simultaneous goals: (1) the improvement of society and the establishment of righteousness, and (2) the regeneration of the individual by the saving grace of God. The pursuit of the first goal is not dependent upon completion of the second. We can and must do both at the same time. Pastors should work to improve society and establish righteousness even though men may be unconverted, and our continued preaching of the gospel is necessary to make those gains “truly and permanently helpful.” Thus, the church can assert her influence in both the public square and the prayer closet.

One Thing Pastors Should NOT Do

Even though pastors should perform the duties described above, there is one thing a pastor should NOT do. Pastors should not preach like pundits.

Let me explain.

Pastors must remember that the ultimate aim of preaching is the glory of God and the edification of the saints. Pastors often speak with a “prophetic” voice, because they are delivering an authoritative word from God to his people. The difference between a prophet and a pundit is the purpose of the message. The pundit’s primary aim is to provide political commentary on the issues of the day. The prophet’s primary aim is to speak a divine word that glorifies God and edifies his saints. This distinction must be maintained.

Most pastors are not equipped to speak authoritatively about complex policy matters, much of which isn’t relevant to the daily lives of their people anyway. If a pastor reads this essay and starts preaching about trade policy, NATO, or federal antitrust regulation, he’s missed the point. He is an ambassador for Christ, who represents the interests of God’s kingdom in the public square.

The pulpit may address cultural issues but must ultimately point people’s hearts toward God, who is sovereign over politics, cultures, nations, rulers, and future events, and to whom all men will one day give account. If his sermons sound like stump speeches, something has gone wrong. The pulpit is no place for political rants.

Here’s what concerns me. I’ve seen so-called conservative pastors use their pulpits to preach about the injustices of our society in ways that seem intended to provoke anger and resentment in their congregations. It seems their sermons are preached for their YouTube audience rather than the people in their congregation. Right-wing pastors may angrily vent their frustrations about the progressive left in ways that encourage their people to sinfully indulge their grievances, hatred, and resentment.

To be sure, young people (and older ones, too) have legitimate reasons to be angry about what the left is doing to our country. They are frustrated they can’t find a woman to marry who isn’t a closet feminist. They can’t afford to buy a home. Gas is too expensive. Scarce job prospects are going to illegal aliens. Young white men have been told their whole lives that they are racist, sexist, and evil, and that they deserve all these hardships and more.

And yet, should pastors fan these smoldering embers of frustration into an inferno of rage? No!

Jesus has a name for men who do these things: hirelings. Hirelings are those who “care nothing for the sheep” (John 10:13). They are more interested in growing their audience than shepherding the souls of the saints entrusted to their care. Every pastor must give account for the flock under his charge (Heb. 13:17). No pastor is called to shepherd the whole internet.

Pastors should preach about cultural issues because God’s people need biblical guidance to navigate the crazy times in which we live. Pastors should understand their plight and lead them to respond righteously, even if it be righteous anger. Scripture tells us to “be angry and do not sin” (Eph. 4:26) and that the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God (Jas. 1:20).

It is easy to indulge the flesh by nursing resentment and anger, but it is hard to teach people to channel their legitimate anger in productive, God-honoring ways, such as lobbying their representatives or even running for office themselves. Pastors must preach about political issues as they are relevant to their people, but they must never subordinate God’s kingdom to politics and culture. After all, Jesus himself taught us to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matt. 6:33).

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Ultimately, every pastor is a man under a divine charge (2 Tim. 4:1). He must preach the law of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sins, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the hope of eternal life that awaits us. Our conservative politics must ultimately flow from our allegiance to Christ. We must answer to him for how we lived as Christians, not merely as conservatives. We fight for our families, our church, our communities, and our homeland because Christ calls us to, not merely because it aligns with our conservative politics.

Conclusion

Looking back, that CRT sermon was an important inflection point in my ministry. It exposed a fault line in my church over what people expected from the pulpit. The encouraging letters and cards that came afterward all shared a similar theme: “This was helpful.”

Ordinary Christians hear about political issues all week. They are bombarded with leftist propaganda in the workplace, on social media, on the news, and in the classroom. Some of them didn’t even have categories for how to think about it. They just had a vague feeling that something was “off.”

But when I preached about it, it clicked. And more than that, it showed them that they could find answers in God’s all-sufficient word. I gave them biblical categories and explicit texts to help them navigate a confusing issue, and by God’s grace it built their most holy faith. But I am not alone.

Sooner or later, every pastor will face an inflection point like that, and when he speaks up, he will probably face the same problems I did. Some people will feel like someone finally turned on the light, and they’ll see the world more clearly. Others, however, will not like it at all. They will accuse him of being political or divisive.

The faithful pastor will do it anyway, because even though their responses are very different, he is helping them both. He gives a light to the first group to see the world better. And he brings the disagreement of the second group into the light where it can be dealt with openly.

In the end, God sees. And as Peter said to pastors, “When the chief Shepherd appears, [he] will receive the unfading crown of glory” (1 Pet. 5:4).

— Michael Clary is the Lead Pastor of Christ the King Church in Cincinnati. This article first appeared at Christ Over All, which you should follow. His latest book, Loser Theology: Why the Weak Will Not Inherit the Earth is now available.

Recent Analysis in Faith & Culture:

NOTE: The Southern Baptist Convention is America’s largest Protestant denomination. Its reach is immense. Its proceedings affect the broader culture, in the U.S. and also abroad.

I recognize that not all of our readers are Southern Baptists, and not all of them have any issue with women in the pulpit. To you, I say this is exactly why we have different denominations: so you can exercise your conscience.

But I also say this: you have one. Whatever you believe, you should stand by it. You should fight for it. You should not cave out of convenience. Perhaps this issue isn’t your issue, but you have some other issue to which these arguments absolutely apply. You should apply them.

And as to my Southern Baptist friends, every one of our churches received voting privileges over SBC missions, ministries, and seminaries by attesting that we upheld these beliefs. If you do, show up in Indianapolis and make that count. If you don’t, please join a denomination where you can be honest. That’s all. — RDM

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by Michael Clary
October 11, 2026

Two of the top leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) have warned that we are facing a significant crisis, but they differ about the nature of the threat. Ultimately, the messengers who show up to the convention in Indianapolis next June will decide who we think is right and which threat we’d rather face.

The Threat of Moral Compromise

SBC President Willy Rice recently warned of the first existential threat. He argued that the SBC could fall into a “chasm” of moral compromise if we fail to pass the Truth and Unity Amendment, which clarifies our position that Scripture prohibits women pastors.

This is an argument from conviction.

Rice’s warning reflects the trend of other major denominations that have suffered moral and numerical decline after allowing women to be appointed to the pastoral office. There is a direct correlation between appointing women to the office of pastor and a steady exodus of members, not to mention the eventual affirmation of LGBTQ lifestyles.

Rice warned of falling into a “chasm” filled with “the bones of a thousand gospel movements and institutions that were once vibrant and strong, but they are now empty institutional shells, tragic monuments to a once-great past.”

Examples are not hard to find. The Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) ordained women in 1956 and approved same-sex marriage in 2015. The predecessor to today’s United Methodist Church (UMC) also decided to ordain women in 1956, fought over various sexuality issues in the decades that followed, and finally split apart over the issue in 2022. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) ordained women in the 1970s and ended up ordaining openly gay clergy in 2009. (The UMC technically didn’t exist until 1968 when the Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren. The new UMC retained full clergy rights for women.)

Willy Rice doesn’t want the SBC to go down this same road, which is why he’s leading the charge to pass the Truth and Unity Amendment. Next June will mark the fifth consecutive year in which the SBC has voted on some version of an amendment to clarify our position that the Scriptures do not allow women to be pastors (ratification requires two consecutive supermajority affirmative votes).

To be clear, the SBC is, on the whole, a very conservative denomination. The Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M 2000) affirms the following: “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”

So what’s the issue? The issue is the inconsistent use of the word “pastor” across the roughly 46,000 churches in the SBC. More than a small number of SBC churches actually have ordained women as pastors. But other churches use the word “pastor” more loosely, referring to someone on staff at the church, such as a “children’s pastor” or “women’s pastor,” while other churches use the word “pastor” more strictly, referring only to the pastoral office (i.e., the office of elder).

Thus, a woman in an SBC church may be called a “pastor” but not function as a pastor in the sense prohibited by the BF&M 2000. On the one hand, a church may say, “the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture,” while on the other hand say, “yes, we call her ’pastor Sally’ but she’s not a pastor pastor.”

It’s confusing. What does it mean to be a “pastor,” if First Baptist Church only uses the word to refer to men who oversee the church while Second Baptist Church four miles away has a staff of twenty men and women who are all called “pastor” but only some of them provide authoritative oversight?

These inconsistencies across the convention may lead people to erroneously conclude that the SBC affirms women pastors when our own confession says we don’t. Over time, this confusion conditions people to accept the feminist premise that men and women are interchangeable in the church, a position Scripture expressly denies. Additionally, there are some bad actors who gladly exploit this confusion to advance a feminist agenda.

Thus, the inconsistent usage of the word “pastor” has caused friction in the convention that could be resolved by simply clarifying what we mean. The Truth and Unity Amendment was written to provide that clarity. Ratifying the amendment next June should settle the issue.

If we fail to pass it, we face the potential “chasm” of moral decline of encroaching feminism Willy Rice warned us about. The confusion will spread, frustration will grow, and feminists will continue to exploit the confusion and push the convention into further decline and compromise.

To be clear, the SBC is not voting to affirm women pastors. The SBC is voting to clarify and strengthen our existing opposition to women pastors.

Some have argued that “there’s not a significant problem of women pastors in the SBC!” This isn’t true, a fact which has been well documented. But even if it were true that the SBC doesn’t have a women pastors problem, it is enough of a problem for it to have been brought to the floor of the convention four years straight. It’s not going to go away.

Besides, the best time to address a problem is before it gets too big to fix. And every year that passes without fixing it, the problem grows and becomes more entrenched, leading those who have been fighting to fix it to become discouraged. Many of them are reducing their Cooperative Program dollars in protest. Others are leaving the convention entirely.

This is how the SBC slowly becomes the UMC. And this is why President Rice sees failing to pass the Truth and Unity Amendment as an existential crisis.

But there’s another prominent leader warning of a different threat to the SBC.

The Threat of Litigation

The President of the Executive Committee, Jeff Iorg, made the opposite argument regarding the Law Amendment, a precursor to what is now the Truth and Unity Amendment. He believed the greater threat would have come from passing it, warning that it would increase the convention’s legal risk that greatly harm the convention.

Iorg has stated he personally holds to the complementarian position that Scripture prohibits women from becoming pastors. Yet he opposed the Law Amendment in 2024. In his view, the BF&M and our current processes are sufficient. No amendment or further clarification is needed.

What’s his argument?

To answer this question, it helps to know how the system is set up. The Credentials Committee evaluates concerns about whether a church remains in “friendly cooperation” with the SBC and then makes recommendations to the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee then determines whether these churches violate our constitutional standard and are ultimately responsible for the decision to remove them.

Iorg raised several concerns in a Baptist Press article, including church autonomy and how much doctrinal uniformity the convention should require. But his legal concerns are what turn this into a question of survival, and he makes two of them.

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First, churches removed from the convention could lose real benefits, such as access to disability coverage and retirement plans through Guidestone (the SBC’s employee benefits entity, not to be confused with Guidepost Solutions, the firm hired to investigate the handling of sexual abuse allegations). He says those losses “increase the likelihood of litigation,” and that “if dozens of churches are excluded or removed from the SBC in an adversarial fashion, the legal risk may increase accordingly.”

Second, he worries about the “legal wall of autonomy” which protects the SBC from being held responsible for the actions of churches.” If the convention starts examining titles and job descriptions in local churches in order to enforce the amendment, then “some enterprising attorney with a cooperative judge may make the case that a convention with this much vested interest in the internal workings of its churches is responsible for their other actions as well.”

As Iorg said at the time, “If the amendment passes, it may be helpful to Southern Baptists in the long run… But I know it will be expensive.” That’s a revealing statement.

This is an argument from pragmatism.

The Executive Committee is understandably skittish about this, given the “sexual abuse crisis” a few years ago. The Executive Committee was responsible for responding to the SBC’s 2021 mandate to investigate its historical handling of sexual-abuse allegations. It waived attorney-client privilege, contracted with Guidepost (not Guidestone, see the above note), and ultimately assumed significant legal liability, including indemnifying Guidepost — that is to say, the Executive Committee agreed to pay for Guideposts’ lawyers and for any of its (many) mistakes.

By the end of 2024, the Executive Committee had spent roughly $13 million of its reserves on investigations and legal expenses. This forced it to seek additional financing because these costs had seriously depleted its reserves.

In short, the SBC got burned — badly.

Jeff Iorg was not president of the Executive Committee when these decisions were made (he was President of Gateway Seminary at the time). He inherited the consequences of these decisions and was the man hired to clean up the mess. This may explain his reluctance to do anything his legal counsel advises would expose the SBC to more litigation and financial harm.

Analysis of the Two Threats

Thus, we find ourselves on the horns of a dilemma. Willy Rice believes failing to pass the amendment could greatly harm the SBC. Jeff Iorg believes passing the amendment could greatly harm the SBC.

Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. So, who’s right? In my view, Willy Rice is right and Jeff Iorg is wrong.

Let me give you three reasons why.

First, the SBC needs more clarity on the issue of women pastors than we currently have. It’s come up for a vote four years running, and it won’t go away until the matter is settled, once and for all. If the Truth and Unity amendment fails next June, the status quo will be preserved and the confusion will keep growing. Failure to pass it would create the impression that the SBC doesn’t have the stomach to enforce our own stated convictions. This would further signal to the feminists that they can advance their agenda unopposed. That’s why the issue needs to be settled now while we have the momentum.

Second, Iorg’s legal argument doesn’t hold up. I’m not a lawyer, but former dissident ERLC trustee Jon Whitehead is, and he addressed it on the Center for Baptist Leadership podcast. He began by noting that the legal case against the amendment has never been spelled out publicly. When you press those making it, he said, “nobody can quite say other than there will be litigation.”

So Whitehead took his best guess at the theory, and it matches what Iorg wrote in 2024. If the SBC enforces this belief, plaintiffs will argue it should have policed everything else its churches do, the way an employer can be sued for negligent supervision.

Whitehead called that argument “bogus under current law.” Courts will not rule on whether a religious body was negligent in setting its own religious standards. Since Hosanna-Tabor and the cases that followed, religious organizations have “enormous protection in deciding who they associate with and who their leaders are.”

His conclusion: “if somebody sues, they’re going to lose.”

That doesn’t mean no one will ever sue. Whitehead granted that “sometimes you do get sued,” and defending even a winning case costs money. But that is true of everything the SBC does. The IMB takes on enormous legal risk every time it sends out a missionary. We buy insurance, take the normal precautions, and get on with the mission.

Whitehead also raised a point about process. If our lawyers believe Southern Baptists can state what we believe but cannot act on it, that “can’t be some kind of secret that’s hidden in a legal memo.” The messengers deserve to see the argument and weigh it for themselves.

The SBC already makes constitutional decisions about who qualifies for cooperation. If a Southern Baptist Church suddenly decided to baptize infants and was removed from the convention, it would have the same legal standing as a church removed for appointing women pastors. Clarifying our doctrinal requirements would not create fundamentally new legal vulnerabilities. In fact, the added clarity the Truth and Unity Amendment provides may actually strengthen the SBC’s basis for enforcing its own doctrinal identity.

Third, and most significant for me, Christians must ultimately stand on conviction, not pragmatism. Even if Iorg were right about opening the door to lawsuits (and I don’t believe he is), this is precisely the moment when our convictions must trump pragmatism.

Iorg has addressed the question of pragmatism in 2024, writing that proponents of the Law Amendment see the risks as “a price worth paying to preserve doctrinal fidelity.” That is precisely my position. I’m glad to own it. We should not shy away from clearly stating our convictions because it will be “expensive.” Our Lord himself told us to “count the cost” of being a disciple.

Would we be ashamed of Christ and his instructions for the church because we’re afraid of lawsuits? Does Scripture not command us to do what is right when it’s costly? Especially when it is costly? We should learn from our heroes of Scripture and church history who stood with their convictions in the face of much greater threats than lawsuits (cf. Heb 11:35b-40).

Conclusion

When I first planted an SBC church through the North American Mission Board, I did so having graduated from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which had earned a reputation under Dr. Mohler’s leadership for standing on the truth of Scripture even when it was costly. That inspired me. I wanted to be part of the SBC precisely because I was convinced we had the courage to do what is right no matter what perils we might face in the process.

The SBC exists to contend for and propagate our Christian convictions. If Southern Baptists do not have the courage to stand for the clear teaching of scripture, then what’s the point of the SBC? Are we really going to be bullied by threats of litigation?

That’s not the SBC I know and love. Ordinary Southern Baptists are courageous Christians, not cowards. Our entities should reflect that.

When faithful churches give their hard-earned dollars to the Cooperative Program, they do so ultimately to advance our convictions. When churches are granted a vote over those dollars, it is based on their assurance that they hold to our beliefs. I value our entities and want them all to succeed, but success is measured in faithfulness to God’s word, not mere self-preservation. If we have to compromise God’s word to save the SBC, then the SBC isn’t worth saving.

That’s Willy Rice’s concern, and that’s why he’s correct. The keys to the future of our convention are in the hands of the messengers who will vote next June. The surface-level issue is the Truth and Unity amendment. But the deeper issue is whether we have the courage to stand for the truth of God’s word even when it’s not popular.

Thus, the biggest threat facing the SBC is not lawsuits, but a failure of nerve. We can’t control lawsuits, but we can control our own faithfulness.

Only the Lord knows the future, but I’m confident Southern Baptists will make the right call next year.

— Michael Clary is the Lead Pastor of Christ the King Church in Cincinnati. His latest book, Loser Theology: Why the Weak Will Not Inherit the Earth is now available.

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by Rod D. Martin
September 14, 2025

Unless you’re a pastor, your job is probably more important than you think.

I grew up in a little Baptist church in Arkansas. And like believers everywhere, we had some things exactly right — and a few things profoundly wrong.

One of those things was the idea that only formal ministry counts as a calling, and only our pastors and missionaries are truly called. Everything else? At best, God permitted it, with more than a hint of disdain. My dad sold insurance. That was okay – it wasn’t actively sinful – so long as he tithed. But obviously “serious” Christians did “more”.

But that’s utterly mistaken. It’s a devil’s lie. And it’s not a small one.

It’s a lie that tells the vast majority of people their work, and their lives, are spiritually second-class. That building houses or raising children or managing logistics is substandard somehow. That the only things that “matter for eternity” happen within the four walls of a church or a mission station. And it robs Christians of joy, theological clarity, and above all, purpose.

It makes them cogs in someone else’s machine instead of disciples fulfilling the individual missions God actually gave them, working all things together for the good of those who love Him.

“Non-ministry” work is not second-class, or “less than”. Yet we don’t disciple people for it. We rarely affirm it from the pulpit. We certainly don’t expound on the vastness of God’s purpose, weaving together all our countless tasks into a seamless, all-encompassing plan of making all things new.

This error leads to aimlessness, guilt, resentment, confusion, and burnout. Our children and teenagers receive little useful career guidance beyond encouragement to consider a call to pastor that few will ever receive. They feel guilty for not becoming a missionary to Elbonia, and thus feel disconnected from the church, too often a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Likewise, our adults assume falsely that their Monday-through-Friday lives are mere necessary evils. That their real service to God begins only after hours, unless perhaps they get a chance to witness at the watercooler. That their only real value to the Kingdom is financial.

No wonder so many disengage. No wonder so few connect their work to their witness.

Yet from Genesis to Revelation, Scripture abhors Gnosticism, and affirms that matter matters. Christ’s eternal resurrection body – and ours someday – demonstrate this beyond a doubt. God cares for His creation every bit as much as you care for the things you create. He sustains it. He extends it. The spiritual and the material are not at odds: they are complementary. And we are entrusted with the stewardship of both.

As a result, all legitimate work is not merely material but spiritual — because all of life belongs to God. He owns it all. And He calls each of us not merely to believe, but to build — to serve our neighbor, to bear fruit with our talents, and like Adam, to finish the work of creation: the Creation Mandate, as it were.

Vocation is not just how you pay your bills. It’s how you glorify your Father, by meeting your neighbors’ needs. Whether you’re a janitor or a CEO, a mom or a mechanic, a politician or a physician, the call is the same:

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“Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes.” (Matt. 24:45-46)

He’s coming. Will you be found faithful?

The Foundation of Vocation: The Creation Mandate

Vocation is not a product of the Fall. Vocation was God’s idea from the start.

Before sin, before death, before pain and toil, God gave Adam a job. And not just one. He made him a scientist, a gardener, a husband, and (prospectively) a father. He gave him the world — not to exploit, but to govern, steward, and develop. “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion…” (Gen. 1:28). This is not a suggestion. It’s a command. Nor is it a curse. It’s a blessing.

