State of the Church, 2024

Series: New Year MessagesText: Matthew 16:1–3

By: Shaun Marksbury Date: January 7, 2024

Venue: Living Water Baptist ChurchOccasion: PM Service

Introduction

The Pharisees were always trying to find a way to disprove Jesus before others. However, Jesus condemned them for being able to predict weather patterns while remaining ignorant on the times. They should have known not only that the Messianic era was upon them, but that the Messiah was there in front of them!

In 2024, our technology has improved. While meteorologists still can’t predict rain or snow with a great deal of accuracy, they have come a long way. Yet, unfortunately, we haven’t necessarily gotten much better about identifying the moral and cultural climate in which we find ourselves. Scripture explains what we should see, but we don’t always.

As we enter a new year, it’s worth looking back and considering some of the top religion stories of 2023. Most of these stories I reference have been noted in The Christian Post’s lists, an interview with Terry Mattingly on Issues Etc., and some I remember from the year. I’ve tried to highlight some issues we all need to be thinking through for the coming year. As we consider where we have been, we can better understand our times so we can consider what to expect as a church in the new year.

The Changing Culture

If we’ve seen anything in the past few years of social discourse, it’s been the motte and bailey defense of language meant to move culture. For those who haven’t heard of the motte-and-bailey argumentation, you’ve probably seen it. Imagine a castle divided into two parts: 1) the bailey, the lower and more assessable land where work is being done, and 2) the upper motte, the fortified area that’s difficult to attack and more defensible. A person makes a bold and exaggerated claim in the bailey, but when he is attacked, he retreats to the fortified motte, where he proclaims a moderate claim that no one will attack.

We see this in an emerging field, DEI principles (diversity, equity, inclusion). Of course, those words sound like principles we would want to embrace, and that’s the motte. Yet, the bailey includes certain kinds of quotas from marginalized groups, the promotion of critical race theory (that systemic racism and white supremacy exists in society), the devaluation of a merit-based practices, employee training programs where individuals feel targeted for their sex or skin color, etc. When challenged on these issues, however, DEI leaders will retreat to the motte, asking why people are against fair treatment and inclusion of different voices. It can be a frustrating tactic.

Perhaps that is why DEI has become so prominent in the past year. One of the big stories was the realization that banks and organizations are pushing companies to adopt DEI principles (diversity, equity, inclusion). However, in practice, DEI has pushed brands to promote social justice or “woke” agendas that we recognize in advertising and in stores.

For instance, it’s because of DEI that Bud Light beer promoted Dylan Mulvaney on a limited line of cans. He’s a male transgender activist who has been dressing up like a woman on social media. This tanked their sales, but numerous other companies have followed suit.

The ubiquitous nature of this appearing everywhere is what made people notice something was happening behind the scenes. Target, for instance, was promoting these things with our children, selling “tuck friendly” swim suits so that boys can wear girls’ swimwear. Maybelline ran advertisements with a bearded man applying its makeup. Hershey’s chocolate partnered with another man dressed as a woman for International Woman’s Day. Harry’s Razors did something similar, featuring mutilated girls with chest scars, using the razors now on their faces like boys. It was an effort to get popular brands to push the cultural change as normal, in the name of inclusivity.

I don’t present this for the purposes of boycotting but to highlight the inroads of DEI into every aspect of the marketplace. Of course, some companies like Target have been far more open to this. Other companies surprised us by opening a DEI department, like Chick-fil-A. This is also being promoted in churches and Christian institutions, so we will see more professing Christian voices defending it in the name of Christian charity and compassion.

This is something that we will have to consider as we move into the next year, as many of the companies you work for may implement changes which defy logic and Christian truth. If we know that there will be a motte-and-bailey exchange on the subject (“Why are you against helping people?”), we can sidestep that and get back to the practical issues that are concerning. We must prayerfully consider how we will answer so we can do so with truth and love.

