Is a Christian ghetto in our future?

Maintaining a Christian witness in an increasingly pagan culture.

by Ken Patrick

Before we begin, let me talk about my qualifications to divine the future: I’m not a prophet; I don’t have a “word from the Lord” in the sense that I’m about to share any divinely sourced revelation with you; God didn’t appear to me in a dream.

What I’m going to share are simply observations on what may come to pass if current trends continue, and what I would do if I were in charge. If you find yourself disagreeing with what I say, hopefully you’ll stay until I’m finished. We’ll have a Q&A session where you can ask a question, and of course you can pigeon-hole me afterward.

So, to answer my own question right up front—is there a Christian ghetto in our future?—I think the most likely answer is “of course, yes” at least in an intellectual sense and perhaps in a real, physical way as well. I think it’s very possible that we’ll see both. Before I begin describing what these Christian “ghetto” scenarios might look like, let’s establish why many of us think…

there’s a ghetto in our future in the first place.

The original thirteen British colonies that became the USA were founded largely by Christians, whether cultural or truly devout, and most of them were of the Protestant persuasion. As the thirteen colonies formed themselves into a continental union, they developed a shared belief in the importance of defending the right of religious pluralism. This shared belief was eventually enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights attached to the Constitution.

Funny thing about religious liberty, though; it turns out that, as a basic human right, religious liberty is only important to religious people—and perhaps more pointedly, it’s really only important to Protestants or religious minorities. Historically, neither the Roman church nor the Orthodox Church have ever been champions of religious liberty or any form of religious pluralism (until they were religious minorities themselves). Freedom of religion as a principle of liberty originated in Protestant countries, and it was Protestant majorities who protected it by force of law—which makes sense given the factious and fractious nature of Protestantism. But when Protestantism goes sour, the principles it holds dear go too, and so it is with our First Amendment Freedoms—whether it be speech, religion or assembly—all of which are important to the Protestant project.

So what happened to religious liberty as a principle? It’s being pushed aside by another “liberty” whose adherents are apparently a bit more committed to their cause than we are.

What is this competing liberty?

Al Mohler has coined the phrase “erotic liberty”—defined as the freedom/right to pursue whatever sexual inclination one has in mind without legal restriction; and perhaps more importantly, without any societal opprobrium whatsoever. Erotic liberty is replacing religious liberty as one of, if not the, first freedom; within two generations it has become the paramount civil right that commands all others. It is the one right that rules them all (and in the darkness binds them…) As the principle of erotic liberty is now firmly established within our culture, any attempts to restrict libidinous license are challenged as a civil rights violation. It’s now common for the erotic liberty crowd to label calls for public restrictions on sexual license as violating civil rights (e.g. the fight over gay marriage), but even now, we’re seeing private actions being labeled as potential civil rights violations as well (e.g. the right of pastors to counsel same-sex attracted individuals to refrain from sin).

Do you grasp what’s happening? By framing erotic liberty as the essential human right, one that we’ve creatively found protection for within the Constitution, anyone who opposes it is a threat to the Republic and the freedom for which it stands! “Hate speech”—which is now any speech that denigrates, devalues or denies the goodness of someone’s sinful choices—becomes the unforgivable sin. Your Christian convictions aren’t only superstitious and false, they’re actually a threat to the public good; adhering to the Ten Commandments makes you a public nuisance and unpatriotic. It doesn’t matter how much you “love” your country; wrapping yourself more tightly in the flag isn’t going to make you any more acceptable in the sight of the growing mass of Americans who see your values as antithetical to the values of the republic.

And, oddly enough, if you weren’t already struck by the number of parallels between the Roman Empire and our own Federal behemoth (things like burgeoning religious pluralism, increasing sexual deviancy, growing emphasis on pursuing pleasure vs. embracing responsibility, etc.), you should know that Imperial Rome did not persecute Christians because they loved Jesus and wanted forgiveness from their sins and to enjoy eternal life in the presence of the Creator. Who could argue with that? They persecuted Christians because Christians were viewed as a threat to the Roman state, to the Pax Romana. They were deemed unpatriotic because they didn’t honor the pantheon of gods that had made Rome great. If the Romans allowed Christianity to flourish, the gods would withdraw their favor and calamity would befall Rome. Because Christians said Jesus—not Caesar—was the King of Kings, they were branded enemies of the state, and this despite copious evidence to the contrary from their own governors.