This is the foundation of every legitimate vocation. This is the Creation Mandate.

God created man in His image, and part of that image-bearing is work. Not work as drudgery, but work as co-creation, imitation, and extension of divine purpose. God planted a garden in Eden, then commanded Adam to cultivate it — and more than that, to extend it. Eden was not a museum. It was a template. A beachhead. Adam was to take the beauty, order, and provision of the Garden and spread it to the ends of the earth.

That’s the mandate. That’s the job. That’s what every godly vocation participates in: extending Eden.

Nor was that call revoked at the Fall. God reaffirmed it to Noah after the Flood (Gen. 9:1). He didn’t say, “Well, that didn’t work.” He said, “Try again.” The Creation Mandate was not Plan A — it was The Plan.

It still is.

In fact, Scripture gives us the final picture of what Adam was meant to do — and what Christ, the Second Adam, will complete. Eden becomes a city. Revelation 21 shows us the New Jerusalem, descending from heaven, radiant and glorious — a place of order, culture, craftsmanship, population, and peace. The raw materials of the Garden are transfigured into the richness of the Kingdom. The rivers, and the gemstones, are still there. So is the tree of life. But now there are walls and foundations and nations and gates and glory, all the product of fruitful multiplication of population.

“Oh, but evangelism!” one might say, and you’d be right. The Fall introduced the need not only to remake the world but also the men. Indeed, without their redemption and regeneration, that populous New Jerusalem would be impossible.

But these are two facets of the same task. As my old Baptist preacher used to say, “we are saved from something for something.” And that “for something” is…whatever our Master equips us to do. We are surely all called to evangelism, just as we are all called to work. But God’s own list of spiritual gifts, like His description of the different parts in the Body of Christ, makes perfectly clear: we are all differently gifted, and all called to excel with the different gifts He’s chosen specifically for each of us. I can witness to my co-workers, and I should. But if my primary gifting is carpentry, carpentry is thereby my calling.

That will be important when it comes time to build a church. But it will be no less important when it’s time to build its members’ houses, or hospitals, or hotels. Christ does not permit us to wave away material needs, telling the cold and hungry without offering aid to “be warm and be filled”. Where we can, we are to meet them.

Nor do we meet them primarily through charity, though charity is one fruit of our work. We achieve it primarily through our vocations. One might protest that “it isn’t ministry if you get paid.” But that’s unbiblical nonsense. Even with regard to pastors the Lord commands that the worker is worthy of his hire. And as to all of us, He says, “the man who does not provide for his family has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” (1 Tim. 5:8) He establishes work as a means to provide. But He also makes it the primary, and certainly the most sustainable, means of meeting our neighbors’ needs.

Ask a widow whether her husband’s life insurance policy mattered, or if her church’s benevolence ministry could have paid off her mortgage or put Johnny through school. Ask a cancer patient if her radiologist’s job is “less than”.

Your work is not a distraction from God’s plan. It is His plan. You are not merely holding down a job. You are pushing back the Curse. You are extending Eden outward. You are preparing the world for the return of the King. And you must occupy until He comes.

This is why Jesus speaks as He does in Matthew 25. It’s easy to overspiritualize the parable of the talents, but that’s a mistake. It’s about stewardship — dominion — enterprise. The master gives capital. The faithful servants multiply it. The wicked servant does nothing. His problem is not that he failed. His problem is that he didn’t try. He refused the calling to extend what he was given. He buried the mandate.

The Imperative of Excellence

The Bible tells us that the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you” (1 Cor. 12:21). It’s easy, but lazy, to imagine God’s kingdom as extending only to the church and its work. That compartmentalizes our lives, walling off huge sections of them from accountability or purpose. In fact, our Master is sovereign over all His creation. He cares for every part of it, and expects us to tend it and extend it.

To this end, Abel kept flocks. Abraham ranched, traded, and led the occasional army. Lydia sold purple to the wealthy. Paul made tents. Jesus was a carpenter, for far longer than He preached. Each had another, church-oriented calling. But did this give the young Christ license to build shoddy homes? You may rest assured that His were the best of the best.

Christians should be known for their excellence, as a matter of integrity and as a reflection of God’s glory. Indeed, we image God in part by reflecting His creativity, and by doing things the way God would do them — with order and excellence. Have you met the Christian businessman or salesman (or pastoral staff, for that matter) who just slops their way through everything, asking for “grace” while unbelievers excel? The world mocks this “mediocrity for Jesus”, and rightly so. Worse still is the “Christian” charlatan, who displays his ixthus proudly but preys on the faithful. How many times has someone said to me, “The minute some salesman tells me he’s a Christian, I run the other way!” Such things ought not be.

Proverbs 22:29 tells us “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.” Note well: God doesn’t demean that work as “secular”, or reduce its value to the tithes it might produce. He identifies it as virtuous, as giving Himself glory, and as providing faithful believers an audience with men your pastor might never meet.

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Indeed, the art, the craftsmanship, and the labor of Bezalel and Oholiab — two men who were neither priests nor prophets, creating physical objects with skill and beauty — is described as Spirit-filled (Ex. 31:1–6). “Yes, but,” you might say, “that’s because they were building the Tabernacle.” And that’s true so far as it goes. But did their prior work not prepare and qualify them for that opportunity? And if they had done less than their best before, would there have been an after?

God calls us to the work He gives us, and expects our absolute best in it, no matter how menial, no matter how preparatory. And He rarely tells us what He’s preparing. He certainly never told the slave Joseph He would someday make him head of all Egypt. Rather, He rewarded Joseph’s long and faithful service under the most unjust of conditions.

But not immediately. Not quickly. Only through great effort, perseverance, patience, and trust.

Pushing Back Against the Curse

Every legitimate vocation is an act of war against entropy. It pushes back the effects of sin — scarcity, decay, death — and restores order, provision, and blessing. It participates in what Christ came to do: to undo the works of the Devil (1 John 3:8).

Think about the janitor. If he does his job poorly, people slip, fall, get sick. If he does it well, no one notices — but real harm is prevented. He serves the good of others and preserves the space for their flourishing.

Or think about McDonald’s. It certainly doesn’t think of itself as a ministry, and it’s fashionable to mock fast food. But every day, that chain feeds one out of every one hundred of all the world’s people. You may prefer organic berries and grass-fed beef. But the mom feeding four kids on a tight budget may not have that luxury.

That’s provision. It’s a very practical love of neighbor.

Railroads and canning technology virtually ended famine. Oil companies lit the world, and in the process, saved the whales. Smartphones give subsistence farmers access to weather forecasts, education, and emergency care.

Vocation isn’t just about making money. It’s about making things better. It’s about solving real problems, in real time, for real people. You literally make money for your family by meeting other families’ needs. It’s the Golden Rule in action.

The Bigger Picture: Not One Steward But Many

And that leads us to the bigger picture. Because God’s plan is far bigger than any one of us. We are a team, and every position is essential to the rest.

Our work alleviates scarcity. But the Bible begins not with scarcity, but with ownership. “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof” (Ps. 24:1). Why? Because He created it. He owns everything — including us. He therefore gets to set the rules for His property’s use.

God delegates that ownership. He establishes property rights, and commandments against theft and covetousness, to protect the boundaries of that which He has entrusted separately to each of us. We may not take what He has not given us. He has assigned us each the task of providing Him an excellent return on what He’s given us, both material and spiritual.

Profit isn’t incidental. It’s essential.

In modern times, we call this Capitalism, the system of private property rights and free — not coerced — exchange. It enacts and incentivizes the command to love your neighbor as yourself. Why? Because free markets require mutual benefit. Absent fraud, which is both a sin and a crime, I can’t get paid unless I meet someone else’s need. I don’t profit unless I solve someone else’s problem.

This is nothing short of miraculous. Capitalism harnesses even sinful motives to produce others’ good. The man who makes shoes to buy a boat must still produce shoes that people want and need to buy. Even if he’s selfish, he must serve others to get what he wants.

A thorough knowledge of Scripture makes this clear. In it:

• Private property is affirmed in the Eighth and Tenth Commandments.

• Inheritance is protected.

• Labor is honored.

• Covetousness is condemned.

• Generosity is commended, but never coerced.

If you invent a better lightbulb, or a better way to ship food, or a better medical device — and people freely choose to buy what you offer — you’re solving real problems for real people. You’re loving your neighbor. Whether your motive is ministry or money, the effect on others is the same.

I encourage you to see it as, and be motivated by, ministry. But God used Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, and Caiaphas to achieve His purpose, and He is surely using you whether you wish it or not.

The man who builds the railroad may never set foot in your church. But when that railroad delivers canned food to a starving city, he has pushed back the Curse. He has served the Kingdom. He has, however unwittingly, answered a call.

And it’s even better than that. Because the more specialized we all become — the more fruitful we are, the more we multiply, the more different people exercising different gifts there are — the greater the reduction in overall poverty. A few people can make a fire and hunt for food. Many people can build an entire civilization, with plenty of food, and art, and science, and everything. Even if the hunter-gatherers had such gifts, their society is too small to use them. Faithfulness to the Creation Mandate creates an ever-greater division of labor and thus progressively eliminates the material poverty caused by the Curse. It also provides the money for the missionaries and pastors such a great number of people will need.

This is exactly what Paul was describing in his illustration of the different parts in the Body of Christ. And it took a while, but that insight brought us the breakthrough concept of the division of labor. This key intellectual achievement enabled not only the Industrial Revolution but the unprecedented hockey stick spike in global living standards we’ve experienced since the 18th Century.

At the beginning of that era, as had been true for millennia, 94% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty (less than a dollar a day in current dollars). In the comparatively brief time since, that percentage has almost flipped. But this is not to be measured in mere money: rather, it should be seen in the reduction of human suffering, the establishment of education, the increase in our life expectancy (from just 47 in 1900 to 82 today), or in Biblical terms, the pushing back of the Curse.

This is the overlooked genius of God’s providence in vocation. We are not cogs in a machine, but we are members of a Body. The more of us there are, the more specialization is possible, the more we’re able to focus on the unique (as opposed to the general) gifts God has given us, and the stronger and more prosperous the whole of Christendom becomes.

Adam Smith called this the “invisible hand”. He was theologically deficient but nevertheless correct. That hand is the hand of God.

What Churches Should Teach

If the church fails to teach vocation, it shouldn’t be surprised when its people treat most of life as spiritually meaningless, and when they fail to see the comprehensiveness of God’s sovereignty and plan.

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This is pastoral malpractice. It leaves Christians adrift — unsure how to serve Christ outside the church, and confused about what “faithfulness” requires from Monday to Saturday.

But it also deprives them of purpose. Why should we not see His intentionality in crafting us each uniquely as we are? Why should we not feel God-honoring joy in our callings, both spiritual and material? And yet if we continue in the false belief that our work has little or nothing to do with God, how could we?

In elevating the importance of the church at the expense of the world outside its walls, we have diminished the very thing we sought to exalt. In seeing all things as part of God’s perfect plan, every area of life as His and for His purpose, we don’t diminish the church: we magnify it. And we exalt the Lord of all that is.

Pastors must fix this.

Christians need to hear from their pulpits that their jobs matter, and not just as a means to tithe. Building houses, coding software, writing music, teaching school, or raising children are not distractions from ministry. They are ministry. God is working all things together for the good of those who love Him. And “all” really does mean all.

The church is not just the gathering place of worshipers. It is the training ground of stewards, of all God’s gifts both spiritual and material.

So ask yourself: Am I doing what God made me to do? Am I in the field He assigned to me? Am I solving the problems He equipped me to solve?

If not, don’t despair. Realign. Pray. Seek counsel. But don’t bury your talent.

And if you are in your calling — run. Run hard. Excel. Be Bezalel. Be Hiram. Build well. Make a difference. Finish strong. Don’t fear failure, and don’t give up: God’s timing and harvest are His own.

“Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor. 10:31)

Your work matters.

So go do it.

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Our full discussion transcribed after the break:

by Rod D. Martin and Jeff Schreve
September 6, 2026

My discussion on American Family Radio’s "Real Truth for Today with Pastor Jeff Schreve". Sign up NOW for the AFR YouTube channel and don’t miss a single episode!

Jeff and I discuss:

• Advancing technology: “the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to search it out.”

• Gilder, Kurzweil, and the Singularity: why computation is not comprehension.

• AI’s incredible usefulness — and its “artificial stupidity.”

• Parenting, education, and learning to think.

• God’s moral requirements for those who use powerful tools.

It’s 15 minutes you won’t want to miss!

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Nothing is more important than educating the next generation. My friends at the Herzog Foundation are expanding access to Christian education. Watch this short clip and visit HerzogFoundation.com

Our Full Discussion:

Announcer: Welcome to Real Truth for Today with Pastor Jeff Schreve, Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church in Texarkana, Texas. Now, here’s Pastor Jeff.

Jeff Schreve: Well, good Thursday morning and welcome to Real Truth for Today. It is September 24th.

Psalm 67 is a psalm — doesn’t give the author — but it says this: “God, be gracious to us and bless us and cause your face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on the earth, your salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you will judge the peoples with uprightness and guide the nations on the earth. Selah.”

Well, that’s a great psalm to start off the day. We do want God to be gracious to us. We desperately need God to be gracious to us.

We need him and want him to bless us. And we want his face to shine upon us and for God to use us as his lights in the world.

Well, it is a privilege for me to welcome once again to the program, my friend, Rod Martin, CEO of Martin Capital and the Rod Martin Report. Now, Rod is focused on the intersection — I looked this up today, Rod — focused on the intersection of geopolitics, technology, energy, defense, stock markets, and a biblical worldview altogether. Would you say that’s true?

Rod Martin: I would say that’s true, and I would say that’s what needs to be true. We need to think holistically. We certainly serve a God who does, who intricately wove together all of the different aspects of his universe. And Christians should do likewise. We can’t possibly comprehend what God can comprehend. My goodness, one of the things I’m probably looking forward most to in heaven is just being able to ask what “Selah” means. Nobody knows. Wouldn’t that be great?

But the truth is we can try. We are made in the image of God. It’s our duty to see things from an entire worldview, how it all fits together, and how it all serves its owner, the creator, for whom we are just stewards.

Jeff Schreve: Amen. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter. It is the glory of man to seek out a matter. Like hiding Easter eggs, Rod, He hasn’t just put them all out in plain sight there. You’ve got to hunt and dig and search.

Technology, Stewardship, and the Effects of the Curse

Rod Martin: You just stated the story of technology. And as some of your viewers know, I was one of the early guys at PayPal. We were inventing the infrastructure of the modern world.

And, you know, all of that stuff was possible in the days of Abraham or the days of Julius Caesar or the days of George Washington. They just hadn’t figured out the pieces yet. And what we find is the more we figure out the pieces, the better able we are to roll back the effects of the Curse. Now, we can’t fully roll back the Curse, of course. Only Christ can do that.

Inventing a fancier computer is not going to save anybody, but it may save their life long enough, give them enough education and communication ability to be able to hear from a missionary, or hear from a pastor like you. We are materially improving a material world God created and cares about a great deal.

It’s very, very clear that God cares about the world he made. God has cursed the world we live in because of our rebellion. And God is restoring that world in the life to come, not just the new heavens, but a new Earth as well, where we will dwell with Him. So seeking out a matter is a matter of stewardship of God’s creation, with real consequences for the quality of life of widows and orphans and everybody else.

On a personal note, it’s not just widows and orphans or people in the abstract. If I had lived even 100 years ago, I would have been dead in my 30s just from high blood pressure, which is the easiest thing in the world to treat.

Technology is a blessing. And it’s because God has concealed everything in the creation, and we receive glory in a very tangible sense by seeking those matters out: by solving the puzzles He has built into the very fabric of His universe.

AI, Human Judgment, and Raising Children

Jeff Schreve: Okay. So, Rod, I talked yesterday, Tim Wildmon had sent out a letter to all the AFA family about the dangers of AI. And George Barna has done a recent survey of 1,500 or so people and then another 500 or so pastors.

They’re real concerns, especially as it relates to kids, as it relates to kids not learning how to critically think because they just go to AI for everything, every answer. And they can be easily duped because AI is not always right. And especially when it relates to a question that would cause you to think through, okay, this can be answered different ways depending on your worldview.

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So what say you about the dangers of AI?

Rod Martin: Well, look, I use AI 12 or more hours a day. So I’m not in a position to say it’s bad. It has been a godsend to me. It has massively multiplied my productivity. But the truth is, and I said this to Jim Garlow on his show last night, the president’s talking about not artificial intelligence, but “super intelligence.” As a constant user of the thing, I would say it’s more like artificial stupidity.

It really doesn’t know what it’s talking about a great deal of the time. It is shockingly capable, amazing in its scope, and it’s getting better every day. New models dropped yesterday that are just mind-blowing. I mean, really, really great tools. But they are only tools. And this is the starting point I would give to pastors.

George Gilder has been writing on this topic for more than 30 years. Yes, AI has been budding for a very long time. It’s, you know, it’s an overnight success, half a century in the making. And George, who, by the way, in addition to being a tech guru, in addition to being Ronald Reagan’s most-quoted living author, including being a father of supply-side economics, is quite the technologist.

He has been one of the thinkers really shaping how Silicon Valley looks at the world for a long time. And he has long been in this kind of friendly debate with the guys who believe in the singularity, who believe that AI is or shortly will be sentient and eventually will become effectively our god. And George’s take on that has always been that just defies everything we know about physics.

I mean, even if you weren’t a Christian, even if you weren’t a creationist, we know from Kurt Gödel, we know from all of these originators of information theory who made the modern world possible, that the central axioms of any system have to come from outside the system. They cannot be derived from within it, which leads you to the next logical conclusion, which is computation is not comprehension. It’s simply not.

Computation is not comprehension. Your calculator is not going to replace your accountant, no matter how many times we were told it was going to back in the 1970s and 1980s, because the accountant brings judgment and reasoning and even aesthetics that the programming simply can’t match. It can mimic, but it can’t match.

It might be able to do some of the things you can do, but it can’t think about it in a creative and original way. So this is a key distinction. A lot of the fears are about what we’re hearing from Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis and others — and they’re brilliant men, and I’m not knocking them — I just think they’re theologically off base.

They’re also off base on the physics, and guess what? The physics derives from the theology. God created it all, and nowhere is that clearer than in Information Theory. So that’s the first thing.

Now, the more practical concerns, like children overusing it and not learning this and that and the other, there are two different paths on that. The first one is I have found that my logic ability is sharper just from learning how to properly prompt AI. You have to get much more precise in what you say and how you say it. So that’s a positive thing.

But I would just admonish parents everywhere, if you’re handing your kids over to the public schools at this point in American history, you’re already eliminating their ability to think because all they’re getting is Critical Theory. No critical thinking at all: all Critical Theory all the time. And the solution to that is either a good Christian school or homeschooling, which we did. And I’ve got to tell you, you can absolutely solve all these problems just by having engaged parents who are really serious about taking care of their kids. It’s really not that complex.

And if you do that, if you lay the foundation, if you get the fundamentals right, all of this stuff becomes a neutral or even positive tool.

But if you’re giving your kid an iPhone when he’s eight, you’re kind of an idiot. You really shouldn’t do that. And you shouldn’t let them on social media. You just shouldn’t. Their brains aren’t ready for that. Their hearts aren’t ready for that. Don’t do that. Be a wise parent. Be in the Word. Apply what you read.

The Antichrist and the Moral Use of Technology

Jeff Schreve: Okay, Rod, I got asked this week about AI as it relates to the Antichrist. You know, we see movies like I, Robot where the robots become, you know, they make their own decisions.

Rod Martin: Where they cross that line.

Jeff Schreve: Yes. They cross that line. We have Terminator and Skynet, I think, was the machines that took over. Or 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL, you know, the spaceship took over and that kind of thing.

How do you see the Antichrist using AI? Do you see that as very critical to his program?

Rod Martin: I think technology is neutral. It’s exactly what you were saying earlier. It’s the glory of God to conceal a matter, it’s the glory of kings to search it out. And “kings” isn’t limited to monarchs, or even political leaders broadly. I think most people can connect that kings can include prime ministers and presidents and governors and such. But no, kings in this case means leaders of any number of things. The head of Exxon is a king in his realm. Peter Thiel is a king in his realm. And they are doing things that fit that description. So what they come up with is neutral in and of itself.

There’s nothing evil about an iron mine, but I can either use it to build either stunning structures that can withstand hurricanes and save lives, or missiles to kill millions of people.

Jeff Schreve: Right.

Rod Martin: Every one of these things is neutral until you add the moral component. And that is not something a machine can do. It’s not something AI is going to be able to do. It will mimic it. But what it’s mimicking is the morality of its programmers. And that is fundamental.

Some people will come back and say, well, now AI is able to code itself to some degree. Yeah. And it will be able to do more of that. But that’s coming from the seed of the original programming. And wait for it: there’s more. It’s also coming from all the material that it takes in. Because all these models are trained on material that’s already out there. News articles, great books, you name it. Movies, comic books, whatever there is in the world, they’re trained on that.

