"I am astonished that you are so readily departing from Him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different message". Galatians 1:6.
Some entries are hard to make, because they must cause us to face some hard truths. This is a consideration that certainly falls into that category.
You may have watched the recent discussion on the Unbelievable page which presented the differences between Christians in regards to how the church responded in the last few years to the requirements imposed during the pandemic.
John Stevens of the FIEC seeks to maintain that the closure/containment response was proper and that Christians who questioned or rejected such measures were wrong - the 'Romans 13' argument was the only way to go.
That all sounds good until you begin to examine the actual consequences of churches adopting this 'sound' policy.
In a shocking piece for the Brownstone Institute this week, Sarah Hinckleigh Wilson seeks to lift the veil on the profound damage these mandates have caused.
She writes: "I don’t have any reason to think that the architects behind the lockdowns were looking to destroy religious life per se, but they couldn’t have come up with a more sneakily effective way to do it. They manipulated clergy into becoming voluntary enforcers. They got church members to turn on each other and their pastors. Some members ended up leaving for other churches, but many left for no church at all. Likewise, pastors have been peeling out of the ministry in unprecedented numbers.
Even with the overall decline in church membership in America, there are now nowhere near enough clergy to fill all the congregations in need.
I am distressed enough about this for the church’s own sake. But the ramifications are wider still.
The lockdowns have been marvelously effective, not at stopping the spread of Covid, but at accelerating the breakdown of civil society. It is beyond dispute that robust civil institutions existing apart from and without reference to the state are what prevent the state from becoming authoritarian and ultimately totalitarian.
The "compassion-hacking" of American churches did not in itself save anyone’s life, but it did help to break down another civil-society barrier standing in the way of governmental totalisation. As Hannah Arendt warned us, authoritarian and totalitarian schemes do not work without mass buy-in from the constituency. Buy-in requires people to be isolated, lonely, atomized, and stripped of all meaning. So if you wanted to advance the authoritarian cause in America, from the left or from the right, you could hardly do better than breaking the back of the churches first—the very communities that exist first and foremost for the lost and lonely.
It grieves me how many churches offered up their backs for the breaking, sincerely convinced that they were doing the right thing for the good of their neighbours, even while abandoning these very same neighbours.
Jesus exhorted us to love our neighbors and our enemies, to stand beyond reproach, and to be as innocent as doves, but he also taught us that there’s a time to be as cunning as serpents, to withhold our pearls from swine, and to keep sharp eyes open for "wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing".
The great tragedy in all of this is just how right these observations are.
The decline actually commenced prior to the pandemic, with fewer churches opening in America, for example, than were closing, but the lockdown process caused this to escalate at a massive rate, many churches encountering a reduction of up to 50% in congregation strength, whilst many smaller companies have never re-opened.
This hard reality is troubling enough, but it is accompanied by the fact that the 'containment' of public worship and Christian expression was substituted by people becoming almost entirely dependent for some period on "e-church" to seek to address their spiritual needs. This has actually been merited and encouraged in some quarters as a way forward, but all of this has played entirely into the arena of social "safety" (control) in respects to what can be said and done.
So here we are, far more disrupted, dispersed and destitute than if actual and obvious persecution had broken out - that, no doubt, is yet to come.
What brings about such a comprehensive failure?
Why did so many choose to merely cave-in to the supposed 'reasonableness' of the strictures without any objection, at least until very late in the day?
In a superb analysis of the tragedy of his own time, Christian theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer shows us exactly what occurs in these situations.
When we trade our birth right for a socio-political 'mess of pottage' that brings no peace or safety, no remedy to our ills but merely compounds them, then we have truly dis-inherited ourselves.
The greatest tragedy of all, no doubt, is that even now, the stupidity prevails, and many congregations are of the mind-set that they can merely 'get past' all the barbs that have so wounded the faithful, leaving the present to hide any remaining scars, but you cannot remove vital organs and expect the patient to continue as before.
Enormous harm has been caused to the Christian church in the West, and the awful truth is that what has been established in that endeavour may well proceed in the near future to return in other forms to finish what has been started... what will the 'leaders' of these companies do then?
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