Transgenderism

As we continue to see the effects of the sexual revolution in our culture, we aren’t surprised to continue to see transgenderism as a major story in 2023, though it often involved minors. Of course, this has been a big debate for some time, with some falsely claiming that minors were not receiving hormones and surgeries if they wanted to identify as something other than their sex. However, clinics have appeared all over the country, and many of them have been prescribing puberty blockers to young children (which may sterilize them for life), cross-sex hormone injections (which create various other issues, including osteoporosis and mood disorders) and then engaging in surgeries of teens which remove healthy tissue and leave behind unsightly scars and, in many cases, necrotic tissue and oozing wounds. This is done in the motte of caring for confused young people, but the bailey is a field littered with carnage.

Some states like Florida and Georgia have passed laws banning such life-altering acts on children. However, more left-leaning states such as Colorado advertise themselves as havens for such horrific acts. Schools here in Colorado are also bringing in healthcare workers who will promote transitioning to minors. Again, this is done under the guise of “gender affirming care” or simply “healthcare,” so speaking against it is panned as wanting to deny life-saving treatments for young people.

Why is that? There have been many in this demographic who have committed suicide, so the concern is to help them by affirming their confusion. However, the data is showing that people who undergo social transitioning, hormone treatments, and surgical alterations are far more likely to commit suicide than those who are denied it. This is due in part to the terrible effects of their treatments for their rest of their lives, which are often shorter anyway. This is also due to the lack of therapy to see why they feel they feel the need to “change their gender.”

Many of the children who have been subjected to this are now grown and have begun speaking out about their ongoing health issues and the lack of proper therapy. They are known as the detransitioning community or “detrains,” and some are suing healthcare providers for allowing them to undergo such mutilations at young and impressionable ages. We can only hope that their voices get heard and this entire cottage industry ends.

Sadly, as long as this continues, there will be some very angry and confused young people. One of the biggest stories of 2023 was the Covenant School shooting, where a self-identified transgender individual named Audrey Hale broke into a Christian school and killed three children and three adults. We’re still waiting to see the shooter’s full manifesto, but she wasn’t the only transgender or queer-identifying shooter in recent news, such as the Colorado Springs shooter, the Aberdeen shooter, the Denver shooter, and, most recently, the Iowa shooter. We need to consider why these individuals are becoming so violent and murderous, even as they are undergoing affirmations and hormone treatments. We are not helping — we’re hurting them.

So, we will need to pray about this first and foremost. We then need to notify legislators that this is wickedness upon our youth. We also need to let schools know that it is not alright for them to promote this with children, nor is it okay to hide these things from parents. We are still in a representative republic, and we have the right to exercise our first amendment rights within the confines of Christian conversation.

Antisemitism and Theological Clashes

To shift gears, we’ve seen something else. Probably the number one international religious news story was what happened on October 7th — the worst terror attacks in in the nation of Israel’s history, perpetrated by the Palestinian group Hamas. Thousands died as Hamas raped, pillaged, and brutally murdered people at a music festival and along the Israeli border. Oddly enough, protests across the world have broken out against Israel’s defense of itself, promoting Palestinian rhetoric.

This is due in part to antisemitism. Many Muslims and secularists alike have a racist view of Jewish people and have been promoting genocidal statements like, “Hitler was right.” This is while terrorists have continued killing Jews in Israel and others in the West have been harassing them.

Some of this, though, has been placed within the same cultural Marxist parameters of a battle between the oppressors and the oppressed. They incorrectly frame the state of Israel as a colonizer (which is a complete misshaping of history) which oppresses the Muslim Arabs in the region (despite the fact that Muslim Arabs have seats in the Knesset). They also have been told that the chant, “from the river to the sea” simply means justice in the region, ignorant of the genocidal history behind this expression, calling for the erasure of every ethnic Jewish in the region. Hamas continues the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s goal of wiping Israel from the map, but Tik-Tok influencers and media acolytes are saying it’s just about correcting power structures and establishing justice.

What’s surprising is seeing this infiltrating Christian churches. We must reject antisemitism, obviously. We also have to reject neo-Marxist thinking that would cause us to view everything through the lenses of oppression.

Moreover, we also will have to think through the fact that we support a secular state over there which isn’t any better spiritually than we are. Israel does support the same sinful lifestyles America does. Yet, we still believe Israel has the right to exist and to defend itself against terror. We also must understand that many innocent people in Palestine are caught in the crossfire. We pray for peace in the region, which includes repentance among Israeli and Palestinian alike toward Christ.