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All of those are written by sinners. 100% of them, except the Bible. And even there, the Lord who wrote every word of our Bible used human sinful authors to execute on the task.

I think that’s very much what we’re looking at here. We are using a flawed system to execute on tasks that we couldn’t even comprehend the possibility of engaging in just a few years ago. It’s phenomenal. It’s tremendous. But you don’t want bad people to have a monopoly on it. They will use it for evil, whether they’re the Antichrist or Xi Jinping.

Closing Thoughts

Jeff Schreve: Yeah, well said. Well, Rod, thank you so much for coming on. It’s always a joy to get to talk to you and to tap into your learning and tell our listeners where they can get the Rod Martin Report.

Rod Martin: Come to RodMartin.org. That’s RodMartin.org. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of followers, and Fox Business calls our daily geopolitical analysis “absolutely phenomenal.” I’ve also got a book coming out next month called Trump’s New World Reorder. You can pre-order it today on Amazon. It’ll come in October. Trump’s New World Reorder. You’re going to love it.

Jeff Schreve: All right. Well, thank you, Rod. Hey, go out today. Shine for Christ. Share what great things the Lord has done for you. And guess what? God will use you as his witness. God bless you

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by David Mitzenmacher
September 20, 2026

Over the last two decades, it has become increasingly common to hear Christians speak approvingly of the collapse of cultural Christianity in America. But “good riddance to cultural Christianity” means very different things depending on who says it.

For some, the passing of a broadly Christian moral consensus is welcome because they regard many of Christianity’s moral judgments as an embarrassment in the first place. There have always been Christians eager to demonstrate that their faith poses no serious threat to whatever moral consensus prevails among the respectable classes, and today that means softening, nuancing, or simply declining to mention the parts of Christian morality that offend the editorial board of the New York Times. Those who celebrate the death of cultural Christianity for such reasons are not my concern here.

More interesting are Christians who welcome the same development for almost the opposite reason. They are not embarrassed by Christian morality; they are suspicious of what happens when Christian morality becomes a substitute for Christianity. If cultural Christianity made it easier for a man to confuse being a respectable American with being a Christian, then perhaps its collapse has at least removed one source of false assurance.

There is much in that concern that is correct. Outward conformity to God’s law cannot reconcile a sinner to God. The man who remains faithful to his wife because adultery would ruin his reputation, and who deals honestly in business because he fears losing customers, does not thereby possess the righteousness that comes only through faith in Christ.

The problem lies in the inference. Once the inability of outward morality to save becomes the only consideration, external moral constraint begins to look insignificant, perhaps even counterproductive. If the root problem is the heart, and only the gospel can change the heart, and outward conformity can make a sinner more confident in his own righteousness, then why should Christians care very much whether an unbeliever behaves morally at all?

“Gospel-Centered” Moral Anarchy

We might call that inference “gospel-centered” moral anarchy. Now, to be clear, I am not saying that those who hold this view believe that adultery ceases to be sinful when committed by an unbeliever, or that the command against theft binds only those who have been born again. The confusion appears instead in what Christians are taught to regard as ends worth pursuing.

Such confusion asks questions like, “If laws, customs, or social expectations make men less willing to steal, fornicate, abandon their children, or lie under oath, but leave them every bit as unregenerate as before, should Christians regard that restraint as a good worth pursuing?”

There is an odd resemblance between this way of thinking and the older error of antinomianism. The antinomian reasons from grace to moral indifference: because the Christian has been justified apart from works and is no longer under the law as a covenant of works, the moral law can make no meaningful claim upon how he lives. Historic Protestant theology rejected that conclusion because it confused freedom from the law’s condemnation with freedom from the law itself.

The error under consideration runs the same reasoning in the opposite direction. Because the unbeliever has not been regenerated, and because his outward obedience contributes nothing to his justification, his conformity to the moral law begins to look theologically unimportant. The antinomian says that the Christian, being under grace, may do as he pleases. This error says that the unbeliever, not being under grace, may do as he pleases, or more precisely that Christians have little reason to care, because changing his behavior will not change his heart.

A Law with Only One Use

Behind the inference lies a truncated account of the moral law. In much of contemporary evangelicalism, when God’s law is not ignored altogether, it is treated exclusively as an instrument of preconversion conviction: it exposes sin, shuts the sinner’s mouth, and shows him his need for Christ.

That use of the law is essential. Paul writes that “through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20), and the Second London Baptist Confession likewise teaches that the law exposes the corruption of our hearts and lives and gives us “a clearer view of [our] need for Christ and the perfection of His obedience.”1 The sinner must know what condemns him before he can understand the good news of justification.

But Protestant theology has never taught that this is the only thing the law does, and the law does not cease to serve a purpose simply because the man standing under it remains unconverted. The error is to let the convicting use of the law swallow every other purpose for which God gave His law. If the only morally significant thing the law can do for an unbeliever is expose his guilt, then his outward conformity to it looks beside the point whenever it does not end in conversion.

It may even look dangerous. The respectable pagan, so the argument runs, is harder to evangelize than the open libertine, because his outward decency gives him more reason to think well of himself. On that reasoning, the man restrained by Christian morality has not merely failed to receive the greatest good; he has received something that makes the greatest good harder for him to see.

A theology that is concerned solely with the individual sinner’s conversion can explain why the restrained unbeliever still needs Christ, but it has no category for explaining why it is better that his sin remains restrained in the meantime. The result is not formal antinomianism, since God’s law is still acknowledged as binding in principle. It is a practical moral anarchy produced by an overly narrow account of what the law is for. Because the gospel alone saves, every use of the law that does not culminate immediately in salvation is treated as suspect.

Imagine two societies in which there are no Christians at all. In that respect the societies are identical: every citizen in both remains under sin and in need of the gospel. But suppose that in the first society the laws, customs, and social expectations cohere in significant measure with God’s moral law. Some of that conformity arises from the light of nature and reason, through which even fallen men retain some genuine knowledge of the law written on their hearts. Some of it may be inherited from neighboring Christian societies, whose moral judgments have been absorbed into the culture without the faith that produced them. Thus, even without saving faith, its citizens may obey these norms of the moral law from fear, habit, legal compulsion, or simple regard for the approval of their neighbors.

The second society is no more pagan than the first, but its moral culture is radically different. Its laws and customs do not restrain the same evils and in some cases actively commend them: sexual vice is celebrated, the destruction of innocent life receives legal protection, and vicious conduct is treated as an exercise of personal autonomy.

If the only question worth asking about an unbeliever is whether he has been converted, it is difficult to explain why the first society should be regarded as any better than the second. Both are full of men who stand condemned before God. No man in either society can say he has the righteousness that comes through faith. Yet the difference between the two societies is not imaginary.

The book of Jonah gives us reason to think that God Himself takes such distinctions seriously. When God summons Jonah to Nineveh, the stated grievance is not that the city lacks faith in Him but that “their evil has come up before me” (Jonah 1:2). Countless pagan cities lacked saving faith without drawing that summons; what distinguished Nineveh was the character of its conduct.

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The same holds when God relents. The king’s decree concerns outward behavior, calling every man to turn from “the violence that is in his hands,” and the text reports that God saw their deeds, that they turned from their evil way, and He relented from the disaster He had threatened (Jonah 3:8, 10). Whatever we conclude about the spiritual state of individual Ninevites, the book presents the outward character of a pagan city’s common life as something that matters to God.

The Second Use of the Moral Law

Protestant theology has a category for explaining this difference. Calvin famously distinguished three uses of the moral law: first, to reveal sin and drive the sinner to Christ; second, to restrain the outward expression of wickedness; and third, to direct the believer in the life of obedience.2

The distinction between our two pagan societies concerns the second of these uses. This is not a generic claim that social order is preferable to chaos. The restraint in view has moral content: God’s law identifies the good that ought to be promoted and the evil that ought to be restrained, and the Decalogue provides the summary of that law. Thus, one of the functions of the moral law, whether known through the special revelation of the Decalogue or the General Revelation of the created order, is bringing the outward conduct of fallen men into greater conformity with the rule of righteousness God has given to all mankind.

Calvin therefore describes the second use of the law as a bridle upon those who possess no inward love of righteousness but who are nevertheless kept from giving full expression to their wickedness. Luther uses the rougher image of ropes and chains placed upon a wild beast.3 Neither image suggests that the sinner has been inwardly transformed. The point is that God’s law can keep a man from doing some of what his sinful heart would otherwise incline him to do.

A man may still covet his neighbor’s property while fear of punishment keeps him from stealing it; he may lust after another man’s wife while shame and social expectation keep him from committing adultery; he may hate his neighbor while the threat of the magistrate keeps that hatred from becoming murder. The inward sin remains, but the commandment has nevertheless placed a real restraint upon its outward expression.

The moral law ordinarily exercises this restraining function through what we call common grace. God has written His law on the human heart and preserved in fallen men genuine, though corrupted, faculties of reason and conscience. He also works through families, customs, social shame, civil laws, and various forms of authority that reinforce what the law requires and attach consequences to its violation. These instruments do not create a different morality alongside the moral law. At their best, they give social force to the same moral law that already binds the men subject to them.

This also explains why Christian influence on culture matters. A culture can reinforce the moral law by praising fidelity, courage, honesty, chastity, and piety, and by attaching shame to their opposites. Or it can work against the law by reversing those judgments, removing shame from what God forbids and attaching it to what He commands.

Are These Not Splendid Vices?

At this point, an objection naturally arises from within the Reformed tradition. If the works of unbelievers do not proceed from faith, and if “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23), why should Christians place any positive value on the unbeliever’s outward conformity to the moral law? The description, often attributed to Augustine, of pagan virtues as “splendid vices” captures the concern. The unbeliever may perform acts that appear commendable before men, but because those acts do not arise from a heart reconciled to God and are not ordered ultimately to His glory, they cannot be called good in the same sense as the obedience of a believer.

The Second London Baptist Confession makes precisely this distinction in its chapter on good works. It acknowledges that works done by unregenerate men may be things that God commands and may be “useful both to themselves and others.” At the same time, because those works do not proceed from a heart purified by faith, are not performed in the right manner according to the Word, and are not directed to the right end — the glory of God — they remain sinful and cannot please God or qualify the sinner to receive grace.

Yet the Confession immediately adds that the neglect of such works is “even more sinful and displeasing to God.”4

Note that, in that final qualification, the Confession does not reason that because the unbeliever cannot perform an evangelical good work, there is therefore no meaningful difference between his outward obedience and disobedience. Quite the opposite. The unbeliever who honors his parents does not perform the fifth commandment as a regenerate son ought to perform it, but he is still doing something God commands. The pagan magistrate who punishes murder does not offer an act of Christian obedience, but his administration of justice is still of good use to his neighbors. The man who refrains from theft because he fears prison has not acquired a pure heart, but his neighbor still has his property. The moral defect in the agent does not erase every distinction between the acts themselves.

Genesis 20 gives a particularly clear example. Abimelech took Sarah believing that she was Abraham’s sister, and God later told him, “It was I who kept you from sinning against me” (Gen. 20:6). God did not regenerate Abimelech in order to prevent the sin; He restrained him from committing it. Nor does the text treat that restraint as meaningless simply because Abimelech remained outside the covenant people. The adultery that did not occur would have been a real sin against God and a real evil against Sarah and Abraham. God’s prevention of it was therefore a real good, even though it did not amount to Abimelech’s salvation.

[NOTE: It was certainly a real good for Abraham and Sarah! Does that count for nothing? — RDM]

This is the distinction “gospel-centered” moral anarchy has difficulty maintaining. If the only category available is that of saving righteousness, every act of an unbeliever is flattened into the same verdict: unacceptable to God and therefore devoid of positive significance. Historic Protestant theology is more careful. It denies that the unregenerate can please God by their works while still affirming that some of their actions conform outwardly to what God commands, benefit their neighbors, and are preferable to the greater sin that would follow from neglecting those duties altogether.

The second use of the law depends upon precisely this distinction.

Honest Pagans and Respectable Hypocrites

A related objection is that the openly pagan society may at least have the virtue of honesty. The nominal Christian who outwardly conforms to Christian morality can mistake himself for something he is not, while the man who has rejected Christianity altogether is under no such illusion. Better, on this reasoning, an honest pagan than a respectable hypocrite. If the collapse of Christian moral expectations strips away false professions and forces unbelievers to recognize that they are in fact unbelievers, perhaps the resulting moral disorder is an unfortunate but worthwhile price to pay for greater spiritual clarity.

The problem with this argument is not that false assurance is harmless. It is a serious evil. The respectable hypocrite who mistakes outward morality for saving faith remains condemned before God, and his self-deception may make him less willing to hear the gospel. But the immediate cost of that error falls principally on the hypocrite himself. It completely ignores everyone around him.

By contrast, when the honest pagan is freed from the moral restraints that once governed his conduct, the consequences of his lawbreaking are borne by other people. His wife bears the cost of his adultery. His children bear the cost of his abandonment. His neighbor bears the cost of his theft.

This is why the comparison cannot be reduced to a question of which unbeliever possesses the clearer self-understanding. Both men are lawbreakers. Both stand under the condemnation of the law. Both need the same Christ. But in one case the chief additional evil is self-deception; in the other, the sinner’s rejection of moral restraint multiplies the harms suffered by those around him. To prefer the latter simply because his paganism is more candid is to treat the sinner’s awareness of his spiritual condition as more important than the well-being of his neighbors.

Nor does the disappearance of Christian moral expectations guarantee that the pagan will become more honest about himself. Fallen men do not need cultural Christianity in order to manufacture self-righteousness. The nominal Christian may congratulate himself for being respectable; the modern pagan may congratulate himself for being authentic, tolerant, liberated, or morally courageous. The forms change, but the impulse to justify oneself does not. What reliably changes when moral restraint collapses is not the candor of the sinner but how much of his wickedness his neighbors are made to endure.

Why We Should Desire Restraint

If the second use of the law is real, then Christians should positively desire the restraint of sin among unbelievers. That desire does not require us to confuse restraint with regeneration or outward conformity with saving righteousness. It simply requires us to take seriously the fact that God’s law remains good and valuable to everyone, even when it is obeyed imperfectly and for imperfect reasons.

There are at least three reasons why Christians should want unbelievers to be restrained by the moral law.

Zeal for God

The chief reason is zeal for God. One of the errors of “gospel-centered” moral anarchy is that, for all its concern to exalt the gospel, it can become surprisingly man-centered. The value of moral restraint is measured almost entirely by what it accomplishes in the sinner. Does it expose his need for Christ? Does it make him easier or harder to evangelize? Does it increase the danger of false assurance? Those are legitimate questions, but they are not the first questions Christians should ask about sin, because the sinner is not the chief party offended by it.

David makes the point after his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah: “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Ps. 51:4). He obviously knew he had sinned against other people. Uriah was dead, Bathsheba had been wronged, and his household would bear terrible consequences for what he had done. Yet David could still say that his sin was against God, because every violation of the moral law is most fundamentally rebellion against the God whose law has been violated. Sin harms the sinner and his neighbor, but before it does either, it dishonors God.

Why should that matter to us? Because Christians love God. Jesus teaches us to pray, before we ask for daily bread or the forgiveness of our sins, “Hallowed be your name” (Matt. 6:9). The Christian desires that God be known, honored, and obeyed because God is worthy of being known, honored, and obeyed.

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The psalmist expresses the same disposition when he writes, “My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law” (Ps. 119:136). He is grieved by sins that are not his own because he loves the God whose law is being despised. A Christian zealous for God’s glory cannot be indifferent to whether His creatures honor or defy Him.

This gives us reason to desire moral restraint even when nothing changes in the spiritual condition of the man restrained. Suppose an unbeliever is prevented from committing some act of wickedness, and the restraint does nothing to make him more receptive to the gospel. If our only concern is what has happened inside that man, we may wonder whether anything of Christian significance has occurred. But the Christian has another interest at stake. The man has been prevented from doing something God forbids. His heart may remain hostile to God, but that hostility has not been permitted to issue in that particular act of defiance.

We should therefore pray for two things at once. We should pray that the adulterer repent, believe in Christ, and be reconciled to God; and while he remains an unbeliever, we should also pray that he stop committing adultery. We should want the blasphemer to come to Christ, and we should want him to stop blaspheming.

The second desire is not valuable only insofar as it contributes to the first. We love the sinner and desire his salvation, but we also love the God against whom he sins, and because God is worthy of obedience from every creature He has made, Christians should desire to see less of what dishonors Him.

Love of Neighbor

Love of neighbor gives us a second reason to desire restraint. Christians should seek our neighbor’s greatest good, which is that he be reconciled to God through Christ. But it does not follow that his greatest good is the only good we may seek for him. We do not reason this way anywhere else. We pray for an unbelieving neighbor when he is sick, help him when he is poor, defend him when he is unjustly accused, and rejoice when his children prosper, all while knowing that none of those goods can reconcile him to God. His need for salvation does not make every lesser good irrelevant.

The same is true of the society in which our neighbor lives. We should desire that he live among people whose wickedness is restrained rather than given free expression, and that he enjoy the shalom of a society with a real measure of peace and moral order, rather than endure the consequences of moral anarchy simply because neither condition can save his soul. As I argued in The Law for the Lawless, to love our neighbor is to desire that he experience the good of living where evil is restrained and good is upheld; to be content for him to live amid the horror of moral anarchy is not a more spiritual form of neighbor-love.5

It is worth noting that the consequences of unrestrained depravity are borne chiefly by other people. The weakening of moral restraint means that men, women, and children are made to live with more of what proceeds from fallen hearts. There is something perverse about claiming that we love an unbeliever too much to care about his outward morality while showing so little concern for the unbelieving neighbors who must live with the consequences when his morality collapses.

Jeremiah’s command to the exiles makes the point from another angle. God did not tell the Jews in Babylon that, because Babylon was pagan, its temporal welfare was of no concern to them. He told them to “seek the welfare of the city” and to pray to the Lord on its behalf (Jer. 29:7). Christians can likewise seek both the eternal and temporal good of those among whom God has placed us. We want our neighbors saved, and we want them spared, as far as possible, from having to live amid the unchecked wickedness of other unsaved men. Those desires do not compete.

The Good of the Church and the Advance of the Gospel

There is a third reason to desire the restraining work of the moral law, and it bears directly on one of the arguments commonly made in favor of the collapse of cultural Christianity. We are sometimes told that the disappearance of Christian moral expectations may actually be good for evangelism. The respectable unbeliever can mistake his outward conformity for Christianity, whereas the man living in an openly pagan culture at least knows that he is a pagan. On this reasoning, the loss of Christian moral restraint may clarify the church’s evangelistic task by stripping away one source of false assurance.

Even if we judge the question chiefly by its consequences for evangelism, however, that conclusion does not follow. The second use of the law restrains the outward expression of depravity, and one of the ordinary consequences of that restraint is social peace.

Calvin makes precisely this connection when he argues that the law’s constrained and forced righteousness is necessary for the tranquility of human society, since without it men would be left increasingly free to act upon the wickedness already present in their hearts.6 The church lives within that same society.

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Moral anarchy does not simply make unbelievers more candid about their unbelief; it also makes the world in which the church must worship, disciple, and preach more dangerous. The peace preserved by the second use of the law does not accomplish the church’s mission, but it can providentially remove impediments to that mission. And likewise, the lack of that peace can create impediments that are hardly imaginable to most Christians.

Paul appears to assume as much in 1 Timothy 2. He commands Christians to pray for “kings and all who are in high positions” so that “we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way,” and then immediately adds that this is pleasing to “God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:2–4).

Paul does not suppose that social peace converts sinners, and he certainly does not make the success of the gospel dependent upon favorable circumstances. He does, however, teach Christians to pray for a kind of peace in which the church can live faithfully, and he connects that prayer with God’s saving purposes. There is therefore no biblical reason to assume that the breakdown of moral restraint ordinarily leaves the church better positioned to evangelize simply because the resulting paganism is more obvious.7

None of this denies that God can advance the gospel under conditions of persecution and disorder. He plainly can, and Scripture gives us examples of Him doing so. The persecution that followed Stephen’s death scattered Christians from Jerusalem, and “those who were scattered went about preaching the word” (Acts 8:4).

But God’s providential use of persecution does not turn persecution into something Christians should prefer. Paul knew that the gospel could flourish under hostile rulers, yet he still instructed the church to pray for peace. Confidence in the power of the gospel means that we know no amount of social disorder can finally defeat it; it does not require us to pretend that disorder is therefore better for the church.

The advance of the gospel is not what gives the second use of the law its legitimacy. We already have reason to desire the restraint of evil because we love God and care about His honor, and because we love our neighbors and do not want them to endure the misery produced by unrestrained sin.

But even on the question of whether moral restraint helps or hinders evangelism, the case for celebrating the collapse of cultural Christianity is weak. The same restraint that preserves a measure of peace in society can also give the church greater freedom to carry out the work Christ has given her.