So your Christian convictions regarding sin, sexual sin in particular, make you quite unsuitable for participation in an open, progressive democratic republic. You are a threat to the pursuit of unfettered license and thus you are a public nuisance worthy of re-education, at best; but more likely, attempted eradication. Remember that, for the last 2,000 years, the kinds of behavior we now openly celebrate were considered criminal offenses (and some capital crimes). The sexual revolutionaries know what’s at stake; they don’t want to go back into the closet or to jail or to the gallows. So when we talk about a ghetto, we mean that the people and government of the United States want to limit our influence. They will do so first by marginalizing us within the public square; and once they have denied us any popular influence, they will seek to re-educate us so we become good citizens in their new mold.

We must understand that the sexual revolution that seeks to place erotic liberty as the true “first freedom” is, by definition, a popular rebellion against God. This isn’t just being crammed down our throats by elites. As a people, we demand bread and circuses, entertainment ad nauseum and continuous pursuit of ruinous lifestyles—and no one has the right to tell us, red-blooded Americans, any different. As a people, down deep we want this, and we’ve proven it in our high divorce rates, our skyrocketing illegitimate birth rates, our pervasive addiction to pornography, and the continuous coarsening of our entertainment culture.

If you think the recent election of Donald Trump is going to stop the sexual revolution, two words: “you’re wrong.” It’s possible that a new administration and balance of power may grant us a reprieve from the current pace of the revolution, but it does nothing to change the fundamentals of our situation. The president-elect is twice unlawfully divorced; he is unrepentant and proud of his many adulteries and fornications; he boasts of his desire to cuckold other men; and he looks at your daughters with a lascivious eye. Mr. Trump didn’t get elected to turn back the tide against the sexual revolutionaries; he’s one of them! Who among us thinks Donald Trump would respond to a prophetic rebuke of his sexual sin or abuse of power as David responded to the prophet Nathan? Who among us would want to be the prophet delivering that message? Far more likely than it being received with repentance (he’s said he’s not done anything worthy of repentance), we would hear the Donald’s famous words “You’re fired!” Don’t take this as a rebuke of the vote you cast; I held my nose and voted for the man for pragmatic reasons. But be assured that, while President-elect Trump may provide some welcome protection for the Church, he doesn’t remove the threat.

So let’s get to my predictions. What does our ghetto look like?

Let’s examine three different areas: church, businesses, & education.