Anti-Christian Biases in the Government

We also continue to be concerned about the government’s treatment of pro-life individuals. You might remember that, in 2022, before dawn, the FBI raided the home of a pro-life demonstrator by the name of Mark Houck. While Houck was acquitted of charges in 2023, the case opened an investigation into the FBI’s and the DOJ’s anti-pro-life and anti-Catholic stance.

While we are not Catholic, we are concerned that a document classified some Catholics as “radical-traditionalist” on the basis of such factors as being anti-LGBT and anti-immigration. We wouldn’t claim either of those labels, but believing that marriage should only be between a biological male and female and that we should secure our southern border would certainly make some people think we are also radicals in a motte-and-bailey fashion.

We have the right to call out this mistreatment, but we will have to contend with a growing anti-Christian sentiment from within the government as well as culture. We must remember Christ’s words, “blessed are the persecuted.” We’ll also have to remember to bring issues back around to the gospel as graciously as we can.

Theological Drift in Denominations

Another big story in 2023 was the ongoing schism in the United Methodist Church. This has been brewing for a while, as Western, wealthier, mostly white denominations have been demanding the church adopt same-sex weddings and embrace everything on the LGBTQ+ spectrum as good. African and Asian congregations in particular, however, have stood against this progressivist move. Since 2019, 7,600 congregations have left the UMC. It’s interesting that those who are concerned with power structures don’t see white and rich churches trying to force poorer churches in the global south to accept their changes, but that isn’t how the social justice warriors in the church frame it in this case.

Of course, the UMC isn’t the only denomination to have this debate. The church of England, for instance, is pushing for the same thing, creating a rift in that fellowship. Interestingly, before year end, the Vatican issued a document on blessing same-sex unions in opposition to the Catechism of the Catholic Church; we might say that the Catholics have left orthodoxy long ago by abandoning sola scriptura, but that doesn’t explain what is happening in so many of our Protestant denominations.

Other denominations are having the same debate, just decades later. It was a long time ago that the UMC decided to ordain female pastors, but that is the current debate in the SBC. After years of hearing that there are no women pastors in the SBC, many have shown how many SBC churches have been appointing women to various pastoral positions in their churches. The SBC did overwhelming vote to disfellowship Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, but only after Rick Warren appointed a husband-wife team to take over as pastors with his retirement — his church and many others have been hiring women pastors for years. Convention leaders are asking people to not be so narrow in their interpretation of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

Conclusion

Much of this comes down to a combination of errors. There is an infiltration of cultural Marxists views in the church causing people to think there are inequities to correct and power structures to tear down. That’s not to say there aren’t errors to correct — there are. Yet, the inequities people look to are not based on scriptural definitions of righteousness versus injustice, but rather power structures and oppression. Men are seen as oppressing women, so we need women in leadership. Heterosexuals are seen as oppressing homosexuals and transgendered folks, so we need to change practices and beliefs. So, it is not ultimately the Bible which is the basis for what we’re seeing within the church, but the world, and people are trying to create change within the church in the name of God while ignoring His word.

If we have no basis for truth, then we have no foundation from which we can speak to our changing culture. The culture is changing, shifting like the sands of opinion which constantly move. People are looking for something true, but as our culture becomes post-Christian, they understand less and less about truth. They don’t understand why we care about sex and marriage or anything else. They think they are being caring by accepting, for instance, transgenderism in schools, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel, and they have no idea how it’s ruining lives. Others, reacting against this, are self-described as red-pilled and becoming increasingly hateful toward all the woke nonsense in our culture — they are embracing some of the old errors of racism, antisemitism, and the like, not seeing the church resounding with a clear voice on these issues.

We have to be willing to speak the unchanging truth of God’s Word lovingly, explaining why the way of God is the best path for human flourishing, kindness, and justice. We will have to walk that line in not touting salvation in any political party or candidate this year while also demonstrating why the platform of the Democratic party is causing more harm than good. We have to show that the sexual revolution and Marxist ideologies are not the liberators people view them as, and that true liberty only comes in Jesus Christ.