Loving God’s Law

Christian theology has never exhausted God’s dealings with fallen men in the question of whether they are justified. God saves men by His grace, but He also governs a world filled with men whom He has not saved. He sends the rains upon them, feeds them, gives them families and neighbors, appoints authorities over them, restrains their wickedness, and preserves forms of social life that would otherwise be impossible among creatures corrupted by sin.

The second use of the law belongs to this work of divine government. God has not failed when His law restrains a man whom the gospel has not yet converted. He has accomplished a different purpose.

That purpose is good because the law itself is good. The evangelical instinct to insist that outward obedience to the law cannot save is entirely correct; the trouble begins when we smuggle into that truth the further assumption that outward obedience therefore has no value. Scripture never asks us to make that inference. God may be displeased with the unbeliever’s heart while still restraining him from a greater act of wickedness, and the fact that the restraint leaves him unregenerate does not make the sin that was prevented morally irrelevant.

The proper response to the respectable hypocrite, then, is not to wish that he were less respectable. It is to preach the law and the gospel to him. If cultural Christianity allowed men to mistake outward conformity for saving faith, the remedy was clearer preaching about sin, grace, repentance, and Christ—not the destruction of the moral restraints that kept those same men from acting upon more of their depravity.

— David Mitzenmacher, author of The Law for the Lawless, is chairman of the board of Founders Ministries and associate pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida. This essay originally appeared at Christ Over All.

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by Sharayah Colter
September 13, 2026

Twice this week I have been doing research regarding the Lindsay Clancy trial and have been struck with one thing both times: The Google search results are full, page after page, of articles from typically left-leaning news organizations and the even further left-leaning groups they prefer.

The narrative: motherhood is too hard, hormones cannot be overcome, the “system is at fault,” and babies and children are bothersome, and to that end, acceptable collateral damage.

Missing were articles from conservative and Christian outlets. If you wanted to find a biblical worldview response to this sordid trial of a mother who strangled to death her three children, ages 5, 3, and 8 months, you’d have to do some intentional hunting. I have seen content from these types of voices on social media platforms, but it was really striking to me that there was not much in the way of Christian-worldview — or even right-leaning — commentary about this case in news outlets and search results.

That is unfortunate and troubling. This case is incredibly high-profile, and people paying attention, and even casual observers, need the benefit of a well-rounded-at-minimum and Christian-influenced-at-best analysis. Why? Because without those things, readers, and especially women who astonishingly report seeing themselves in the Lindsay Clancy story, are only ingesting a one-sided perspective.

They’re hearing that it wasn’t Lindsay’s fault at all. She was failed, they say, by her family, by medical professionals, by “the system.” They’re hearing that it is common to have postpartum psychosis (actually fewer than 1 percent suffer this) and experience intrusive thoughts about harming their children. They are hearing that those kinds of thoughts are just part of the process and the territory of motherhood.

They are seeing a version of motherhood displayed that looks, frankly, awful and unappealing. Who would want to become a mom when all you see is that it makes women cry, makes them tired, leads them to only wear sweats and spit-up covered t-shirts, and drives them to drinking?

So, then, women who have become mothers begin looking for those thoughts and attitudes and feelings to pop into their own minds. And, when that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, these women then accept and embrace them rather than shunning them right away, because now they have been told that those thoughts are normal and common. They therefore give intrusive thoughts a hospitable home where they can fester and take root.

After all, this is normal and common, they’ve heard on repeat.

And that is how, in the span of this trial being before the court, the jury, and the watching public eye, at least one woman has allegedly carried out a “copycat” crime in Illinois. If you’ve not been on social media lately (good for you), you may not be aware that as the Lindsay Clancy trial has become a center of online discussion, women are now:

• Recording themselves throwing ice in their bathtubs and screaming, supposedly to express and release the pent-up anger and dissatisfaction they have about the difficulties of motherhood

• Pretending to drop their babies off balconies, to put them in dryers, and to hit their heads into doorframes

• Splashing babies with ice water in their faces for “clicks”

• Filming themselves crying while they pat their babies with the text “same, Lindsay” pasted over the videos

This is incredibly alarming.

Are hormones real and difficult? Certainly. Is it possible for someone to have a mental problem that leads them to be institutionalized for their safety and the safety of others? Also, yes. But these things do not and cannot be allowed to give women a pass on murdering their own children.

It doesn’t matter how tired you are or how much you are struggling with emotions and balancing life’s demands. Killing children is never the answer. This cannot be normalized. It should be scandalized and held by all of society as disgusting, atrocious, and shameful behavior. Those who commit these crimes should purposefully be held out as social pariahs for the good of the rest of the community, not lauded as heroes and celebrated outside the courthouse.

On September 3, Clancy’s defense attorney delivered fan mail to her in the courthouse. This should. Not. Happen.

People often want to be seen as the victim to be pitied, but most people don’t want to be the pariah who is held at arm’s length. Therefore, the overall social and cultural response to this matters greatly.

Two things need to happen:

1. We need to make killing babies and children be seen as a stomach-turning evil again.

2. We need to make motherhood attractive again.

Show the positives, the wins, the blessings, the smiles, the joys. Dwelling only or mostly on the hard parts was already driving young women away from getting married and having babies. Now it is driving them toward harming what they see as the parties responsible for their misery: their children.

We must present a better and more compelling view. Katy Faust said this well this week, describing human nature as “mimetic.” I agree with her.

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You don’t have to have a role in Congress to help make a difference in this. In fact, we have a specific ask for you. We are beginning Motherhood Mondays and Fatherhood Fridays, and we are asking you to send us your stories and photos. Together, we are going to create positive content to share into the electronic ecosphere that currently is tainted with TikTok moms cheering for Lindsay Clancy and filming themselves joking about killing their own kids.

What we need to show is the “greener grass” that does exist in parenting. Sure, it’s not a walk in the park. It certainly has plenty of hardships: no one denies that. But right now, young people need to see the beautiful side of raising children, and they need to see it fill the internet.

So, let’s get busy. Send us your content at americanrevivalproject@colterco.com. We’ll share it with one goal: to make motherhood and fatherhood desirable again.

Because here is the reality almost every parent would acknowledge: children are a blessing.

The days are long and the years are short, and despite the very real difficulties that exist in child rearing, children bring a richness to life and family that cannot be replicated in any other way.

— Sharayah Colter is a journalist, author, and co-founder of the American Revival Project alongside her husband, Dr. Scott Colter, and founder of Colter & Co., a national communications firm with offices in Dallas and Washington, D.C.

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Our full discussion transcribed after the break:

by Rod D. Martin and Jeff Schreve
September 6, 2026

My discussion on American Family Radio’s "Real Truth for Today with Pastor Jeff Schreve". Sign up NOW for the AFR YouTube channel and don’t miss a single episode!

Jeff and I discuss:

• Why excusing Lindsay Clancy means denying women moral agency

• How therapeutic culture turns wickedness into diagnosis and perpetrators into victims

• Why Protestant seminaries’ silence on demonology has left Christians unarmed

• How abortion’s “culture of death” brought us here.

It’s 14 minutes you won’t want to miss!

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Nothing is more important than educating the next generation. My friends at the Herzog Foundation are expanding access to Christian education. Watch this short clip and visit HerzogFoundation.com

Our Full Discussion:

Announcer: This is Real Truth for Today. Podcasts of the program are available on the podcast page at AFR.net. Now, back to Pastor Jeff Schreve.

Jeff Schreve: Welcome back to the program. Pastor Jeff here, talking to my friend Rod Martin, founder and CEO of Martin Capital, an anti-communist, and part of the team that started PayPal. His website is RodMartin.org.

Okay, Rod, at the break we were talking about Lindsay Clancy and just how horrific what she did was. It seemed like it was planned out. She got her husband out of the house and killed her kids in a gruesome way, strangling them to death. They were five and under, three kids. Then she threw herself out of the window to try to kill herself. But she slashed her wrists or slashed her throat or something like that.

I haven’t followed it closely, but what is her defense? That I was just nuts?

Rod D. Martin: Yes, pretty much. She pled that she did it, but she’s crazy. That’s probably the best defense available, because otherwise this is completely indefensible.

The evidence is absolutely clear that she did it. And the people online who say, “Oh, well, the husband really did it,” and so forth are shocking to watch.

No. Her defense lawyers actually had her plead not guilty by reason of insanity. That means she’s admitting in a sworn filing that she did it. The whole basis of her defense is that she did it, but she wasn’t mentally competent. So all this internet crazy is just really wild to watch.

It goes back to something we were fighting in the Southern Baptist Convention for several years. In the defense of women, and of course we want to defend women, critical theory takes you into this weird place where women should be given all power, and if only women existed, there would be no violence in the world. At the same time, women can kill their children randomly and can’t be held responsible for it because: hormones.

Well, wait. What?! That’s just insane.

It’s anti-biblical, because the Bible actually holds us all responsible for our actions. If she really is crazy, then of course you would modify that, but you wouldn’t let her go free. She’s a threat to society, and she murdered three children. That’s not how that works.

So what is the biblical view? The biblical view and the American legal view are that you are responsible for what you do. That’s a good thing, because that’s the basis of equality.

If women are just all ninnies buffeted about by their hormones to such a degree that you can’t leave your children with them safely, then the logical response to that would just be to lock all the women up. But that’s complete nonsense, and so is the infantilization of those same women by their so-called defenders.

Jeff Schreve: Right.

Rod D. Martin: So the defenses being made are absurd. They are a dodge of responsibility, which is endemic in this culture. Everything is made a therapeutic issue to avoid the reality of sinfulness and fallenness. Nobody is ever accountable for anything. If somebody steps beyond a certain norm, we just call it crazy so we don’t have to call it evil.

That’s unbiblical. That’s un-Christian.

Honestly, if this woman is crazy, she probably didn’t have the requisite intent to be held fully accountable for murder one in this case. But she’s still accountable. She still did what she did.

Jeff Schreve: Right.

Rod D. Martin: There’s just no avoiding that.

The other thing, in answer to your question, is this idea that somehow she was drug-addled and turned psychotic by pharmaceuticals. The evidence doesn’t seem to support it.

I saw one of the doctors give testimony on this. He was saying her real problem was that she was pill-resistant. Her defense lawyer cross-examined that, and he said, “No, we couldn’t get her to take her pills. That was the problem.” She had all these prescriptions because she wouldn’t use them.

And sure enough, the physical evidence matches that. They looked at her pill bottles very, very closely. She’d hardly taken any of them, ever.

So the defense that she was driven into psychosis by medical malpractice just doesn’t seem to hold water. I look at this evidence, and I think she meant to do it. I think she was competent, and she’s just wicked.

Mental Illness and the Reality of the Demonic

Jeff Schreve: It’s just horrific.

I’ve had this conversation with a number of people in ministry. In the Bible, you don’t read much about mental illness. They had crazy people. They said of Jesus that he’s out of his mind. But you hear and read a lot about demonic possession.

I think that in America today, we don’t ever want to say somebody is demon-possessed or anything. But if you do the things that a lot of these people are doing, you stab Iryna Zarutska on the train for no reason at all, stab her to death as that guy did in Charlotte, North Carolina, I mean, the demons are involved in that kind of behavior, just like with her behavior. I think she even said she was hearing voices.

We don’t like to talk about the demonic side of this, but I put more emphasis on the demonic side than on, “She’s got a mental illness.”

Rod D. Martin: Well, that certainly seems to be the case here. I don’t think you’re going to be able to prove that to a jury, of course. But as Christians, we know that demons are real. We know how they act. We actually are given a very clear picture of that in Scripture. Jesus certainly took it seriously, so why wouldn’t we?

The answer to that is part and parcel of what I was saying earlier. The entire culture wants to deny the idea of fallenness, and certainly of the supernatural, all of which is a bit ironic these days. We have gone way past the rationalist materialism of our youth into a culture where Wicca is prevalent and all kinds of pagan “spirituality” is everywhere. They may not all know it, but of course they’re playing with demons.

I’ve met more than a few of these people. We’ve got one young lady in our church who was a Wiccan and spent years in the occult before she was miraculously saved. She tells stories: “Of course we knew we were dealing with demons. We would make contracts with demons. Yes, we knew what we were doing.”

Crucially, she said, “We took the Bible more seriously than any Christians I know, because the demons know perfectly well who God is and that He’s real.”

So the whole aim is to twist and pervert whatever God wants into something that will give Him offense.

Well, if that’s going on even with people in my own church, I don’t think that this is hidden in a corner somewhere anymore.

It is a real shame that our Southern Baptist seminaries, and no other Protestant seminaries of which I’m aware, even have a single class on demonology. They just don’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. That’s a mistake.

It is a real mistake to leave mental health issues to a professional field that is rooted in Freud’s dictum that having religious belief is itself a sign of insanity. And it’s equally stupid for us to leave demonology entirely to the Catholic Church. That’s an enormous mistake. Protestants have to start taking this more seriously.

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In any case, if it is true, and I don’t know that it’s true, but I think based on the evidence I’ve seen that it is true, that Lindsay Clancy really wasn’t taking her pills, really actually seemed to be able to form the intent, and certainly premeditated it to the degree of even getting her husband out of the house and arranging everything so that she could carry this out, she actually strangled her own three children in front of each other.

Imagine the horror in the two children who are watching the first one get strangled to death and just can’t believe that their mommy is doing this.

Jeff Schreve: Yes.

Rod D. Martin: And she did all this just completely heartlessly.

So, okay, that actually does sound a lot like demon possession in Scripture, and Christians need to take that seriously. We don’t know that for sure, but we know that it’s possible.

And it would be helpful to speak to a culture that thinks of itself as highly spiritual without being Christian: Here is the consequence of what you’re believing and doing.

When Abortion Is Called Mercy

Jeff Schreve: Rod, I’m going to play you a clip. That was from Anne Hathaway on The View. I don’t know if you’ve heard it, but it just shows you Isaiah 5:20 comes into view every single day: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.”

Here is Anne Hathaway talking about the mercy of abortion.

Anne Hathaway, recorded clip: When you are a young woman starting out your career, your reproductive destiny matters a great deal. My own personal experience with abortion, and I don’t think we talk about this enough, abortion can be another word for mercy.

We don’t know. We don’t know. It’s not a world in which we know that no two pregnancies are alike, and it follows that no two lives are alike. That follows that no two conceptions are alike.

So how can we have a law? How can we have a point of view on this that says we must treat everything the same?

And where I come at it from is, when you allow for choice, you allow for flexibility, which is what we need in order to be human.

Jeff Schreve: It’s just unbelievable. Abortion is another word for mercy. Brutally murdering your unborn baby is another word for mercy. That’s where we’ve come. And then all the ladies on The View are a bunch of seals: “Oh, that’s right.”

Rod D. Martin: Yes, you can hear them.

Jeff Schreve: “Mm-hmm. How insightful.”

Well, that fits in with the women who are now supporting Lindsay Clancy, saying, “Oh, she’s not guilty because she was in psychosis.”

I look at that, Rod, and you just think: Obviously, there’s hope for humanity in Jesus, but there’s not hope for humanity outside of Jesus. We’re taking a bullet train in the opposite direction that we need to go.

The Culture of Death

Rod D. Martin: Well, we had a number of Southern Baptist leaders for a while — fortunately, many of them have left our denomination — but a number of them preached for many recent years that the worst thing about America was its Christian culture, this horrible “cultural Christianity” that deceives people into thinking they’re believers when they aren’t.

Okay. First of all, I question that anybody’s really deceived about that. Romans certainly suggests they are not. They either know Jesus or they don’t.

But the point is that what “cultural Christianity” did for us for centuries was give all of us a common moral reference point such that we just didn’t do or even think of certain things. And if somebody did, even the unbelievers understood that they were horribly wrong.

So there was a consensus that meant you didn’t get a lot of Lindsay Clancys, or Iryna Zarutskas, or the woman who in Times Square yesterday just randomly pulled a knife on a bunch of people and started stabbing them. Again, that sounds like demon possession. Apart from that it’s just weird.

And we have this increasingly prevalent view that no one is ever responsible for anything. Of course, unless you’re a Christian white male, and then you’re responsible for literally everything, of course.

Again, it is an attack on Scripture. And yes, it started with Roe v. Wade. It started with the idea that you could murder your own child in the safest place it should ever experience in its life, your womb, and somehow that’s not only morally acceptable, but in many cases morally virtuous.

No, that’s horribly, horribly wrong.

And not only because the excuse is frequently, “But the woman might not be able to raise the child well.” Well, guess what? Lots of people have bad mothers. That doesn’t mean they want to die.

For that matter, there are about three times as many people in the United States who would like to adopt a child as are able to. There’s no lack of demand for happy homes where these children can be raised, if somebody can just manage not to murder them before they have a chance to be placed for adoption.

So all of this is just horrible. And of course it was always going to lead here. What is the difference between killing a preborn child and a post-born child? Increasingly, the answer of many Democrats in particular is: There isn’t any difference at all.

We saw that under the previous governor in Virginia, when he was actually enacting legislation to allow the mother and the doctor to decide, after the child was born, whether they would kill it in the hospital.

This is where this goes: it can go nowhere else. And you see it with the euthanasia campaign in Canada and other countries. It is a culture of death. And if anything in the world is satanic, that’s it.

Democratic Socialism’s Openly Communist Goal

Jeff Schreve: Well said, for sure.

Okay, you are an anti-communist. It’s in your bio. They don’t call it communism. It’s democratic socialism, which I think the Nazis were the democratic socialists of their day.

Rod D. Martin: Yes.

Jeff Schreve: It’s on the rise. Young people think it’s all the rage. Are we on a collision course with disaster here?

Rod D. Martin: Well, they used to deny the communist thing. But we just had the Democratic Socialists of America convention a few weeks ago, and one of the principal leaders of the DSA stood up at the podium and said, “Our goal is communism.” And the crowd cheered.

So no, they don’t think it’s bad. They want to use the power of the state to punish their enemies. And we know where that goes. We know where it’s gone in every country that’s tried it. It involves mass censorship, mass theft, mass deaths, and just unbelievable totalitarian oppression.

So yes, we’re in a horrifying place in this country, and the Democrats are lapping it up like water at a trough. So we have our work cut out for us.

Jeff Schreve: We’re talking to Rod Martin. When we come back from the break, we’ll be taking your calls: 888-589-8840. That’s 888-589-8840.

If you have a question or comment, you’re listening to Real Truth for Today with Pastor Jeff Schreve here on American Family Radio. We’ll be right back after the break.

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by Michael Clary
August 30, 2026

“My daughter was murdered by gender ideology.”

Those are the words of Abigail Martinez, a devout Christian widow in California, who watched the state take her daughter away when she refused to affirm her daughter’s transgender identity. Her daughter, Yaeli, was struggling with depression and her sexuality, so a school psychologist recommended she join the school’s LGBT club (without Abigail’s knowledge or consent). When Abigail discovered what was happening, she refused to affirm her daughter’s transition, so the state removed her from her home.

Activists told Martinez to hold a funeral for her daughter and celebrate the adoption of a “son.” They told her she’d never see Yaeli again if she kept talking about God.

Not long after this, Yaeli killed herself.

When Martinez later testified before Congress, she said her daughter’s death was a murder. Gender ideology killed her.

Now, ask yourself a question. How many Christian leaders and churches have been outspoken about the dangers of gender ideology? How many pastors will boldly and unflinchingly denounce homosexuality, gay “marriage,” transgenderism, and the whole array of LGBT sins? Even though there is a growing movement of courageous pastors speaking out, the reality is, over the last 20 years or so, many of them have been silent.

I’m a pastor. Over more than 20 years in ministry, I’ve watched a theology take root in American evangelicalism that trains Christians to be silent in the face of all kinds of cultural tyranny. It’s a theology that says the church is at her best when she’s losing. It says we should not seek cultural influence because that would only corrupt us. Further, it says we should not seek political power because that’s beneath us. Our only public duty is to do evangelism, because eternal destinies are all that really matters. The culture war is just a distraction.

I call this loser theology, and it has done great damage to the modern church. Further, it harms society by causing Christians to disengage as the greatest conscience-shaping force in our culture.

Loser theology is promoted by prominent advocates, though that’s not what they call it. Russell Moore, one of the most influential evangelical voices of the last decade and former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm, wrote in his 2015 book that “the Bible Belt is teetering toward collapse, and I say let it fall.” He argued the church is most faithful when she exists as a “persecuted minority,” never a “moral majority.” He says Christians are better witnesses as cultural losers rather than winners.

That may sound humble, but it isn’t. It’s simply waving the white flag of surrender to cultural powers who will eagerly destroy us if given the chance. This theology is custom-built to explain away defeat after defeat, training a generation of Christians to lose and feel good about it. Loser theology regards retreat as a virtue.

When loser theology is a dominant motif of modern evangelicalism, what do you think will happen? We don’t have to guess. The same year Moore’s book came out (2015), the Supreme Court invented a right to “gay marriage” in its Obergefell v. Hodges decision. In the six years that followed, public support for gay marriage skyrocketed to 70 percent. During that same period, LGBTQ identification among Gen Z nearly doubled.

