John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg (1746-1807) was a 30-year-old pastor and a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. In 1775, Muhlenberg preached a message on the Christian’s responsibility to be involved in securing freedom for America. The text for his sermon came from the book of Ecclesiastes 3:1. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” He closed his message by saying: “In the language of the Holy Writ, there is a time for all things. There is a time to preach and a time to fight. And now is the time to fight.”
Thereafter, he threw off his clerical robes and revealed the uniform of an officer in the Revolutionary Army. That same afternoon, he and 300 men marched to join General George Washington and his troops. Muhlenberg became the Colonel of the 8th Virginia Regiment where he served to the end of the war, during which he was promoted to the rank of Major General.[1]
Muhlenberg’s Regiment was just one of many formed by pastors from across the colonies who arose and lead their congregations into the battle for freedom. Unlike today, the church during the revolutionary era served as the center-point for political debate and discussion on the relevant news of the day. Today’s church leaders have all but lost that concept of leading their congregations in a Godly manner in all aspects of their worldly existence and are afraid to speak out against the progressive agenda that has dominated our political system for the past century. The Church and God himself has been under assault, marginalized, and diminished by the progressives, secularists and socialists/Marxists, from both within and without the Church. It is time for church leaders and laypeople to stand up for our Lord and Savior and to protect the freedoms and liberties granted to a moral people in the divinely inspired US Constitution.
In his book Letter to the American Church, Eric Metaxas identifies several reasons—and excuses—for the silence of many pastors and Christian leaders in American evangelical churches. One of those reasons goes as follows:
The American Christians of our time have taken to using the term “the Gospel” in a new way, as though by doing this they hope to set religious and theological issues apart from all else, as though this were possible. And so now, when may American church leaders shrink from taking a particular stand, they often say that they are doing so “for the sake of the Gospel” that we will not contest these things. They say, that we will assiduously avoid taking sides in these terribly divisive “culture wars,” and will even more assiduously avoid being identified with any political party or candidate is manifestly out of bounds.[2]
This attitude or mindset has infiltrated even some of the most stalwart Christian evangelical denominations over the last 100 years. I wrote of one such denomination in Culturewarrior.net on February 23, 2024.
On February 7-8, 2024, one thousand Assemblies of God pastors gathered at the “1000+ AG Lead Pastor Connect” conference in Miami, Florida. This gathering was designed for lead pastors from the largest one thousand churches among the thirteen thousand plus AG churches in the United States. John Maxwell was the featured speaker, and the core of his message to the pastors was “to avoid politics, because it is polarizing.” Maxwell’s message created a firestorm among the faithful inside and outside of the denomination.[3]
At least one Assemblies of God pastor took Maxwell’s message to heart. In a recent sermon he spoke of the blasphemous portrayal of da Vinci’s iconic painting of the Last Supper with live performers in drag clothing representing Christ and His disciples. The scene was viewed by a worldwide audience during the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Olympics. The following is the pastor’s recommended response to the blasphemy:
Here’s what we need to do in my opinion as believers. We need to pray that light will show from heaven. We can get mad and we can raise a fist and shake it, and there are some things that make us mad. And I don’t have any problem with getting mad about stuff. That’s okay, but the solution is not found in our anger. The solution is found in our prayers. (emphasis added)
In other words, according to this Assemblies of God pastor, we are to remain silent (except in our prayers) and not speak out or take action.
However, Erwin Lutzer implores Christians to be bold, speak out, and take action in the face of evil.
“Whether in Nazi Germany or America, believers cannot choose to remain silent under the guise of preaching the Gospel…we must live out the implications of the cross in every area of our lives. We must be prepared to submit to the Lordship of Christ in all ‘spheres’.”[4]
Yet, as we live out the implications of the cross in every area of our lives, we must understand that the culture wars in which we soldier for Christ are not about maintaining the American dream however one may define it. Rather, the culture wars are about restoring the biblical understanding of truth in all spheres of our national life. To do so one must speak the truth in the face of lies, stand on biblical principles when others compromise, and take right actions in spite of consequences. A hostile culture, an adversarial government, and a culpable legal system will extract a price from those that dare to oppose them. What is accomplished by such opposition when it seemingly brings only hardship, suffering, and defeat? “Suffering communicates the gospel in a new language; it authenticates the syllables that flow from our lips…It is not how loud we can shout but how well we can suffer that will convince the world of the integrity of our message.”[5]
What would the giants of the Christian faith have to say about silence and inaction “for the sake of the gospel”?
