The Deadly Cancer within American Evangelical Churches (Part 2)
There's a new form of Gnosticism that has throttled believers for decades. It must be cast out.
Yesterday, I discussed the sharp contrast displayed in this election between Chinese immigrants and American evangelicals. While the Chinese immigrants mobilized on every front to fight the dark Democratic platform, many American evangelicals, especially pastors, remained largely mute. I feel this silence is the direct consequence of embracing the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, which idolized spiritual elements and disdained earthly matters. Within this framework, politics as an earthly enterprise was considered unworthy of the Church’s engagement.
How did political Gnosticism take root in American evangelical churches?
For the most part, American culture had been strongly influenced by Christian values. How should Christians live in a culture that is largely Christian, where our need for God’s help seems minimal? In the late part of the 20th century, turning inward and nurturing personal spiritual growth became the logical answer. Bible studies and devotions aimed to help Christians draw closer to God through cultivating inner awareness of His presence. Though this did not oppose Christians’ participation in secular activities, such as, civic duty and politics, it clearly marked spiritual pursuits as substantially superior to any earthly affairs.
Furthermore, the central doctrine of the evangelical Church — justification by faith — has unfortunately played a role in the reincarnation of Gnosticism. Though God clearly demands us to demonstrate our repentance and faith through good works, this doctrine is often taught in opposition to good works. This, in part, is due to the fact that evangelical churches have not satisfactorily resolved the tension between faith and works. If only faith is necessary for salvation, are good works optional? Why not, if it does not affect one’s salvation? And in what way are good works necessary?
Besides, whenever good works, virtuous behavior, or moral living are mentioned, many evangelical pastors feel obligated to qualify it with a statement that by no means can good works contribute to our salvation; rather, only faith in the atoning sacrifice of Christ matters, and rightly so. However, when faith is viewed as being at odds with works, it leaves the impression that our deeds are a dangerous gimmick that can trick us to fall into the dark pit of justification by works. For the average layperson, the message is clear: stick with faith, and the issue of good works will hopefully take care of itself.
Thus, we inadvertently began a new gnostic movement of faith without works — and that manifested as apathy toward the most recent election.
True Tragedy
Scripture tells us that faith without works is dead; unless we live out what we believe, our belief remains empty and abstract. But with Gnosticism, the dead faith boosts our self-image, making us confident in our standing before God. Consequently, faith without works disregards the application of the Gospel message, bypassing the passages that teach about our earthly responsibilities. Gradually, it has dulled our sense of morality, making us callous toward the evil around us — as if once we said a prayer and got our ticket to Heaven, we could abandon the things of Earth. This mindset naturally viewed politics as being in conflict with the Church, just as works with faith.
As an immigrant who grew up in a totalitarian society, I consider this position the most consequential tragedy of American evangelism.
Unlike other countries, God has graced America with a culture based on Judeo-Christian values. He has also given us an unprecedented political system, a constitutional republic, in which every citizen — both children of light and sons of darkness — has the right to maintain, defend, and change the culture. In one sense God has designated the political arena as a primary battleground for Christians to shine our lights in a dark world. If American Christians are not involved in politics, we leave the battlefield to the devil’s minions and offer them unimpeded opportunities to advance their dark kingdom.
That was exactly what we faced during this election!
For years, we have been laboring to get people to say a prayer so more will join our faith-without-works movement. In fact, we intentionally lowered our already weak moral standards – a consequence of our gnostic practice — to attract the world. Why not? Isn’t getting people to say a prayer so they can go to Heaven infinitely superior spiritually? The inevitable result, however, was that the churches increasingly began to resemble the world, allowing diverse ideologies and belief systems to metastasize within the Body.
This gave us another reason to shun politics: to maintain unity within the church because, in America, politics are divisive.
There’s a sound evangelical church in a community near where I live that preaches the Bible. During a prayer meeting, when an attendee began to pray against indoctrinating young people with evil ideologies in the public schools, the group leader immediately stopped her for fear that she might offend the others.
Bursting Our Bubble
For a long time, evangelical churches had lived in a bubble. But the pandemic burst that bubble and exposed our true condition, forcefully proving that dead faith is neither spiritual nor effective. In fact, it’s useless, incapable of effecting change or satisfying hunger.
The pandemic forced Christians to redirect their attention to biblical applications to help them manage the crisis. With many primary sources available online, some Christians began to perceive the dark truth about the virus, shutting down society, and mandatory vaccine shots. They saw the government’s manipulation and lies and wanted to know the Christian way to respond. They hungered for strong leadership to guide them through that difficult time.