Let that sink in. Roughly one-fifth of an entire generation of children who were seduced into sexual perversion in the immediate aftermath of Obergefell. The culture didn’t just suddenly change its mind. Rather, people changed their minds because powerful people signaled this was the new morality.

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And where was the church? She was largely silent because many Christians believed we should just focus on soul-winning rather than culture-warring. Thus, LGBT activism marched on, unopposed.

None of this happened because the culture simply changed its mind. Rather, it happened because the church had abandoned its post as the most powerful conscience-shaping institution in the world.

Obergefell has already done its damage, and it will be very difficult to get that toothpaste back in the tube. In the wake of Obergefell, Christian parents are now losing custody battles over their kids’ gender identities because their churches never gave them a theological framework for resistance, only permission to suffer and lose. And when the church loses her spine, the sheep are left without protection.

Other battles are ongoing and have yet to be settled where Christians need to assert a strong, prophetic voice. As Islam is already taking Europe hostage, its footprint in America continues to expand. Is it too late? Will we lose this battle also? We certainly will if the church is convinced that our only job is to ignore the culture and just do evangelism. And if we lose the culture, we will be ruled by a jihadist religious system that has no scruples against wielding power to crush its enemies.

That’s what Islam is. It’s a system of domination with a religious veneer. They will not simply coexist with us if we let them win.

So, should we let them win so we can be losers for Jesus? If so, how else might we choose to lose? How about family courts, school boards, and city councils? The pattern repeats across every civic institution because the best people to hold the line have been taught for two generations that line-holding is somebody else’s job.

Here’s the part that should bother you most, whether you’re a churchgoer or not. This isn’t happening because Christians are cowards. They’re not. It’s happening because many of them have been discipled to regard passivity as a form of holiness. They’ve been trained to think losing is “the way of the cross” because “Jesus calls us to be weak.”

These statements sound pious, but they profoundly misunderstand scripture. Yes, when we are weak, he is strong, but scripture never commands us to pursue weakness as an end in itself.

I’ve sat across from men and women in my office who suppress every instinct toward leadership and strength because they’ve absorbed the idea that ambition is sin and confidence is pride. I’ve watched churches refuse to speak plainly about cultural evil because plain speech might be regarded as unkind. This is no accident. It was discipled into people, one sermon at a time.

In short, some Christians are afraid of winning because we’ve been conditioned to believe power can only be used for evil purposes, never as a force for good. That’s not true. To be sure, scripture is full of warnings about the corrupting potential of power, but Jesus also promises to give his people power, and he expects us to wield it righteously (Acts 1:8).

Further, there’s a difference between refusing to worship power and refusing to use it at all. The same Christ who died on a cross now reigns at the right hand of the Father, and scripture says every knee will bow to Him — kings and nations included. That’s not a losing vision. The men and women who built the church that shaped Western civilization understood this. They didn’t do it by convincing themselves that losing was the point.

If you’ve ever sat in a pew wondering why your church seems allergic to contesting anything, or why every act of Christian courage gets treated with more suspicion than every act of Christian retreat, that’s not your imagination, nor is it biblical faithfulness. It’s loser theology. It’s a theology of defeat that’s presented as humility. And it’s long past time we reject it and step into the arena where we belong.

— Michael Clary is the Lead Pastor of Christ the King Church in Cincinnati. His latest book, Loser Theology: Why the Weak Will Not Inherit the Earth is now available.

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Our Full Discussion Transcribed After the Break

by Rod D. Martin and John Anderson
August 23, 2026

In this episode of “Wisdom for the Church,” former SBC Executive Committee officer Rod D. Martin shares his perspective on the current state of the Southern Baptist Convention.

We discuss:

• Why the SBC Annual Meeting is a stewardship responsibility, not merely another worship gathering

• How Baptist polity gives ordinary church members real authority over seminaries, missions, budgets, and denominational leadership

• What Willy Rice’s election says about the SBC’s rejection of critical theory and institutional drift

• Why the Mohler Amendment and the female-pastor debate concern the authority of Scripture, not merely denominational politics

• How presidential appointments shape the SBC for years, and why phone calls, messengers, and faithful attendance can overcome institutional groupthink

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Our Full Discussion:

John Anderson: Welcome back to Wisdom for the Church. I am John, and I have a special guest on this episode: Rod Martin.

Rod, I’ve had you on before. Before I started recording, I was thinking, “What do I introduce Rod as?” You wear a lot of hats. How do you typically introduce yourself in terms of what you do?

Rod D. Martin: Well, I’m CEO of Martin Capital. We do technology investments. As you know, I was one of the early guys at PayPal, so I’ve got a bit of a background in that.

For the purposes of your podcast, though, I’m a former officer of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, so I’m very, very interested in the things in which you’re interested.

John Anderson: Amen. Before we get into that - because that’s your credential with the SBC, and you are someone who knows what he’s talking about — I will say, Rod, and this is a compliment: You look like you have so much fun in life.

Maybe it’s just an act. Maybe it’s all a big act. But every time I see a picture of you, I feel like you’re on Fox Business with a fedora on, just living your life.

Rod D. Martin: Very, very often, yes.

John Anderson: There we go. It just looks so Florida. You’re helping people understand the world on Fox Business and various Fox channels. Every time I see a picture, I get a kick out of it because it looks like you enjoy your time on those programs.

Rod D. Martin: Things are complex. The world has not gotten simpler because of TikTok. We all have the attention span of a fruit fly, and people get their news that way. I’m just as guilty as anybody.

I see a video on YouTube that’s more than about three minutes long, and I’m just like, “Eh, I don’t have time for that.” But the truth is, we have to make time for that. We have to understand how all these things interrelate. When we don’t, we make bad decisions.

That just isn’t okay. It’s not okay for yourself. It’s not okay for your family. It’s not okay for your church. But it’s really not okay from a stewardship perspective.

The Lord has put us here to steward His world. This all belongs to Him. It may be in the hands of rebels for a little while, but He is still sovereign. He is still on the throne. Everybody is going to bow down at the throne of judgment, and it’s our job to steward His world until He comes.

Well, you have to understand it to steward it.

John Anderson: Great point. I know you might be alluding to how, with short-form content, we consume something and then come to a conclusion even if it isn’t the full story. I feel like we’ve seen a lot of that over the last three or four years in post-COVID times, even on the conservative side. If a conspiracy theory sounds pretty good, a lot of people think it’s probably right.

One thing I am tired of — and I try not to do this on my channel, though I can’t say I’m batting a thousand — is hearing stories and watching videos about, “Did you hear what so-and-so said about such-and-such, or what so-and-so said back?” I don’t know if you’ve noticed that, but there seems to be a lot of personality-driven slop out there.

I’m interested in people, but I want to hear the actual facts of the situation. I don’t always get it right, but I am certainly tired of that. I don’t want my channel to be clickbaity.

Rod D. Martin: Lots of this is just high school. Again, the attention span drives that. If all of your media is consumed in 30-second chunks, you’re not getting any depth. You’re not getting any real understanding.

Someone produces a slick enough reel with ominous music and tells some terrible story about somebody. You’re already conditioned, by the immense lying of our institutions, to disbelieve authority.

John Anderson: That’s true.

Rod D. Martin: Well, sure. It’s super easy to say, “This says something other than the received wisdom, so it must be true.” Wrong. That’s not how that works.

John Anderson: It doesn’t make it right, especially the more superficial it is. A few years ago, we were all saying that the difference between a conspiracy theory and an established truth is about six months.

Rod D. Martin: And that’s frequently true. Don’t improve upon it by making the same errors. That’s the thing.

We actually have a standard of truth. We have something by which to judge all these facts. The first and foremost thing we get from that standard is well summarized in the proverb that says it is the glory of God to conceal a matter and the glory of kings to search it out. We are supposed to be diligent in finding truth, not merely things that contradict people we don’t like.

John Anderson: Yes. The confirmation bias and echo chambers — we’re all prone to that error. In our sin nature, we want to be right, and we don’t want to investigate because it does take work.

Rod, I appreciate you being on because I’ve wanted to debrief with you for a while. The Southern Baptist Convention held its annual meeting back in June. It seems like a while ago now, but I didn’t get to talk to you about it. I thought, “Well, Rod always has an opinion on certain things.”

Overarchingly, I felt like it was a positive step in the right direction on a couple of key issues. First, just off the cuff, what did you think about it? I think you’re still part of an SBC church.

Why the Annual Meeting Matters

Rod D. Martin: Oh, absolutely. They may have to bury me in the sanctuary.

I’ve told you before that I was a Southern Baptist before I was a Christian, which is true of most of us who were born in the church. I believe in it. It matters. It has sometimes gone awry. It is sometimes a mess.

This is the exact same thing: We have a stewardship responsibility. That’s what the annual meeting is. The annual meeting is a stewardship event that, honestly, a lot of our leaders want to turn into something else.

Sometimes that’s out of a good motivation. They say, “This is a great time to get together and worship.” Well, yes, it is. But we have a two-day Pastors’ Conference immediately before it for that.

The annual meeting itself, back in the day, used to be four whole days. We had four days of business meetings in my short lifetime. That’s actually how we did it. There was plenty of time to debate literally anything and get real work done.

We don’t have that luxury anymore. We now meet for two days. Those two days are truncated to a morning and an afternoon session on Tuesday, a morning session on Wednesday, and then an afternoon session after everybody has already left.

It is frequently true that the Committee on Order of Business — and I’ve chaired that committee, so I know a little bit about this — will schedule things for late Wednesday afternoon to make sure nobody is there to vote on them. Just the hard-core attendees will actually be making those decisions.

That’s a problem in a fundamental way, because guess who doesn’t get his way paid to the annual meeting? That would be messengers from little dinky churches, and little dinky churches are the overwhelming majority. Seventy-four percent of Southern Baptist churches have 100 members or fewer. Almost 50 percent have 50 members or fewer.

There’s nothing wrong with those churches. They just don’t have a big budget to fly people across the country every year. Compare that with Lifeway, the International Mission Board, the North American Mission Board, and all the seminaries. They know what matters to them is going to be up for a vote, and they pay for plane tickets and hotel rooms for staff members who are absolutely going to the convention and will vote the way they are told.

That is endemic. There probably is a fix for it, but that doesn’t really matter at the moment, because it is what exists.

If Southern Baptists want to have a say over how their tithe money is spent, how we conduct missions, how we conduct seminary education, and how we conduct all the work of the Lord that we delegate to this larger body — not delegating authority over our churches, but delegating authority to spend this money because it can do that work better collectively than we can individually — then we actually have to show up.

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The decisions are made, always, in all things and in all of life, by the people who show up.

John Anderson: Very pragmatic.

Rod D. Martin: That’s very practical and very biblical. The Bible is an incredibly practical book. There’s no escaping the need to do the things that are effective to achieve righteousness in a world entirely populated by sinners who, under the best of circumstances, are going to have mixed motives and occasionally evil intent, even when they don’t think they’re being evil.

The way you guard against that is to have more of the people of God in one room, in one place, making decisions together, checking and balancing one another. That is the essence of Baptist polity going back centuries.

John Anderson: Amen, brother. When I said pragmatic, I really meant practical. God is a God who uses means. He’s not a God who is going to contradict the sense He has given us. He has given us logic and a sense of order for a reason.

I think the SBC, in terms of the convention, conducts things mostly in an orderly way. It was my first annual meeting. The massive endeavor that it is was really impressive from a logistics standpoint and many other standpoints.

I did notice a smaller detail. After being there for the entire two days of the actual convention, apart from the Pastors’ Conference, I realized that I needed to be in that convention hall with thousands of people as early as possible and stay until the final thing was done, and do the same thing the next day.

Sometimes they would say approximately when a vote would be held, but then it would be later or earlier. I’m not saying there was a sleazy motive, but it felt like, “I thought we were voting on this a little later. I’m glad we’re in the room now, because it’s 8:35, and I thought this was supposed to happen at 9:05.” Have you noticed that in the past?

Rod D. Martin: In most cases, I would say it’s perfectly well-intentioned. Of course, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But that doesn’t change the fact that the people trying to run this are usually doing a good job and usually have good intent. Even when they happen to disagree with me, they’re usually trying to do something they believe to be good.

That’s exactly why we have a business meeting every year. And no, guys, it’s not a worship service. It’s a business meeting, and you’ve got to have those. Somebody has to be the janitor. Somebody has to be the plumber. Everybody doesn’t get to sing all the time. That’s what business meetings are.

I grew up in Southern Baptist churches. Now a lot of our churches have elders. My church has elders, and a lot of the business gets done in an elders’ meeting somewhere. You very rarely have a business meeting.

But when I was a kid, we had one every month on a Wednesday night, which admittedly is not when everybody was showing up. The people who cared about those kinds of things showed up. At any given business meeting, big things could change. They might fire the preacher and kick him out of the parsonage. That’s part of the reason we don’t do that quite so much anymore.

But the truth is, the business meeting is where we determine how to do the ministry that is the business of the rest of the church’s time. You determine who is going to be the music minister and lead the music. You determine the theological content of various church programs and Sunday school classes. You vote for or against an existing pastor, a future pastor, the succession of the church, and the future of its members.

That sounds really boring to most people, but it’s some of the most important stuff. You don’t get to eat and live indoors if somebody doesn’t build a house or a restaurant, and it’s the same with this.

At the Southern Baptist annual meeting, we don’t directly decide, for instance, which missionary gets assigned to which country. That’s not what the meeting is for. But we do pick the people who do. That’s crucial.

We pick the people who serve on the International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board. They’re the people who hire the heads of those entities. We pick the people who determine the future of each individual seminary.

Our seminaries matter. We educate one-third of the seminary students on this continent in just six Southern Baptist schools. It’s amazing. They don’t all finish. They don’t all get an M.Div. or a doctorate, but they go. We have a ridiculously outsized influence on the state of the church in America, and therefore the world.

If you’re not participating in that, you’re really missing out. It’s a wonderful way to worship, in a way we don’t normally think of as worship, and to make sure things stay on track.

Good men make mistakes. We’ve seen that over and over. I think the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force was entirely composed of wonderful, godly men, many of whom are good friends of mine. I also think they really screwed up. I think the whole thing has been a disaster, and I voted for it. I was for it.

If we had had a few more guys in there like Chuck Kelley telling us, “Wait. This is going to go into a ditch in these three very predictable ways,” maybe we wouldn’t have done it. But we listened to the guys on the platform. They thought they knew best. They had every reason to be trusted, and they were trustworthy men. They were just wrong. If we had had more people in the room, it might have gone better.

Baptist Polity and Institutional Accountability

John Anderson: Good point. You’ve talked before about the SBC’s importance, and I’ve become more and more convinced of it. It’s a massively important denomination, a cooperation of so many churches, because of its far-reaching influence across the world, not just the United States.

I’ve also become convinced that it’s such a privilege to be part of it. For all its warts and flaws — and there are some that always have to be dealt with — you’re in a denomination where you actually do have a say. Not everyone can say that.

Rod D. Martin: Let’s put a fine point on that. It’s really important.

Look at Harvard. The men who started Harvard did it 10 minutes after the Pilgrims got here. Seriously, the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, and in 1636 somebody founded Harvard University. That’s amazing. They did it to educate preachers. That was the point. By 1800, it had already gone Unitarian. Still, 1636 to 1800 is a really long time, so they were very successful in what they did. It’s still a shockingly important and successful institution.

But here’s the thing: You don’t have any say over it. Even if you were an alumnus, you wouldn’t have a say. It has what’s called in law a self-perpetuating board. The board picks its own successors. Nobody outside the board ever gets any say whatsoever, unless they write a big check or something, and most people aren’t going to be able to do that.

That board picks the people who succeed it. Once it moves in a direction, you’re never going to change it unless God does a miracle.

That is not so in the seminaries that educate a third of the seminary students on this continent. If enough people show up at the annual meeting in any given year, they can meaningfully change the direction of any of these institutions. If one goes bad, it can be fixed.

We had that in the 1980s. Pretty much all of them had gone bad, and that changed. It didn’t change by itself. It changed through the faithful attendance of tens of thousands of Southern Baptists.

At the height of it, at the convention in Dallas, Texas, in 1985, we had 45,000 messengers in attendance. It was the largest deliberative body in the history of the world, determining the direction of the largest Protestant denomination in North America.

So yes, it’s a privilege to be part of it. It’s also, “Hey, where are all you guys? Shame on you. Show up.” Everything can’t be singing. Now, we sing a lot at the annual meeting, so if you want some good singing, they’ve got it. But that’s not why you’re there. It’s a business meeting, and it matters.

John Anderson: The motion for you to have your solo did fail. For anyone going next year, Rod will not have either a vocal or a guitar solo.

This year, more than a couple of important things happened. Two big ones that I was part of and saw a lot of reaction to were the election of a new president and a very important amendment.

Overall, what was your take on Willy Rice becoming the president of the SBC? Josh Powell, I believe, went up against him, and the vote wasn’t too close from what I saw. It seemed like two overarchingly good candidates, given recent years. What did you think?

Willy Rice and the Turn Against Critical Theory

Rod D. Martin: We didn’t have a single plagiarist on the ballot. That was a big improvement. I appreciate and approve of that. Nobody was woke. This is all good.

Willy Rice is the man for the hour. He’s a friend, and he’s been doing the work in the SBC forever.

The thing I love about Willy is that he did go over to the dark side for a little bit. He drank the Kool-Aid a little bit on the whole woke thing, not because he believed in it, but because his friends told him, “This is good. We’re not doing that crazy Marxist stuff. We’re eating the fish and spitting out the bones. This is going to make us more effective with certain groups in the country.”

No, it’s not. It’s poison. It’s complete poison, and it’s antithetical to the gospel.

We serve a God who literally gave His own life to redeem you. You are a rebel and a traitor to the King of all creation. There’s no reconciling that. One sin is enough for eternal hell. Yet Jesus personally, in the flesh, made a way for you to be redeemed and set judicially innocent, as though you never did any of that.

That’s even true after you’re saved and you keep sinning, because you do. There’s no escaping that. Yet it is a once-and-for-all salvation that allows you to stand with your head held high at the throne of judgment.

That’s Christianity. We’re for the underdog. We believe in redemption stories. We want to see people become more than they are.

Not so with critical theory, which defines you by your most superficial characteristics — things like skin color and private parts. Those things define not only who you are and what you can ever be, but also what you are required to believe or, alternatively, what you are defined as believing.

There’s a reason the National Museum of African American History and Culture had that big poster about whiteness and everything defined as whiteness on that poster. Fortunately, it was up for only about five weeks, and the Trump administration got it taken down, because it was evil. It was racist.

The gist of it was that things like reasoning ability and hard work, all these virtuous things, are characteristics of whiteness.

John Anderson: I remember seeing that.

Rod D. Martin: That’s horrifying. The whole thing says, basically, that if you’re you, John, you are irredeemable.

Hillary didn’t use those terms lightly: deplorable and irredeemable. You cannot be redeemed. You will always be a racist. You’ll always be a misogynist. You’ll always be a class enemy. But you can make amends for it a little bit through a regular penance of antiracism or allyship.

This is ridiculous. This is evil. Again, it’s antithetical to the gospel. It says one group of people can never repent and another group never needs to. It teaches the opposite of Christianity.

Willy Rice, like many of the guys in leadership, saw that the wind was blowing in a way that suggested we needed to fine-tune our messaging to reach various unreached groups. He drank the Kool-Aid for a minute. Then one day he woke up — he didn’t go woke; he woke up.

Willy did the most amazing thing I’ve seen in Southern Baptist life, probably in my whole life: He publicly repented. You’re not allowed to do that! In public, he said, “I was wrong. Here are the reasons I was wrong. Nobody should believe this stuff that I taught. It’s wrong.”

He wins my vote just on humility.

I know virtually every Southern Baptist leader you can name, and none of them did that except Willy Rice. Some of them were on the right side all along. Some were on the wrong side and are pretending they never were. Willy Rice told the truth, said he was wrong, and then started working against the things he had been wrong about.

That by itself deserves the presidency of the SBC. And that’s not all. He understands the institution. He understands how it works. He understands who is and isn’t qualified for various boards and committees. He’s going to do a fantastic job. He already is.

I’m thrilled with Willy, but I’m mostly thrilled because that was probably the most Christian thing I have seen an SBC leader do. Boy, I’ve seen them do the other.

John Anderson: That was well stated. On critical race theory and the various problems, the bottom line is that it’s contrary to the Bible. It’s contrary to the gospel. It’s racism rebranded. It’s not so much a political fight as a theological one.

That all got shoved under the rug: “No, no, this is just an analytical tool.”

Rod D. Martin: No, it’s not. Even if it works, if I judge everything by Satan’s standards, I’m going to end up with Satan’s conclusions. If it is an analytical tool, it’s one you shouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole. It’s horrifying.

John Anderson: The reason I know who you are is that I used to watch a lot of videos by Jon Harris, and I still watch some. The first time I saw a video of you was when you were on his podcast, which I still think is one of the top-quality podcasts.

