Evangelical Idolatry

I’ve been going through a dilemma.

The question on my mind is this: How do I talk about my book with people who don’t know me all that well?

Or, more to the point: What do I say about my book when I know it’s content is likely to offend the person I’m talking to?

This has been my dilemma since moving to Upland, Indiana and joining a church where I’m not the pastor. Jen and I have joined a church, joined a small group in the church, I meet regularly with the pastors of the church, and we have been investing in relationships with people in this church. Many of them know that I’m under contract to publish a book, and many of them are interested in the content of the book.

But I don’t know what to say about it or how to talk about it because the book contains the thoughts that lost me many friends.

At the same time, I’ve had to write a number of summary statements about the book. Both when I was pitching the book to publishers and now after getting the contract, I’ve had to write a number of “summaries” and “descriptions” and “synopses” so the publishers and marketing teams know how to position the book.

Here are some of the things I’ve sent them:

There are idols embedded in the evangelical church. These idols have empowered the evangelical church to deny science, ignore racism, and embrace the conservative political agenda in contrast to the true gospel and to the detriment of our witness. However, I and other pastors like me are guilty of perpetuating the worship of those idols.

It was all from good intentions; we didn’t mean to establish idols. But we uncritically merged Biblical truth, American values, evangelical traditions, and an evangelical subculture into an amalgam where discerning the difference between what was true doctrine and what was idolatry became almost impossible. As a result, we built congregations of poorly discipled people who worship the wrong things, fear the wrong things, and fail to model the life of Christ.

I’m a pastor who is complicit both by teaching and by silence, but distance has given me new eyes to see where these idols come from and how they function. I’m on a journey to not only recover from them but to help other pastors and laypeople dismantle them in their own lives and perhaps prod the evangelical church in America to get back to living out the good news of Christ.

Here’s another thing I’ve written about it:

For 17 years, I led my church without a partisan bent, but whenever I said anything, it was decidedly conservative largely because I knew saying anything that sounded like a Democrat would offend my congregation. As a result, people got the idea I was just as conservative as they, but in 2020 when I took a stand that COVID was real, that Donald Trump was immoral, that racism was real, that vaccines weren’t the Mark of the Beast, etc. people left my church feeling that I had changed or that I had betrayed them. We lost 80% of our congregation during the summer of 2020.

Brokenhearted, I couldn’t understand why my church was filled with people whose faithfulness to Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Republican party outstripped faithfulness to me, their church, or the character of Christ. I wasn’t alone, but I felt alone. Reporting shows that countless pastors felt as alone as I but we all had nowhere to turn and no framework for understanding what was going on. After years of reflection, I’ve come to realize that I was part of the problem. My teaching actually contributed to the evangelical idolatry of our day. I needed to say something, but I had to confess my complicity first.

This book is my confession, and then my call for other pastors and church people to step away from misunderstandings and misapplications of Scripture, to tear down the idols of partisanship, divisiveness, pride, and their theological justifications, and to return to living like Jesus.

There are many pastors and laypeople whose hearts are broken over the condition of the evangelical church in America. They know something is wrong but they can’t tell what is wrong. These people, both pastors and laypeople, need a framework for understanding and talking about the issues they feel. What’s more, they need the perspective of someone who has begun to see differently after nearly 50 years in the evangelical church world, 20 years as an evangelical pastor and 7 years of formal training in evangelical institutions. That is the perspective I bring to the table.

Just today, Jen and I were meeting with one of the elders of the church where we are now members, and he asked me what my book was about. I hesitated. I didn’t want to give the full answer, and I told him so. I said, “I’m just developing a relationship with this church and with you, and I don’t want to say anything that will jeopardize that relationship. My book has some things that are potentially offensive and my heart is to open dialogue rather than put off, so I’m hesitant to talk too much about it just yet.”

Nevertheless, I need to get serious about finding a way to talk about these things.

This blog post is a bit of a first pass at that.

The book is all about the idols embedded in evangelical doctrine and perpetuated by pastors like me. Through things I said and things I left unsaid, I gave people in my congregation the opportunity to think that Christianity was deeply linked to things that had nothing to do with Christ.

For example, in sermons about loving your neighbor, I talked about how “love” can sometimes be “tough” but I avoided all applications that might have sounded liberal. In sermons about sharing your faith, I focused on teaching “truth” more than washing someone’s feet or laying down your life. In sermons about the unity of the body of Christ, I ignorantly avoided all talk about the vast gulf between the experiences of white Christians and Black Christians in this same country. In sermons about the beauty and wisdom of God displayed in creation, I carefully avoided any real encouragement toward climate action and was cautious in my approval of scientific disciplines. In many ways, I gave my congregation the impression that Christianity and political conservatism were compatible if not equivalent belief systems.

Much like Aaron standing before an unruly crowd, I asked people to give me their gold, and I gave them a poor representation of the image of God.

The book is me going into detail regarding just a few of the idols I helped to build up in the lives of the people in my church. It’s an exploration of my evangelical education, the doctrines I taught, the doctrines I avoided, and the misunderstandings I held for too long myself.

The book is also me describing in detail why a number of things evangelical Christians hold onto are really just false idols.

I am 100% certain that some people will read the book and conclude…

• that I am “woke”
• that I am falling for the “religion of the culture”
• that I am “watering down the gospel”
• or even that I’m a heretic.

And that’s what makes me nervous about the whole endeavor.

I’ve been convinced for 4 years now that there are idols in evangelicalism that need to be torn down.

I’ve been convinced for 2 years now that these idols must be called out by name and brought out into the open.

I’ve been convinced for 1 year now that I (and pastors like me) are largely to blame for the problem.

If we can recognize our failure and start tearing down the idols, I think God will bless the endeavor. But I’m nervous about the road ahead.