However, since pastors had shunned being “political” for so long, and had not lived out their faith through engaging concrete issues in society, they were unprepared to deal with the challenge. Facing the government’s draconian policies and their own apparent lies, most evangelical pastors lacked spiritual discernment, knowing neither how to address the challenge nor how to exert their spiritual authority, much less demonstrating much-needed courage to defend the Church.
There was a reason the expression “God is sovereign and He is in control” became so popular, especially during the pandemic. Following the logic of Gnosticism, its implicit message is that a good Christian should trust God unconditionally, no matter how bad our society has become. We must believe that whatever is happening is His sovereign will. Thus, an evil situation should not concern us. Any worry and concern would demonstrate worldliness, unbelief, and spiritual immaturity.
In the past few years, I’ve heard this expression more often as our society has grown increasingly dark. Many Christians and church leaders threw this around as a readymade response, both to hide their inadequacy to confront the challenge and to preemptively shut off any argument that advocates courageous action to oppose evil. This slogan, in my opinion, has done an enormous disservice to American Christianity.
Woke Weirdness
Left to struggle on their own during the pandemic, many lay people looked elsewhere for spiritual help. No wonder Christians — even unbelievers — flooded, in person or online, to the few churches that had taken a clear stand and courageously resisted the government’s unconstitutional orders. These churches never shut down. One particular church was able to evade the government’s unjust punishment because it had been politically active, supporting local candidates who approved biblical worldviews. During the pandemic, these elected officials in turn helped the church defy the unconstitutional lockdown orders.
This shows that in America, when a church not only teaches the Gospel but also actively lives out its convictions, it becomes effective in defeating dark forces and advancing the Kingdom. These churches were spiritual beacons of light in that dark and confusing period, living out their faith in a tangible way.
Church without politics (as an application of Gnosticism) has also produced another abnormality: woke churches.
When a church is actively engaged in politics, it will reshape its congregation to be either progressively oriented or biblically grounded, but it cannot be both. However, an apolitical church not only tolerates diverse ideologies, but does not see a problem in having a biblically grounded pastor yoked with a woke pastor.
This forces the biblically sound pastor to further avoid politics in order to keep the amalgamated church together. However, eventually either the biblically grounded pastor will surrender to woke ideology or the woke pastor will repent and have a change of heart. My gut feeling is that an apolitical church will gradually become increasingly woke because the progressive Left, both within the church and elsewhere, never practices tolerance. None of the woke pastors themselves are apolitical, but they use “apoliticism” to demand that others in the church remain silent.
Case in Point
On the Sunday after the election, one pastor at a well-known evangelical church in California asked the congregation if anybody needed prayer that morning for discouragement and fear. Apparently, he was expressing his heartfelt despondency over Kamala Harris’s loss. He proceeded to read a portion of a Psalm to offer encouragement.
Many must have wondered why a Bible-believing pastor could feel disappointed about the defeat of an evil platform. What’s wrong with saying no to Harris, the embodiment of the rainbow ideology of diversity? What’s wrong with saying no to pro-choice ideology that promotes killing babies? What’s wrong with saying no to the castration of children in the name of radical gender ideology? What’s wrong with affirming that there are only two sexes and that marriage is between a man and a woman? What’s wrong with the closing the border to stop the flow of illegal drugs and criminals that endanger our citizens? What’s wrong with saying no to child sex trafficking? What’s wrong with deporting violent illegal aliens with criminal records? Why would all these ideas make that pastor feel fearful and unsafe? Whose side was he on?
In this election, it is ironic that many Chinese immigrants who probably haven’t embraced the Christian faith demonstrated a greater degree of moral conscience, courage, and clarity than many Christians, especially pastors. They might not have heard about Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s words: “The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.” But their action has demonstrated that they wholeheartedly embrace that statement.
As God’s image bearers, we all are free agents capable of making moral decisions. However, it’s shocking that our faith kept many from making that decision while the unbelieving Chinese immigrants were able to exercise their free moral agency to choose the good.
The deadly cancer within the evangelical churches — the Gnosticism of faith without works and church without politics — must be removed.
Chenyuan Snider was raised in Communist China and majored in Chinese language and literature in college. After immigrating to the U.S. and studying at Assemblies of God Theological Seminary and Duke Divinity School, she became a professor at Christian colleges and seminary. She and her husband live in northern California and have two grown children.