He’s the real deal in terms of Christian character. He’s not trendy. He isn’t just hit by different winds and waves. You were a voice at that time against wokeness, so praise the Lord for that.

Even for those who fell a little captive to it — I think I did as a young Christian for a little while, probably around 2016 — I didn’t go fully for it, but I remember hearing those thoughts and thinking, “Of course I want to care about my nonwhite brothers and sisters,” not realizing that the person I was hearing was importing a lot of poison.

After a year or two, I thought, “Whoa. This is Satan. It is not about loving your neighbor as yourself. It’s about guilting one group, uplifting another, playing games with prejudice and partiality, and imposing double standards. I don’t want to touch this with a 10-foot pole.”

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Rod D. Martin: Even if it’s well-intentioned - and for most of these guys, it was - it was wrong.

Let’s be very clear: Some guys used this stuff to displace political opponents and take power in an inappropriate way. There were certainly people who were true-believer Marxists, and they have largely outed themselves over time, whether they meant to or not.

But the truth is that most of these guys meant well. They meant exactly what you thought in 2016: “We’ve got to love our brothers, and we’re being told that this is how.”

But you’re being told wrong. It is exactly like when physicians came to treat a dying George Washington and their cure was to bleed him. They eventually bled him out. He died of the treatment, not the disease.

You can mean to do well and still do something patently harmful. That’s what was happening here, led in part by people who were not acting in good faith and have shown that over time, but in many cases by people who really meant to do well.

I’m glad to see them do better now. But I’m more glad that Willy Rice said it straight out: “I was wrong. This is what’s right. We’re sticking with the Bible.” That was courageous. It was not obvious that it would be rewarded in any way, but ultimately it was.

John Anderson: Praise the Lord.

He was more of what you might call the reform candidate — not Calvinistic Reformed, but someone saying, “We need to push forward, and we need to change some things.” You might not call them foundational matters, but there are some things we really need to get right.

The other candidate seemed okay, but he was a little more status quo. I attended a panel where both of them were present and got that feeling.

The problems with institutions that have theological issues or are dealing with female pastors may not be stage-four cancer, but they’re not not sick. It’s becoming far more serious than it should be, and we should try to kill the sickness.

That’s why I felt Willy Rice was the better candidate. These aren’t mere tweaks or maintenance issues. If the Bible is clear on female pastors, for example — and it is — that’s a little leaven that leavens the whole lump if we just let it go or aren’t clear. Willy Rice was clearer on this where we really needed clarity.

The Presidency, the Committees, and the Egalitarian Question

Rod D. Martin: It was a huge win. We’re so happy. We’ve been working for a better presidency for many years now, and we had six years of frankly very poor presidents.

J.D. Greear is an amazing guy. He’s shockingly capable. I have tons of respect for him, but he was a terrible president. The appointments he saddled us with were just awful.

Then you get Ed Litton, who was convulsed in a plagiarism scandal, for heaven’s sake, and didn’t have the decency to resign. I’ve never seen anything like it. And this guy’s appointments — oh my gosh.

Then you get two terms of Bart Barber. I like Bart, but he’s a goober. He’s a company man, and his appointments show it.

It’s going to take several years to work through that. I know most of your viewers probably don’t realize how this works, so let me explain it very quickly.

The president appoints a bunch of committees. But the most important thing he does, and almost the only power he has that really matters, is that he solely appoints the Committee on Committees. The Committee on Committees appoints the Committee on Nominations.

I just lost half the audience right there. How many committees can you have?

This is all about checks and balances. It’s intended for the presidential vote to matter, but ultimately for a group of godly people to get together in a room and pick the nominators, who then pick the trustees of all the different entities. That’s how it works. Of course, all of this has to be ratified by the annual meeting. That’s why you show up.

In any case, we had six years of terrible Committees on Committees. That meant terrible Committees on Nominations, which meant terrible trustees, and nowhere worse than the Executive Committee. That’s a bad place to mess up.

We’re going to have to dig out, and that’s going to be a multiyear process. It’s going to take longer than Willy Rice has. He’ll be president this year and probably next year, and then he’s out.

We have to keep going. We have to keep picking great, godly, humble men who are savvy enough to understand how the system works, which Willy absolutely is. That’s vital.

You hit on the other big issue of this annual meeting, which is female ordination. I marvel that this could even be an issue in Southern Baptist life, except that I lived it in the 1980s. They were pushing it then, too. Nothing has really changed. Many of those people didn’t go away. They just went underground. Now they’re pushing it again.

The first round of this was the Law Amendment. Mike Law proposed it, and it went to a vote in New Orleans in 2023. It won by a huge margin. You have to pass a constitutional amendment by two-thirds and then do it again the next year.

It was a thumping victory in New Orleans for something that did not come from the establishment. The establishment worked against it, though not super hard. They tried to make it look stupid: “This is unnecessary. We already have the Baptist Faith and Message. There might not be 20 women pastors in the entire denomination.”

Then, within two weeks of the Law Amendment passing in New Orleans, the narrative completely changed: “There are thousands of women pastors in African American Southern Baptist churches, and what you’re doing is racist.”

That’s savvy. It’s terrible, but it’s savvy. What they’re doing is unbiblical.

John Anderson: Yes.

Rod D. Martin: We’re not telling them they can’t do it. This is a big misnomer, and your audience needs to understand it. We aren’t telling any church what to do, ever. That’s not what we do.

What we’re saying is that, if you do certain things that take you outside the shared confession of faith we all agreed to as part of the Southern Baptist Convention, we’re not going to let you vote on the budget anymore. We’re not going to let you pick the president of something when you don’t believe what it believes.

It’s no different from saying you’re not going to let Hindus join your church. You’re not going to let Democrats join the Republican Party. You’re going to fence the table a bit. That’s all that’s happening here.

This time it worked because Al Mohler proposed the amendment, so the establishment guys fell in line. I feel reasonably confident that we will pass it next time and the constitutional amendment will take effect. That’s all positive.

But we have to understand why it matters. It’s actually brief, so you’ll be thrilled, because I keep talking.

John Anderson: This is gold.

Rod D. Martin: It’s very simple. First, there is the elections aspect. If people lie about what they believe, they shouldn’t get a vote over the money and the leadership.

Second, and this is much more important theologically, 1 Timothy is extremely clear on this issue. There’s no escaping it. First Timothy doesn’t contain the only passages on it, but it’s certainly the most prominent, and there’s no question what the Lord said.

Not only that, but it isn’t situational. It isn’t limited to a single church somewhere in Asia Minor. Paul argues it from the creation order. This is clearly a permanent statute.

If you’re going to interpret that away, is there any passage of Scripture exempt from the exact same approach?

That’s what we’ve seen in all the liberal denominations. They start here, and within a decade or two they have compromised on every other key doctrine in Scripture. You’ve already said that Scripture doesn’t mean what it says, or that it doesn’t matter what it says and you can change it. So you have no reason to take on any of the other beliefs that don’t tickle your fancy.

That’s what we’re guarding against. We know it’s not popular. We know the culture doesn’t understand it. We know some Baptists don’t understand it.

But if we don’t stand on, “I’m sorry, I didn’t make this rule. God made this rule. The Bible says it. That’s all I need to know,” then we aren’t Baptists anymore. We aren’t even really good Christians anymore, if we’re Christians at all.

It’s a vital, vital debate. I’m so glad Al finally took it up. I wish he’d come along a little more quickly with the Law Amendment, but he was making good statements. He just wasn’t out there quite as strongly as he is now. It made a difference when he did.

How Grassroots Baptists Move the SBC

John Anderson: Amen. We can end with this, because that’s a good segue to Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He’s been a very prominent voice for decades and was important in the Conservative Resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.

As a member of an SBC church and a messenger this past year, I felt there was an organic ground game from run-of-the-mill laypeople who want to see things change in a positive direction. They don’t know every last detail of how the SBC works, but they know we want to stand on Scripture and see God honored according to what we believe to be a biblical standard.

Do you think someone like Mohler responds to that? Is there a give-and-take? Do those with more institutional power feel some pressure?

We respond to people with institutional power. We followed Mohler’s lead here. He leaned in hard, so his muscle meant something. But was there also something organic, from the layperson’s point of view, putting pressure on those with more oomph to make more of a statement?

Rod D. Martin: Oh, absolutely. You hit a certain critical mass where enough people are concerned about something, and it absolutely influences the institutional leadership.

Al Mohler isn’t on a ballot anywhere. Well, actually, he was on the ballot for SBC president in 2021, and he came in third. But other than that, Al isn’t on the ballot.

Al got the job as president of Southern Seminary when he was just 33 years old. My guess is he’ll probably be there at 350, if the Lord allows such things. He isn’t standing for election, but he knows that tithers don’t have to give to his seminary.

He also knows something the Executive Committee isn’t very honest about. Sometimes that’s because it’s a bunch of preachers and they just don’t know about these things. But sometimes it’s because they’re actually obfuscating.

But the truth is that, when you look at Cooperative Program giving over the last 15 years and adjust it for inflation, it’s all fine and good to talk about how much money we have. In real dollars, it has dropped off a cliff. We’re running on 40 percent less than we had in 2010. It’s obscene. It’s terrible.

There’s a reason, and it matters. It matters for real ministry, sending missionaries, church planting, evangelism, and seminary education.

We’re moving into a period when there aren’t enough pastors to go around for all the churches. You’ve got to educate more men, and you can’t do it if you can’t pay to train them.

Al is aware that people have a choice in whom they give to. It doesn’t have to be Southern Seminary, and it doesn’t have to be the SBC.

Yes, it makes a difference when regular people make phone calls. Of course pastors are great. We really, really appreciate it when pastors do it. But when regular Billy Baptist, sitting on the 14th pew, calls these guys and says, “I really care about this. It matters. I want to see some action,” it matters.

It’s no different from a member of the U.S. House. Members of Congress have long had a rule that, if 10 people call their office on the same issue, it means there are probably thousands back in the district who are really upset, because people just don’t make those phone calls.

Regular, everyday Baptists can make all the difference in the world. They have to make phone calls. They have to go to meetings. Otherwise, they’re just ignored.

Honestly, all these guys went to seminary together. They’ve all known each other since they were barely more than teenagers. They have groupthink like a bunch of high school girls. There’s no kidding around it. It’s just part of the situation, and that has to be broken through.

That’s why we have a system that is grassroots-based, bottom-up rather than top-down. But that means the people on the bottom actually have to speak to the people at the top. It’s an easy phone call. They all have a phone number. It isn’t hard to get.

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So yes, it made a huge difference. I think we’ll get real action on this. I think the SBC is in the best hands it’s been in for quite a while, and we really are making progress.

That doesn’t mean it’s over. It ain’t never over. You’ve got to keep maintaining. You don’t drift anywhere you wish to go. That’s really true in a fallen world composed entirely of sinners. If we’re left to our natural inclinations, everything will decay.

It’s possible to build only when people make a concerted, careful, deliberate effort to be faithful to the Lord. Even then, they’re going to disagree on a bunch of things. That’s why you have a meeting. That’s why you have Robert’s Rules. That’s why you have a vote.

That’s also why everyone in your audience should become a messenger and go to the annual meeting in June 2027 — except for you Presbyterians.

John Anderson: Except for the Presbyterians.

Rod D. Martin: But y’all can join us, too. Come be Baptists, and you can go.

By the way, for the Presbyterians - those of you who are CREC or PCA, and others like them - you have a general assembly you can attend. You have places where many of these fights are very active and really do matter. You can have a say there, too. You just can’t have as much of a say as you can in the Southern Baptist Convention.

John Anderson: You’re definitely a champion of the SBC. You champion it well. Like we said earlier, it has its problems and warts. It’s a human institution. But we’re praying that the Lord will continue to refine us and reform us into a greater image of Christ. I think we’re moving in the right direction.

For those who don’t know, Rod, you have The Rod Martin Report. That’s one thing I wanted you to speak about briefly. You wear a lot of hats. You write, and sometimes you have guest writers. What is your report all about, and how can people find you?

Rod D. Martin: As we mentioned at the outset, church is not my day job. Christianity is my passion, and Christ is my Lord. But I work for a living. I don’t just teach Sunday school or something.

What we do is largely based on global macro analysis. A while back, we decided there was no reason we couldn’t package it in a way that’s useful to policymakers, engaged citizens, and people who just don’t understand what’s going on in the world because there’s so much going on.

It really does all fit together, but it isn’t obvious, and nobody is giving you a roadmap. So we decided to give you a roadmap.

At RodMartin.org, we do daily geopolitical analysis. Fox Business calls it “absolutely phenomenal.” We have tens of thousands of subscribers to daily long-form content that many people would never want to read, but lots of you might. We also have hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. There’s a reason.

Come join us at RodMartin.org.

John Anderson: You heard the man: RodMartin.org.

From my experience, it is informed by the correct foundation, a biblical Christian worldview, but it is also in-depth. It offers skill and depth of knowledge on geopolitical and economic issues that the average person, including me, hasn’t delved into or experienced.

That’s one great thing about The Rod Martin Report: It’s very in-depth, but presented in a way you can actually understand.

Rod, I really appreciate your time. You’re a busy man, wearing fedoras, appearing on Fox Business, and doing everything. It’s an honor to have you.

You’re a good brother in the faith. Thank you for continuing to fight the good fight for Christ’s name.

Rod D. Martin: Thank you. I love your show. I love your work, and I’m so glad you’re doing it. It’s an honor to be here.

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by Doug Ponder
June 8, 2025

In view of the importance that our Lord gives the command to love your neighbor (Matt. 22:36–40; Mark 12:28–33; cf. Matt. 7:12; Luke 10:25–28), it is no mystery why Christians have followed suit in making much of the same. This is well and good, provided that we understand what is (and is not) required of us. Unfortunately, there are two common ways the neighbor-love command is hellishly misinterpreted and misapplied.

The first is when someone turns the command into a cudgel for beating the consciences of Christians, all but forcing submission in matters not required by the Lord (whether explicitly or by good and necessary consequence). This is not new, but we did see a recent example of it in the dogmatic insistence that Christians who dissented from the government’s demonstrably arbitrary lockdowns and/or abstained from getting the COVID vaccine were failing to love their neighbors.1

Cards on the table: I think mounting evidence continues to justify the courage and prudence of those who refused to be blown about by every wind of the zeitgeist. As such, I think it would be good for the souls of any who publicly employed the neighbor-love argument in that way to issue an apology in the form of, “I was wrong. I’m sorry. You didn’t fail to love your neighbor.”

Yet I am even more concerned about the second way that we can abuse the command to love our neighbors, which I fear is even more common — and significantly more destructive — than the first. Namely, there is a growing tendency among many Christians in the West to redefine the second greatest commandment instead of simply misapplying it. To these misguided minds, when Christ said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” he actually meant, “Make sure your neighbor feels loved by you.” The difference between those statements can be a matter of (eternal) life and death.

When Man Is the Measure, Truth Always Comes up Short

Though it was Protagoras who first said, “Man is the measure of all things,”2 it is postmoderns who have embodied that outlook par excellence. For the West today is a place where people not only feel free to determine what is true for themselves but also assume that everyone constructs reality according to their own desires.3 This is why Francis Schaeffer felt the need to speak of “true truth” (a tautology in every age before ours).4 He foresaw that a day was coming, and is now here, when people will speak of “my truth” and “your truth” as if such phrases have the power to settle any dispute about reality. Perhaps ‘2 + 2 = 4’ is true for you, a Harvard PhD recently opined, but ‘2 + 2 = 5’ is also true for others.5

That is the way of madness.

Yet many well-meaning Christians have failed to grasp how the postmodern ethos has infected (to the point of destruction) their own understanding of Christ’s command to “Love your neighbor.” In our hyper-subjective age, this command is emptied of all objective content. The result is that some cannot even conceive of a situation in which a Christian could fulfill this command in such a way that a neighbor who is loved according to God’s standards might not feel loved according to his own..

I have spoken about this with pastors around the country, and I regret to inform you that it is not a problem found only along America’s progressive coasts. To give just one example, a friend who lives in the pejoratively labeled “flyover country” recently told me that his ecclesial superior rebuked him for failing to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). My friend was not at all certain that this was the case, nor were many of those who knew him best. So he asked, “Who gets to determine whether the truth is spoken in a loving way?” My friend’s interlocutor replied, “It all comes down to whether the person we are speaking to feels loved after we have spoken the truth to them.”

If Feelings Are the Standard, Then Jesus Is a Sinner

All who think this way have fallen for the poisonous lie that hurt feelings, per se, are proof that you have failed to love your neighbor. Yet if that is so, we make Christ himself out to be a sinner! For there were not a few times when his words were poorly received by some of those who heard him. Indeed, Jesus was not murdered because he was too nice but because he did and said things that caused some to despise him — yet in all this he was “without sin” (Heb. 4:15; cf. 1 Pet. 2:22; 1 John 3:5).6

The point here is not that we have the license to be jerks for Jesus.7 We plainly do not. We cannot turn the phrase “Love your neighbor” into “Hate your neighbor.” Even so, the idea that we are commanded to make our neighbor “feel loved” is ultimately a form of relativism in Christian drag, a kind of sentimentality that holds to the form of godliness — “love your neighbor!” — while denying its true power.8

Furthermore, in addition to making Jesus guilty of sin (by definition), such a view of Christ’s command places the standard for fulfillment not in the hands of the Creator but in the hands of creatures who are estranged from him (James 4:4). If feelings are the standard, then there is no standard. There also are no constraining limits. For if making someone “feel loved” is the requirement for being loving, there is no end to what darkened hearts may demand in order to feel sufficiently loved. This is, of course, precisely what is happening everywhere in the West.

The Devil Is Cashing the Blank Checks You’re Writing

We have reached the point where no matter how kindly you articulate the biblical view of gender and sexuality, you will be branded a “hater.” Which is to say, you will be seen as unloving (even though you aren’t), and you will hurt feelings (no matter how lovingly you speak the truth). Yet if you have wed the fulfillment of Christ’s command to a runaway train, where then will you go?

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In case the answer to that rhetorical question was not plain: you will go to wherever you are told to go, and Christians who are ruled by their sentiments instead of by the Scriptures are sitting ducks for this sort of manipulation.9 They have turned Christ’s command to love our neighbors — along with the many biblical commands to be compassionate and kind — into a blank check for the world to cash. “If you aren’t a bigot, then you will bake the cake” (never mind your religious convictions). “If you truly love me, then you will use my preferred pronouns” (never mind God’s commands not to lie or bear false witness). “If you really cared about the poor, then you will vote for this candidate” (never mind their manifestly destructive policies that mutilate children or undermine the family).

The devil is only too pleased with this arrangement. Indeed, the situation reads like a new chapter in The Screwtape Letters: since the powers of hell cannot make Christ’s command go away, they will settle for leading Christians to think the ultimate arbiters of whether we’ve obeyed the command are precisely those who are least qualified to understand it (1 Cor. 2:14). In a demonic inversion of Christ’s own words, the worldly person says: “If you really love me, you will obey my commandments.”

The Dead End of Subjectivity (And The Only Way Out)

I am not suggesting that every professing Christian who has fallen prey to the devil’s lies at this point will go to hell — but their neighbors will unless these Christians find the courage to begin doing and saying what is actually loving, according to Christ, instead of according to what makes their neighbor always feel loved. In other words, the only way out of this demonic cul-de-sac of subjectivity is to anchor the command of Christ in the Scriptures, letting the character of God, the acts of God, and the words of God define for us what is (and is not loving) according to the One who gets the final say on the matter.

This is precisely what the apostle Paul alludes to when he says, “The commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery; do not murder; do not steal; do not covet;’ and any other commandment, are summed up by this commandment: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:9–10).

These words can set us free if we let them (John 8:31–32), for they remind us that our Lord has not commanded us to love our neighbors without telling us what he means. Indeed, he has given us explicit teaching on the nature of love (1 Cor. 13:1–8), including additional commands that fill out what love is and what love does (Rom. 12:9–22). On top of this, he has given us examples in the Scriptures, not only in himself (John 8:12; 13:5; 1 Cor. 11:1) but also in those who belong to him (Rom. 15:4; Phil. 3:17; 2 Thess. 3:9; James 5:4; Hebrews 11:1ff).

Learning to Love a World That Hates You

Yet some will say to me, “Physician, heal thyself!” It is true that I write as a man who has at times been too quick to speak and too slow to listen (James 1:19). My carelessness has caused unnecessary offense (Prov. 18:19). My pride has hindered apologies for legitimate wrongs (Matt. 5:23–24). And my selfishness has surely been the occasion for many missed opportunities to serve others in a way that accords with their salvation (1 Cor. 10:33).

But I have also known the pressure to keep quiet about matters of eternal significance. I have been tempted to soften the truth in the name of “love.” And I have, in the past, been guilty of espousing a caricature of winsomeness that replaced the real Jesus of history with a false Christ of impotent faith.10 All this was a fool’s errand, for our Lord said the world would hate us in the same ways and for the same reasons that it hated him (John 15:18–20).