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) – His background, experiences, and powerful words in defense of truth speaks far louder than the din of lies shouted by egalitarianism’s Ministry of Truth and its toadies including spineless politicians, the corrupt media, universities in name only, complicit mega-corporation billionaires, ranting Hollywood leftists, self-proclaimed “intellectuals,” and many corrupt voices and false teachers in the church. Solzhenitsyn wrote:,
In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it (evil) will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers . . . we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.
The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.[6]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) – Bonhoeffer knew well the cost of silence in the church when faced with evil in the public square. His ardent faith and boldness in confronting evil cost him his life by hanging on the personal orders of Adolf Hitler. He called silence when faced with evil what it was…sin.
We have been silent witness of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open…Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?[7]
Silence in the face of evil is itself evil, God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.[8]
Franklin Graham – Graham said, “Those who are afraid to address moral issues are no better than those who commit transgressions.”[9] The truth of his powerful words is confirmed in Revelation 21:8, “But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” (emphasis added) [NKJV] In his commentary on this verse, In his commentary, Donald Stamps describes the ultimate destination of the cowardly.
The “cowardly” are those who lack faith in God and who fear the disapproval and threat of people more than they value loyalty to Christ and the truth of his Word. Their personal security and status among others on earth mean more to him than faithfulness to God. The “cowardly” include the compromisers among God’s people who give up the spiritual light and do not overcome evil.[10]
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) – The following quote is often attributed to King, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.”
However, the quote appears to be a paraphrase of a more complex thought he uttered during a sermon in Selma, Alabama, on March 8, 1965, the day after “Bloody Sunday,” on which civil rights protesters were attacked and beaten by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
“Deep down in our non-violent creed is the conviction there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they’re worth dying for…The cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit…A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.”[11]
Eric Metaxas – In his 2022 book, Letter to the American Church, Metaxas captures the essence of how the church has become silent in the face of evil.
…those who behave as though there is really nothing to worry about, who seem to think—as such prominent pastors as Andy Stanley and others do—that we ought to assiduously avoid fighting these threats and be “apolitical” are tragically mistaken, are burying their heads in the sand and exhorting others to do the same …Do we not realize that no good ever can come of such silence and inaction, that human beings whom God loves suffer when His own people fail to express boldly what He has said and why they fail to live as He has called them to live?[12]
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] William J. Federer, America’s God and Country, (Coppell, Texas: FAME Publishing, Inc. 1996), p. 460.
[2] Eric Metaxas, Letter to the American Church, (Washington, D.C.: Salem Books, 2022), pp. 10-11.
[3] Larry G. Johnson, “Silence in the Face of Evil-The Modern American Evangelical Church,” Culturewarrior.net, 2-23-2024, https://www.culturewarrior.net/silence-in-the-face-of-evil-the-modern-american-evangelical-church/
[4] Erwin Lutzer, When a Nation Forgets God, (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Publishers, 2010), p. 33.
[5] Ibid., pp. 120-121.
[6] Solzhenitsyn, AZ Quotes. https://www.azquotes.com/
[7] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Letters and Papers from Prison Quotes,” goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1153999-widerstand-und-ergebung-briefe-und-aufzeichnungen-aus-der-haft (accessed June 29, 2018 (accessed June 29, 2018).
[8] 20 Influential Quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” Crosswalk.com. https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/spiritual-life/inspiring-quotes/20-influential-quotes-by-dietrich-bonhoeffer.html (accessed June 29,
2018).
[9] Mario Marilla, “Politics in the Pulpit?” Mario Marillo Ministries, February 12, 2024. https://mariomurillo.org/2024/02/12/is-he-right/ (accessed 2-22-2024).
[10] Donald Stamps, Commentary on Revelation 21:8, Fire Bible: Global Study Edition, New International Version, Gen. Ed. Donald Stamps, (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC,
Copyright 2009 by Life Publishers International, Springfield, Missouri), p. 2565.
[11] “Did MLK Say ‘Our Lives Begin to End the Day We Become Silent’?” Snopes, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mlk-our-lives-begin-to-end/#:~:text=Similarly%2C King never uttered the statement%2C “Our lives,every year on Martin Luther King%2C Jr. Day%3A (accessed 8-4-2024).
[12] Metaxas, Letter to the American Church, p. 51.