This doesn’t mean I now have a desire to be hated (I don’t), but it does mean that I have a firm resolve to fulfill Christ’s command to love my neighbor on Christ’s terms, not on my neighbors’. We cannot be more loving or winsome or compassionate or kind than Jesus. Therefore, he and his Word are the standard — which means learning to love a world that hates us begins with the One who was hated first.

In view of all this, Christians must no longer ask, “Does my neighbor feel loved?” (according to their standards) but rather, “Has my neighbor been loved?” (according to Christ’s Word). Or, to borrow a phrase from the apostle Paul, we all must ask ourselves: Am I seeking the approval of my neighbor or of God? For if I were still trying to please my neighbor, I would not be a servant of Christ (cf. Gal. 1:10).

— Doug Ponder is Biblical Studies Professor at Grimké Seminary and Teaching Pastor at Remnant Church in Richmond, Virginia. He writes on X and Substack, and sometimes here.

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by Rod D. Martin
August 9, 2026

I actually think evangelists and revivals were valuable. I wish we still had them.

I grew up in churches that brought in evangelists and had revivals regularly. I can distinctly remember at least one who was quite manipulative. He was never brought back. The rest seemed valuable to my young mind, at the very least for shaking things up and causing people to actually bring other people to church.

Oh, and they were also useful for proclaiming the Gospel.

It seems to me that the reason Southern Baptists (and specifically, the North American Mission Board) killed their evangelism and revival emphases was a growing dismissal of such things among then-younger seminarians and their “cool” younger professors. Perhaps I’m mistaken. But I don’t think there’s any reasonable doubt that this growing culture was the leading edge of the trend away from all such things.

That hasn’t worked out very well. There are many reasons Southern Baptists lost 4 million out of 16 million members — 25 percent of total membership — over the last 15 years. There are many reasons for the inflation-adjusted collapse in Cooperative Program giving (never mind that Nashville never adjusts for inflation: the real numbers are ghastly, but never reported). There are many reasons we’re baptizing fewer people than we have in over half a century.

But wouldn’t it make sense that one of those reasons might be that we no longer ask people to become Christians? You know: actually ask them.

We did once. Now we don’t. And the difference in results is pretty obvious.

Nothing I say here is intended to step on anyone’s soteriology. I affirm that God is sovereign. I’m talking about what is expected of us. I would argue this just the same with Tom Ascol as I would with Jerry Vines (although with the former, I’m sure we’d veer off into a discussion of the Regulative Principle).

The thing is, the Great Commission teaches us one particular lesson of universal applicability: that for us, God commands persuasion rather than force. This applies to economics, to politics, and certainly to discipling the nations.

At the Final Judgment God will use force. But in this life, he does not send Paul to Mars Hill with a sword (like a jihadist); and at the same time, He does not refrain from sending Paul to Mars Hill (like a Zoroastrian). He does not plead like a beggar (as some maintain, shamefully), but he pleads nevertheless, as a Father who knows the fate of His wayward children and earnestly desires their return.

He would have been entirely right to kill Adam and Eve in the Garden; and likewise, to give no warning to Noah and let His greatest of resets be complete. He would have been entirely within His right and His power to create men who would entirely choose Heaven.

He did not. And He chose persuasion as His mechanism of action. We are commanded to persuade. By implication, we are also commanded not to compel.

Now anyone who’s sold, or been sold to, recognizes what’s happening when the salesman hands his prospect off to his manager. And likewise, the Holy Spirit must close the sale. None of us are that persuasive.

Yet persuade we must. And I invoke the Great Commission as a universal principle, because it informs everything else. If God would entrust the most important matter in all of life to persuasion (humanly speaking), that fact teaches us how He addresses other lesser matters too. Government must be by the consent of the governed. There is a time for force (as there will be at the Judgment), but it is limited. Even the offerings for the construction of the Tabernacle and the Temple were voluntary, and God Himself (in 1 Samuel 8) limits the government’s legitimate taxing power to less than the tithe, leaving the state with very little capacity for compulsion.

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We should live as free men. We should reason lovingly with our wives and children as we disciple them. We should organize our economies on market principles rather than state planning. In all things, we should be imitators of Christ, applying God’s own chosen priorities.

So as Zig Ziglar would have said, we are all salesmen, and everything is selling.

Now if God has made persuasion a guiding principle in virtually all arenas, how much more so in that core arena of the Gospel, in which He states it boldly and explicitly?

I am persuaded by our many Calvinist friends that invitations, and revivals, and evangelistic appeals may be manipulative. I have witnessed it myself. But I am equally persuaded by our many Provisionist friends (and what Calvinist could disagree?) that the mere fact that there are bad evangelists should not abolish evangelism.

Church planting is wonderful, and sometimes involves evangelism (though it often relies far more on proselytizing). But it is not itself evangelism. For fifteen years, NAMB has gutted the latter in favor of the former, and the results are plain to see. But NAMB did not do that alone.

Our numbers bear out our neglect of such things. We are told our prior numbers were inflated by the aforementioned emotional manipulation, and perhaps that is so. But is the current system working? And did the prior system actually fail? Or are these two assertions without adequate evidence, and once we examine the evidence, we find that it was the innovators who were wrong?

The Great Commission commands persuasion. We grant that the Holy Spirit must “close the sale”, but “how will they hear without a preacher?” Evangelistic meetings and revivals incentivized members to invite their lost friends (and to come themselves) to hear the Gospel, night after night. They came, they heard, and many were unquestionably saved. They multiplied. They were made new, they went about making new converts, and the world was made better with them.

The less we do of this, the more we preach only to the faithful. Except even that is not true, because in fact, our churches now hardly meet at all. Where is Sunday night? Where is Wednesday night? Prayer Meeting is gone. Church Training is gone. How can we even consider whether or not to give an invitation at a service that never takes place?

The first rule of political advertising is that a voter must hear your message seven times before it connects. How many fewer times do average people hear the Gospel message now than they did 25 years ago? Than 50?

This all began at NAMB and in the seminaries. It culminated in the SBC’s ill-fated “Great Commission Resurgence”. The men who led that effort tried to do something great, no matter what their detractors may say. And yet like the men who brought you Betamax, Pets.com, Billpoint, and the Zune, they were still wrong.

We are failing by our own hand. We have lost a quarter of all Southern Baptists in a country that is growing. We are doing so in precisely the same way so many businesses have failed: by ceasing to do what we originally did that succeeded.

It’s not too late to change course.

We could start at your church.

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NOTE: I have above-average experience with Michael Clary’s topic. As a former officer of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention while many of us fought the infiltration of “Woke” Cultural Marxism into the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, there is virtually no limit to the demonization we experienced. The aim was simple: to cow those who stood against “Big Eva” into submission. I, however, am not one to tamely submit. You should not be either. In the words of the Apostle Peter (to the highest religious body of his day), “we must obey God rather than men.” — RDM

by Michael Clary
August 2, 2026

“Struggle sessions” aren’t just relics of communist China. They’re creeping into evangelical churches, and Christians need to learn how to spot and resist them.

Originally, struggle sessions were a form of psychological torture. Victims were publicly humiliated, accused of imaginary crimes, and pressured by friends and enemies alike to confess their guilt. These sessions served to advance the political goals of communist China’s Cultural Revolution: break social bonds, coerce ideological conformity, and force total allegiance to the state.

As crazy as it may sound, a softer version of this has become common in Bible-believing churches. Typically, outspoken conservatives are the primary targets.

Why? Because those conservatives hold views that make their left-of-center peers uncomfortable, and their willingness to speak out makes them anxious. If someone is vocal about hot-button cultural issues, like LGBTQ, feminism, race, or immigration, people at church will start getting nervous, accuse him of “getting too political,” and tell him he should keep his opinions to himself because the church should focus on “preaching the gospel.”

Ironically, these conformity enforcers may not even disagree with the speaker’s views. They just think Christians shouldn’t talk about them publicly because doing so might offend people who disagree. They might say something like, “Brother, I agree with you that illegal immigration is a problem in our country, but that’s not our focus as a church. We just need to preach the gospel and love people.” Meanwhile, our neighborhoods are being rapidly overrun by lawbreakers who worship idols and can’t even speak English. Suddenly, the admonitions about Romans 13 so common during COVID disappear.

Sometimes, they pit neighbor-love against confronting sin. They might say, “Brother, we believe homosexuality is a sin, but it’s not our job to play the Holy Spirit or alienate people with hurtful rhetoric. We just need to show them the love of Christ.” Meanwhile, our local schools and libraries are pushing a gay agenda on our children.

In these and similar cases, those holding unacceptably conservative views must be silenced. The Christians trying to silence them see themselves as doing the right thing — serving the body of Christ by correcting their overzealous and judgmental brothers. They see themselves as just doing what Jesus would do — eating with tax collectors, welcoming sinners, and spreading the love of God. Speaking boldly about cultural sins is an obstacle to that mission.

Their moral compass is calibrated by Progressives’ priorities. If a leftist is offended by what a Christian says, that’s clear proof that the Christian is in error. The church’s “public witness” must be protected. This is done by staying “above the fray.” They say the church should just “preach the gospel,” which is narrowly defined as preaching about God’s love, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and forgiveness of sins (without naming them).

Sometimes, a disagreement may escalate to the point where corrective action must be taken. A common example is a social media post that gets people worked up. Sometimes, a pastor may preach a bold, uncompromising sermon that offends church members, so they grab their pitchforks and torches to make sure that never happens again.

Regardless of the particulars, struggle sessions are usually triggered by a single inflection point, where someone did something that prompts a wave of collective anxiety in the church, often led by anxious women (and their compliant husbands). This inflection point enables everyone’s accumulated frustration to focus on one person who “went too far.” An example must be made of him. Everyone must learn that outspoken conservatism is not Christlike and such behavior will not be tolerated.

From here, the subsequent struggle sessions follow an all too familiar script: call out the offending party; accuse him of vague, subjective, and imaginary sins; demand a public apology to those who were “hurt” by his insensitive actions; and take disciplinary action to ensure neither he nor anyone else repeats his error. Perhaps he is required to submit to some kind of counseling. In extreme cases, he is cancelled or fired.

The emotional dynamics in such situations are wonderfully described in Joe Rigney’s book, Leadership and Emotional Sabotage. The people behind the struggle session think they’re doing the right thing. They don’t realize they are punishing courage and reinforcing a church culture of capitulation and weakness. Sometimes, church leaders can put members through struggle sessions to silence them. At other times, church members, elders, or deacons can put their senior pastor through a struggle session.

I’ve seen it many times, and it always follows the same playbook. I’ve outlined three steps below to help you identify and resist it.

Step One: Accuse the Victim of Imaginary Sins

The goal of a struggle session is control. The accusers want to extract a confession from the accused for imaginary sins, subjective offenses, and violations of the therapeutic code that can’t be measured. In the woke struggle sessions of the world, people are charged with an array of -isms and -phobias, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, or xenophobia. The harm supposedly is always psychological. Someone’s feelings got hurt because the truth spoken was too much to bear.

Churches do the same, using biblical language to lend weight to their accusations. But the supposed “crime” is never a violation of clear biblical teaching. It’s always an accusation of some vague, difficult-to-define, “heart-issue” sin. For example, a man who speaks plainly against the popular sins of the Left and refuses to caveat his words may be accused of arrogance, quarrelsomeness, stubbornness, lacking compassion, or being hurtful. In each of these cases, the accuser’s subjective interpretation of his actions is sufficient evidence to prove the charge. Sometimes, a vague cloud of witnesses is summoned to amplify the charge: “Brother, I’m not the only one who feels this way. I’ve heard reports from others who also found your comment hurtful.”

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Evangelical struggle sessions are effective because they weaponize the Bible’s teaching about sins of the heart against the victim. Since all Christians acknowledge that our actions and motives matter, accusers work to convince the accused that there must be some sin to confess, even if the action that triggered the struggle session isn’t itself sinful. The spiritual vagueness is key, because we believe that even our best good works are tainted with sin (Rom 7:21). So even if people are upset at the accused for saying something true, they will accuse him of saying it in a sinful way.

Sincere Christians are especially vulnerable. They’re accustomed to humble, self-examination, so they start to wonder if the accusations might be true. Churches that emphasize “heart idols” and introspection can be especially prone to this, since vague accusations feel spiritual and humble. Reformed churches, ironically, are often the easiest targets. Then, the accusers add to the weight by saying things like, “You don’t want to wound your brothers and sisters in Christ, do you?”

One of the most common charges is the failure to “love your neighbor.” That sounds weighty. After all, it’s the second greatest command (Matt 22:39). But in practice, even loving one’s neighbor is defined subjectively, according to the accuser’s feelings, not God’s law.

The accusers may present themselves as wise, voices of reason. Being captive to the therapeutic spirit of the age, they think they can “see the sin beneath the sin.” They rely heavily on secular, psychological concepts. Being outspoken for truth becomes “bullying.” Being decisive becomes “controlling.” Being a strong leader becomes “authoritarian.” Not caving to the emotionally manipulative tactics of the angry mob makes one “divisive.” All of these labels are rhetorically powerful. These words can ruin a man’s reputation.

He’s trapped in a Catch-22. There’s no escape. Any response reinforces their narrative. If he denies any wrongdoing, he will be accused of being “defensive.” His refusal to confess his sin is regarded as further evidence of his “pride.” And if all the above labels fail to accomplish their objective, the granddaddy of them all is “narcissist,” which means the accused is hopelessly imprisoned in his sinful self-delusion.

Remember, the goal of the struggle session isn’t justice. Nor is it truth. The accusers running the struggle session will say they are seeking “accountability” or even “restoration.” Not true. The goal is submission. The accusers are trying to control the accused by asserting enormous psychological pressure on him to participate in their humiliation ritual.

And their accusations against him don’t even need to be true. They just need to feel true enough to get him to question his reality or even his own sanity.

Step Two: Leverage His Social Circle Against Him

As the social pressure mounts on the accused, those closest to him also feel the heat. If he caves to the pressure, he will be publicly humiliated and hung out to dry. If he stands his ground, the pressure will continue until no one wants to associate with him. This is especially difficult for his wife, because she is torn between two important feminine instincts. On the one hand, she doesn’t want her relationships disrupted. But on the other hand, she wants to stand by her man.

The accused knows how burdened she is, and he fears she may resent him for the pain she’s feeling. Even though he knows, deep down, he’s not guilty of what they’re accusing him of, he’s nevertheless under enormous psychological strain. So he shuts down, panics, loses sleep, and maybe even relationships. In extreme cases, he loses his job. He becomes a hollow shell, demoralized, living in a confusing world where truth seems irrelevant.

As he and his family feel the noose tightening, paranoia can easily set in. He feels as though his world is collapsing around him. One by one, the people who initially stood by him start abandoning him. They see the strain he’s under and interpret it as a man with a guilty conscience beginning to break, which only supports the agenda of his accusers.

Step Three: Require Penance Through a Humiliation Ritual

Struggle sessions follow a predictable pattern. Most often, the accused will cave, confess his guilt, and issue a public apology. Sometimes he might be required to go on an “apology tour,” personally grovelling before various accusers as a form of penance. He may be required to attend counseling or submit to other corrective measures.

If he is truly innocent of wrongdoing, yet he submits to the humiliation ritual to appease the mob, he’s cooked. Even the smallest of apologies empowers the accusers and sets the template for their next victim.

Mentally, he might justify the confession, knowing there was probably some kind of sin going on, even if he doesn’t know what it was. In this way, his conscience gets distorted. He starts equating righteousness with submitting to mob demands. He loses confidence. His moral clarity is eroded. He’s been neutered and gaslit. His “guilt” is now a matter of public record, making him vulnerable to future manipulation.

I’ll say it again: Struggle sessions like these in the church are a form of psychological torture and spiritual abuse. I’ve seen many good men be subjected to them by weak, spineless men who targeted them. I’ve known many courageous pastors who were accused of fake, unprovable, therapeutic thought-crimes and lost their ministries as a result. Yet their accusers are dead certain of their victim’s guilt.

They didn’t see it coming. They were probably naive enough to think the church is the one place where speaking the truth is valued. And they paid a steep price for being gullible.

Conclusion: Stand Firm

If this is happening to you, I have one simple word of counsel: Don’t give in. Yes, your theology tells you to humbly confess your sins, but scripture also forbids false accusations. Yes, all deeds are tainted by sin, but that’s not a valid basis for subjective guilt. You are being bullied and manipulated. They’re trying to silence you.

Require them to name a specific, concrete sin. If you are guilty of an actual sin, then of course, repent.

But if you are accused of a made-up, subjective “sin”, and if the only evidence of guilt they can provide is someone else’s hurt feelings, you are being struggle-sessioned, and it is your duty to resist the manipulation. Yes, doing so may cost you friendships, but the alternative is worse. You’ll wound your conscience and damage your soul if you cave to manipulation by confessing faux guilt. You’ll also stop speaking the truth, in an age that desperately needs it.

Trust God. Stand your ground. Preserve your dignity. It’s hard, but holding the line is worth it. You are not alone. Be courageous. Speak truth with wisdom, pray for clarity, and let your conscience — not the mob — guide your actions.

— Michael Clary is the Lead Pastor of Christ the King Church in Cincinnati. This essay originally appeared at the Center for Baptist Leadership. You should follow both.

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by Jason Mills
July 26, 2026

There are ideas so absurd they once belonged safely in satire.

Imagine telling your grandfather — a man who hunted, farmed, and fed his family from the land — that one day a political movement would treat killing animals for food as moral barbarism. Explain that raising livestock, fishing in rivers, and harvesting game in season would be criminalized.

He would not debate you. He would laugh. And yet here we are.

Oregon’s Initiative Petition 28 (IP-28) moved in precisely this direction, redefining animal abuse in ways that would effectively criminalize hunting, fishing, slaughter for food, and ordinary animal husbandry. Beneath the policy language is a deeper claim: that man possesses no unique moral authority over animals. The petition nearly gained enough signatures to place it on the November ballot.

That is not reform. That is confusion, codified.

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by Virgil Walker
July 19, 2026

A generation of men opened the Bible expecting a sword and found a self-help book with verses scattered through it. The mistake was not theirs. They were handed a Christ engineered for the therapeutic age, and they correctly noticed that He had nothing to say to them.

Open the Book. He has something to say.

God Reveals Himself as Father and King

From the first page, God speaks, and what He speaks comes into being. He forms what is formless and fills what is empty. He walks in the garden to call Adam to account, and He thunders from Sinai to give law to people who would have settled for less. When the time was full, He sent His Son to crush the serpent.

He is Father. He is Lord and King. Scripture never softens those titles, and the people who try are not editing the Bible. They are replacing it.

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by Michael Foster
July 12, 2026

The very first question in the Bible does not come from God, Adam, or Eve. It comes from the serpent.

“Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1)

On the surface, it looks like a simple yes-or-no question. But it isn’t. It’s a deceptive, leading question, designed to reframe reality before Eve ever answers.

The serpent technically gets part of the facts right. God did forbid eating from a tree. But he frames the prohibition in the most distorted way possible, as if God were withholding everything rather than one thing. The question is deliberately negative. It casts God as withholding and suspect.

Eve responds:

“And the woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.”’” (Gen. 3:2–3)

Notice what happens. Eve does not answer with a simple yes or no. She clarifies, which is the correct instinct. But she also subtly alters God’s word. God never said, “neither shall you touch it.” That addition suggests that the serpent’s question has already begun to do its work.

The goal was never truth-seeking. It was to destabilize the authority of God’s word.

The serpent’s question pushes Eve away from objective revelation (“What did God actually say?”) toward subjective interpretation (“How does this feel? What seems reasonable?”). It invites her to evaluate God rather than submit to Him. The question was not neutral. It was a wedge.

Not all questions are innocent. Some are weapons.

We see this again and again in Scripture. The Pharisees question Jesus not to learn, but to trap Him. Their questions are often structured as false dilemmas, A or B, when the truth doesn’t belong to either option. If you accept their framing, they already have you. The dominoes are lined up.

That same tactic is everywhere today. People say, *“I’m just asking questions,” but the questions are doing heavy ideological work. If you don’t choose A or B, you’re accused of taking “the third way,” as if there are only three options. In reality, there may be ten, or a hundred. The dilemma itself is fake. The question is a steering mechanism.

By contrast, in Acts 17, the Bereans ask questions that are genuinely authoritative and submissive:

They examine Paul’s claims by the standard of Scripture.

Their questions are tethered to an external authority. They are not asking Scripture to justify itself to them; they are asking whether Paul’s teaching conforms to what God has already spoken. That’s the difference.

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In the case of the Bereans, it should also stand out that Paul is not offended by them going to the Scriptures. He doesn’t demand allegiance to himself. Paul understands that he is a man under authority. The allegiance is to God and to His revealed truth, not to Paul as a personality.

That’s where you see a subtle slide of hand in manipulative ministries and personality cults. Officially, they’ll say Scripture is the authority, but in practice the authority becomes the communicator of Scripture. The line between God’s revelation and the man delivering it gets blurred.

Sometimes it goes so far that faith is lodged in the personality rather than in the Word itself. Question the interpretation, and it’s treated as questioning the truth. That’s not how Paul operates, and it’s not how the Bereans think.

Paul welcomes scrutiny because the standard isn’t him. The Word is.

So one of the most important diagnostic questions you can ask about any question is this:

Is the question actually seeking an answer, or is it trying to smuggle in a conclusion?

If the answer is treated as “self-evident,” then the next question must be asked plainly:
Self-evident according to what authority?

When pressed, people often retreat to vagueness: “Do your own research.” We saw these with the QAnon hysteria. Or they hide behind posture: “I’m just asking questions.” This allows them to imply truths that are neither self-evident nor grounded in any objective standard, while avoiding accountability for the claim itself.

That’s the trick.

It’s not accidental that the last question in the Bible mirrors this reality in reverse. In Revelation 18:18, the sailors cry out at the fall of Babylon:

“What city was like the great city?”

That’s not a real inquiry. It’s a rhetorical question of lament. The answer is obvious: none. The greatest city of man has fallen, and its uniqueness only becomes clear in its destruction. That question clears the stage for the city of God, which does not rise from human power and cannot be undone. It is the greatest city.

So Scripture begins with a deceptive question meant to undermine God’s goodness, and it ends with a lamenting question that exposes the fragility of man’s glory.

Questions matter.
Their framing matters.
Their authority matters.

And no one is ever “just asking questions.”

One question that will inevitably be asked about this article is, who is this about? And yes, people will say, “This is obviously about Candace Owens, right?” It does apply to her. She’s guilty of this. But she’s not the first, and she won’t be the last.

At the very beginning of East River Church, I was openly critical of QAnon and its false prophecies. We lost several families over it. Oh well.

That’s not what this is really about anyway. This is about learning to discern biblically. It’s about not having your life tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, every new trend, every charismatic personality who claims to see what others don’t.

We weathered Rob Bell. We weathered Brian McLaren. We will weather many others. The names change. The tactic doesn’t.

The point is not identifying the latest villain (or hero). The point is learning how to test spirits, recognize leading questions, and keep your allegiance anchored to the Word, not to whoever happens to sound confident this week.

Listen to whoever you want. Ask questions. But be cautious and biblical. Be an actual Berean.

— This essay originally appeared at This Is Foster, which I encourage you to follow.

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NOTE: Yesterday was America’s 250th birthday. On the 4th, I gave you “The Christian Worldview of ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”, which I consider one of my most foundational essays. Take a few minutes to read that, and then today’s important piece regarding the moral legitimacy of the American Revolution itself. — RDM

by Rod D. Martin
July 8, 2014

There is a recurring, albeit ill-informed, question in Christian circles regarding Romans 13 (which counsels dutiful subordination to legally established authorities) and the American Revolution: were the Founding Fathers in sin when they rebelled against King George? My beloved son (a Harvard, Yale and Mayo Clinic doctor who daily does heart and lung transplants but not a lot of historiography) recently asked me for some references he could read to help answer this question, as raised by some of his friends at church. This is my response.

Archer,

I am not …

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by Seth Brickley
June 28, 2026

In my previous article, “When Repentance Becomes Costly,” I described a great problem in the American Evangelical Church. There is a need for pastoral repentance, but it has been absent in large measure. While the Lord has raised up many good shepherds, there is indeed an entire class that has disqualified themselves, because broadly they have participated in pastoral corruption.

One aspect of that corruption I did not mention previously is the cancer of pastoral pietism. But in this article, I will explain how many modern shepherds, especially in the U.S., eerily resemble the Pharisaic leadership of first-century Israel that opposed Christ.

A Great Neglect of People

The Pharisees were those who did not care about the everyday problems around them. In Matthew 23, where Jesus went scorched earth on the Pharisees, he told them, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you ti…

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NOTE: I am republishing this important essay in honor of Father’s Day. Take time with it. You’ll be very glad you did. — RDM

by Rod D. Martin
March 30, 2025

When Paul describes our salvation, he invokes the law — specifically, the Roman law concerning adoption. He does so deliberately, decisively, and repeatedly. His hearers understood what he was saying: they lived under that law. There can be no question regarding his intent.

And that has enormous implications for the Gospel, and for our status before God.

In Roman law, adoption was no soft sentiment. It was a public legal act that completely redefined who a person was: his rights, his duties, even his debts. Paul wasn’t waxing poetic when he said we’ve received “the Spirit of adoption”. He was invoking the most powerful legal metaphor available in the Greco-Roman world, a metaphor — and a reality — that explained not just what God has done, but who we become as a result.

He was also explaining what kind of Father God is.

What Roman Adoption Meant

In Roman civil law, adoption was only rarely the domain of parents seeking infants. It was primarily a tool of inheritance, as in the case of Julius Caesar’s adult adoption of his nephew Octavian. Adoption was usually a strategic legal transaction between intentional, consenting adults, used to secure heirs (political as much as financial), transfer wealth, and perpetuate family lines.

Roman adoption came with three enormous implications, enshrined in law:

1. Irrevocability: A natural son could be disowned. An adopted son could not. Adoption created a new legal status that could not be undone.

2. Erasure of past debts and obligations: Adoption wiped the slate clean. If the adoptee had debts, they vanished. His old family ties were legally dissolved. He became a new person in the eyes of the law.

3. Full rights of inheritance: The adopted child wasn’t “like” a son. He was a son, in every legal sense. He received the full status, name, and inheritance of his new family.

Paul’s Roman readers would not have missed the implications. To say that God has adopted us is to say that we are no longer legally bound to our old identity — our sin, our shame, our condemnation. It is all gone. Nullified. Buried. We have a new name, a new inheritance, and a new status that can never be revoked.

This is not just an aspect of the Gospel. It is the Gospel, expressed in legal form: God has made us His children — not figuratively, but legally, relationally, irrevocably.

When Jesus tells Nicodemus he “must be born again”,1 this is precisely what He means.

From Slaves to Sons

Paul’s recurring contrast between slavery and sonship only makes sense in this legal context. A slave in Roman society was property. A son was an heir. Paul tells us, “you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons”.2 This is not spiritual allegory. It is a courtroom declaration.

In Christ, we are no longer outsiders looking in. We are not merely sinners with a second chance. We are no longer children of the flesh, or of the devil. We are heirs, co-heirs with Christ3 the only begotten (or natural) Son,4 the firstborn of many (adopted) brothers.5

The force of Paul’s claim intensifies in Galatians: “So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God”.6 That “if” is not figurative or speculative — it is legal. It is Paul’s shorthand for the full status of adoption under Roman law. He is saying: God didn’t just release you from bondage; He gave you the title deed to the house. You were not just freed — you were claimed.

Modern readers may find this idea of inheritance confusing: Is God going to die? No. But in an era of emperors and nobles such as Paul’s, an heir had a special place and status both before his father and the world, even while his father still lived. That is our status before God, or rather, the status of all who are redeemed.

Scottish law professor Francis Lyall drives this home.7 Roman adoption was not simply a change of relationship. It was a change of jurisdiction. A new father meant new law, new debts (none), new obligations (glory), and new destiny (inheritance).

The adoptee didn’t bring his baggage. He couldn’t. It had been erased as a matter of law. The magnitude of that — imagine having your mortgage completely cancelled — is why a Roman adoption had to be granted by a court. Likewise, our adoption is granted by the Judge of the whole world.

Debt Forgiven, Identity Rewritten

This is why the Gospel cannot be reduced to forgiveness alone. Forgiveness cancels punishment. Adoption confers identity. Forgiveness means you’re no longer guilty. Adoption means you now belong.

This is why Paul’s presentation of the Gospel is both legal and relational. Indeed “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”.8 This is the doctrine of justification. But it’s not the final word. The Spirit Himself bears witness that we are children of God. And “if children, then heirs — heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ”.9

No condemnation, because your debts are gone. No distance, because you’ve been brought near. No uncertainty, because your inheritance is fixed. The law once testified against us. But now, through adoption, the law testifies for us. We have been legally transferred from the domain of darkness into the household of our new Father.

And in Roman law, as Lyall notes, such a legal transfer wasn’t private or provisional. It was public, binding, and irrevocable. This is the doctrine of the perseverence of the saints, what Baptists usually call the security of the believer. You cannot lose your adoption, assuming you were in fact adopted, because adoption is forever.

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Many fear losing their salvation. This is an impossibility. But many think they’re saved because they recited a prayer, or walked an aisle. Scripture, however, is quite clear: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.”10 Many who profess the Name do not truly believe. But for those who genuinely do, “He has given the right to become children of God”,11 and “no one may snatch us from His hand”.12

The Father’s Heart Behind the Law

All of this legal precision serves one relational end: sonship. Not servitude. Not probation. Not parole.

In Roman adoption, the adoptee didn’t earn his place. He was chosen. And in the case of God’s family, chosen not because of worthiness, but because of divine love. “In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ”.13 That’s the motivation. Love, not merit. Election, not works.

Such great love — of the Father for us, and of ourselves for the Father and for our Savior — will surely produce good works.14 How could it not? If I love someone I want to please them. But those works are not the basis of our salvation.15

And here the legal metaphor gives way to something even deeper. Paul tells us that the Spirit we have received cries out, “Abba! Father!” “Abba” is not formal: its best English equivalent is “Daddy”. This is not transactional. It’s relational. It’s not legalese. It’s the joyful cry of a child running to a daddy whom he knows is his.

Paul’s use of “Abba” is no sentimental flourish. It’s a theological earthquake. Jesus used that word in the Garden of Gethsemane. Now Paul says we say it also. The access that belonged to the Son by nature now belongs to us through our adoption.

This is what the Gospel is — not just pardon, not just escape, not even just rescue. It is that the Judge has found us “not guilty” by reason of Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice, and has willingly and gladly become our Father.

And He will never disown His children.

The Healing Doctrine Our Age Has Forgotten

Our culture is drowning in fatherlessness: broken homes, fractured families, and absent dads. And the problem is not just one-way: there is a rising trend of children deserting their parents, orphans by choice not need, with 26% of Millennials deliberately estranged from their fathers.

It is no coincidence that so many people today struggle to understand the Gospel. The very framework God has given us — Fatherhood, sonship, adoption — has been shattered in our modern generational memory.

And yet, this is the very truth that speaks hope to our orphaned generation.

God is not merely a sovereign. He is not merely a lawgiver. He is not a cosmic CEO or distant deity. He is a Father. And not in name only, but in reality: He loves, provides, protects, disciplines, delights, and never lets go. He has bound Himself to us in the most permanent legal terms imaginable, and sealed it with the blood of His Son.

This is not metaphor. This is identity. This is the Gospel.

Not Just a Theological Detail — The Theological Core

The doctrine of adoption is not a minor chord in Paul’s symphony. It is the key in which the whole piece is written. It is how God accomplishes our salvation, and how He frames our new life.

It demands a response. The foundational reality of our status before God is that — inexplicably — He loved us so much He made us His children. Everything else flows from that.

Theologians and pastors often rightly focus on justification by faith. But justification answers the question of guilt: it’s just the entry point. Adoption answers the question of belonging. And without the latter, the former feels incomplete. God didn’t just save us from something. He saved us for something and to something. He made us a family.

This is why our theology must be driven not just by clarity, but by love. Not just by law, but by the Lawgiver who, through adoption, becomes Abba. The more we understand that, the more everything else falls into place. The law becomes instruction, not condemnation. Discipline becomes proof of love, not rejection. Obedience becomes joy, not obligation.

If you study your Earthly dad (let's call it "dadtrine" or "dadology") you certainly do so to some degree to stay out of trouble, and to some degree because it makes life easier. But mostly, you do it because you love him. And loving him, you want to please him.

That’s part and parcel of the doctrine of sanctification. And it’s beautiful.

The Gospel in Legal Form, the Gospel in a Father’s Voice

Roman adoption law gave Paul the tools to articulate the full glory of the Gospel. And it gives us a framework to understand who we are.

We are not just redeemed. We are not just forgiven. We are not just justified.

We are adopted. We have a Father. We have a new status. We have an eternal home.

The Judge has ruled. Our debts are gone. Our status is changed. And our Father opens His arms, not to strangers, but to daughters and sons.

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by Voddie Baucham
June 14, 2026

“Critical Sex Theory: How to Keep Marx and Freud Out of Your Bedroom” is a sermon preached by Pastor Voddie Baucham on September 11, 2021 at the Fight Laugh Feast conference. In it, Voddie argues that modern cultural views on sexuality are rooted in the destructive philosophies of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud:

• Marxism & Power: Secular views reduce human relationships to power dynamics, stripping sexuality of its holy, design-based purpose and replacing it with perpetual conflict.

• Freudian Influence: Secular frameworks hyper-sexualize human nature, making individual desires supreme and leading to moral relativism and degradation.

• Biblical Foundation: True fulfillment in marriage and sexuality comes from understanding and submitting to God’s original, distinct design for male and female.

We miss our friend Voddie. He was a good man, a powerful preacher, and a wonderful father and husband. We are all blessed for having known him.

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If you or your organization are facing a sex abuse or sexual harassment claim, or if you are yourself the victim, my friends at Chalmers Adams can help. Click here.

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by Rod D. Martin
June 9, 2026

Today is the first day of the Southern Baptist Convention in Orlando. It’s also the 43rd anniversary of Christ saving me.

So perhaps you’ll indulge me if I stray for just this one essay from our normal daily geopolitical analysis to talk about the most important thing in the world.

As you know, I am not one to “take someone’s word for it”. I have built an entire career on facts, logic, science, and reasonable inferences therefrom. Many of those inferences seemed counterintuitive at the time, but were correct, precisely because of the other three.

That’s exactly how I came to faith. Christ miraculously redeemed me, but in His kindness to meet each of us where we are, He presented my skeptical heart with the historical case for believing in Him. That was exactly what I needed to see, and it opened the door to the intimate, personal relationship with Him that’s available to all who place their trust in Him.

God is our Creator. He owns everything and everyone. We are rebels, subject to a traitor’s death. But God provided an escape, paying the price of our treason by entering history in the flesh and shedding His own sinless blood for all those who “confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in their heart that God raised Him from the dead”. Nor does He make us mere servants: once set right judicially, He adopts us as His own sons and daughters, “co-heirs with Christ”.

That’s what Christianity is about.

Christianity is not about cathedrals, as grand as they are, or fellowship suppers, or singing songs. It is about a claim so bold, so outrageous, and so world-shattering that if it’s true, it changes everything.

That claim is this: that Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish carpenter crucified under Pontius Pilate, physically rose from the dead three days later.

Not metaphorically. Not spiritually. Not as a nice symbol of renewal or a poetic expression of hope. He walked out of a sealed tomb in the middle of Roman-occupied Judea, showed Himself to hundreds of eyewitnesses, and transformed history so radically that time itself was eventually divided by the date of His birth.

Believing that is a big ask. But let’s be honest: a God who could not do such a thing is no God at all. The miracle is that He would do it.

The resurrection is the very center of Christianity. And if it didn’t happen, the entire Christian faith collapses. As the Apostle Paul put it, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). Christianity is not a philosophy of life. It is not a self-help system. It is not one religion among many. It is the declaration that God entered history in the person of Jesus Christ, and that He proved it by rising from the dead.

The Trilemma: Who Is This Man?

C.S. Lewis, the great Oxford professor and former atheist who wrote Mere Christianity, put it plainly. Jesus did not leave us the option of calling Him merely a “good moral teacher.” That line may sound respectable today, but it is not rational. Because Jesus didn’t just teach love and kindness. He claimed to be God.

“I and the Father are one,” He said (John 10:30). “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58), deliberately using the sacred name God gave to Moses at the burning bush. When His disciple Thomas declared, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus didn’t correct him — He accepted the title.

This brings us to Lewis’s famous trilemma. If a man goes around claiming to be God, there are only three logical possibilities:

1. He is a liar — He knew He wasn’t God, but deliberately misled people, making Him evil and certainly not a great moral teacher.

2. He is a lunatic — He genuinely believed He was God, but was out of His mind, like a man who thinks he’s a poached egg.

3. He is Lord — He really is who He claimed to be.

But what you cannot say is that He was just a good teacher. “A man who was merely a man,” Lewis writes, “and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice.”

The Resurrection Is the Crux

Josh McDowell, who through Keith Whitworth led me to Christ, popularized Lewis’s trilemma in the phrase “Lord, liar, or lunatic?” and applied it directly to the resurrection. McDowell, also a former skeptic, began his investigation of Christianity intending to disprove it. Instead, he became one of its most prominent defenders.

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Why? Because the evidence for the resurrection, when honestly examined, is astonishing.

Here are just a few facts that demand explanation:

1. The Empty Tomb – Even the enemies of Jesus admitted the tomb was empty. The authorities spread the story that the disciples stole the body, which only makes sense if the tomb was in fact empty. But how could a group of terrified fishermen overpower professional Roman soldiers? And even if they could, they couldn’t assume success going in. Why would they be willing to die for a lie?

2. The Eyewitnesses – Jesus appeared physically, bodily, to many people after His death. Paul records in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus appeared to Peter, to the Twelve, and even to more than 500 people at once, “most of whom are still alive.” This was written within 25 years of the event — far too soon for myth or legend to develop. Anyone could check the facts. And many did.

3. The Transformed Disciples – On the night of Jesus’ arrest, His disciples fled. Peter even denied Him three times. They were defeated, confused, and in hiding: they had incorrectly believed He had come to overthrow the Romans and establish a physical kingdom in Jerusalem; they struggled to imagine that instead the Romans would kill Him. Yet within weeks they were boldly proclaiming that Jesus had risen — and they were willing to suffer torture and death for that claim. Men may die for what they believe to be true, but no one dies for what he knows is false.

4. The Explosion of the Early Church – Christianity should never have survived the first century. It proclaimed a crucified Jew as the risen King of the world. It directly contradicted the mandatory claims of the Roman Emperors. It faced persecution, ridicule, and death. Yet it exploded in the first century, and within two centuries more it conquered the Roman Empire — not by the sword, but by testimony.

5. The Conversion of Skeptics – Saul of Tarsus (later the Apostle Paul) was a Pharisee, an enemy of the church who hunted down Christians. But he had a direct encounter with the risen Christ that transformed him overnight. Likewise, James, the brother of Jesus, was a skeptic during Jesus’ lifetime — yet he too became a leader in the early church and died for his faith. What would it take to convince you your own brother was God?

No Other Explanation Works

Many theories have been offered to explain away the resurrection. All of them fail.

• The Swoon Theory? Jesus didn’t really die, they say — He just fainted. But Roman soldiers were experts at execution, and the purpose of crucifixion was itself a torturous death from which no one was allowed to escape, much less recover. The soldiers even speared His side to confirm He was dead. And if somehow Jesus revived in the tomb, half-dead, bleeding, and crippled, He would not have inspired worship: He would have needed a doctor.

• Mass Hallucination? Hallucinations are personal. 500 people don’t hallucinate the same thing, at the same time, in multiple places, at least not without mass media manipulation. And hallucinations don’t eat breakfast with you on the beach, like Jesus did with His disciples (John 21).

• Stolen Body? By whom? Not the Romans — they wanted to crush the movement. Not the Jews — same reason. Not the disciples — they were terrified, and had nothing to gain but death. And again: why die for something you know you made up?

The best explanation for the empty tomb, the eyewitness accounts, and the explosion of Christianity is simple: Jesus actually rose from the dead.

Why It Matters

This is not a mere intellectual curiosity. It is the most important question you will ever face.

If Jesus rose from the dead, He is exactly who He said He is: the Son of God, the Lord of heaven and earth. And that means every one of His claims is true.

He said He came “to seek and to save the lost.” He said, “No one comes to the Father except through Me.” He promised, “Whoever believes in Me will not perish, but have everlasting life.”

The resurrection is God’s stamp of approval on all of it. As Paul says in Romans 1:4, Jesus “was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by His resurrection from the dead.”

If Jesus is Lord, then you must deal with Him. You cannot ignore Him. You cannot brush Him off as a wise man or moral teacher. He claimed your allegiance. He died for your sins. He rose again to offer you eternal life.

You Must Decide

The choice is yours.

You can say He was a liar, but liars don’t speak with the moral clarity of the Sermon on the Mount, or die forgiving their murderers.

You can say He was a lunatic, but lunatics don’t articulate logically-consistent brilliance, or found the greatest movement in human history.

Or you can say He is Lord — and fall at His feet in worship.

That is what your God demands of you: a verdict.

As Jesus asked His disciples, so He asks you: “Who do you say that I am?”

Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

What will you say?

Examine the evidence. Confront the reality. And respond to the risen Christ. He is not just a figure of history. He is the creator of it. He is alive. He is King. And He is calling you home.

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” —Romans 10:9

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Further Reading:

• Mere Christianity — C.S. Lewis

• Evidence That Demands a Verdict — Josh McDowell

• The Case for Christ: Solving the Biggest Mystery of All Time - Lee Stroble

• Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels - J. Warner Wallace

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