1. What will happen to our churches?
   1. Antagonistic public leaders will continue to reframe our historic religious liberty as a “right to worship.” The right to worship is an intentional misnomer that emasculates the robust religious liberty we’ve enjoyed for centuries. Don’t be fooled into thinking they’re the same thing. Changing freedom of religion to “freedom to worship” narrows the scope of the liberty to what you do inside the walls of your church sanctuary—and eventually to just within your own mind. This new phrase is their attempt at marginalizing freedom of religion.
   2. Depending on where you are in the country, churches are likely to witness upticks in vandalism and public displays of displeasure. If you don’t believe this, revisit what happened in San Francisco in the early 80’s & 90’s when an OPC church (Rev. Charles McIlhenny) terminated a musician because he was an active homosexual. That was 30 years ago. Since then, outspoken faithfulness to Christian orthodoxy has been muted in the Bay Area. This sort of persecution will likely start popping up in other areas as well, especially the coastal “blue” regions of the country.
   3. Churches that remain true to biblical principles will be made to pay—literally—for challenging the erotic liberty consensus.
      1. Churches who limit hiring pastors or other personnel to persons who actually hold to that church’s doctrinal standards will be guilty of discrimination; preaching that the pursuit of erotic liberty is a sin, calling for repentance of it, and disciplining the obstinate will be deemed hate speech. So envision a Sunday morning where you read from Leviticus where sodomy is named an “abomination,” or you read Romans 1. The simple public pronouncement of these verses has been deemed hate speech in some contexts. If you have a visitor, they could report you to a local Human Rights commission (all the rage in NYC) who could then rule you guilty of a hate speech crime. Penalties could be fines; it could mean a loss of tax-exempt status; it could lead to zoning battles, inspection issues, etc. If local municipalities determine they don’t want “purveyors of hate” to find homes within their jurisdictions easily, they will try to make life miserable for you. Think about NYC or Chicago trying to keep Chick-fil-A out of their cities. Of course, it will be easy enough to avoid this persecution: you just need to worship the emperor, publicly stating that you disavow Christian orthodoxy with regard to erotic liberty.
      2. Perhaps even more insidiously, Churches will come under increasing attacks by members of their own flocks. They will be sued by folks who have been disciplined for embracing erotic liberty. If Church discipline is deemed hate speech, declaring it defamatory and worthy of monetary damages will be close upon its heels. Insurers will make a couple of large payments and they’ll exit the Church liability business. Churches will then be responsible for paying monetary damages on their own, and the penalties could extend to the pastors, elders and deacons, personally; This could lead to economic ruin and bankruptcy.
   4. To follow on that last point about members of our congregations, we’re going to see continuing apostatizing on the part of Christians. It’s been going on for a while. Most recently we’ve seen Janet Hatmaker & Nicholas Wolterstorff capitulate, and the trend will likely increase. Some will surrender wholesale, embracing their epiphany with regards to love and same-sex unions. The betrayal of others will be more subtle; we’ll hear lots of talk about “social justice”, about “sex-trafficking,” and maybe a little about abortion, but there won’t be direct confrontation of erotic liberty. Pastors who desire cultural influence will self-censor. There will be fewer orthodox churches, fewer self-sacrificing pastors, fewer stalwart sessions, and fewer pious parishioners. Faithlessness and unbelief will sift us.
   5. As the pressure of capitulating to a culture of erotic liberty intensifies, the distinctiveness of our denominationally-driven Protestant landscape will fade. Our theological distinctives will lose importance in the face of the broad assault on biblical doctrines of sexuality. To withstand this onslaught, I think it very possible that God will take the “5,000” who’ve refused to bend their knee and will remake a unified Church that is more centered within smaller geographic regions and local communities where we’re more likely to find fellowship with congregations who are like-minded on biblical sexuality and anthropology. This rather than finding sustaining unity in the more finely wrought denominational doctrines. And—I know this is heretical coming from a self-proclaimed Presbyterian—I think we’re likely to gravitate to an episcopal system of church government as like-minded, Trinitarian, bible-believing Christians band together, and in that unity will possibly elect a spokesman who I think could morph into a metropolitan bishop of sorts… which may not be a bad thing. Just a thought.
2. So what about the world outside of churches? In a society that increasingly relies on credentialing and licensure, Christians in the professional services and academia will be forced to either subscribe to speech and behavior codes, and thereby deny their faith publicly, or risk the forfeiture of their credentials and positions.
   1. Of course this has been commonplace in higher education for at least a century, with increasing momentum in the last 40-50 years resulting in a vitriolic spike in the last two to three. Unless you are teaching at an actively and deliberately conservative institution, there will be no room for you to advance a career, if you’re fortunate enough to begin one; conservatives in today’s state universities and elite private institutions are largely there incognito. And notice, I did not refer to “Christian” institutions as potential safe harbors for godly academics; sadly, “Christian” means virtually nothing as an appellation in the university discussion. We are seeing a tremendous erosion of commitments to biblical orthodoxy in historically Christian colleges, and much of this stems from Christian college personnel, administrative or scholarly, who are desperate for the approval and approbation of their secular counterparts. They want the glories of advanced degrees, they want the prestige of the secular academy’s approval; and in the process, they have been gelded. So the sexual revolution has come to many evangelical campuses, typically arriving within the guise of the heresies of feminism and egalitarianism, then spreading to the acceptance and eventual embrace of deviant behavior. Calvin College in Grand Rapids would be a prime example. And not to put all the blame on the faculty, a lot of colleges are wavering on commitments to biblical orthodoxy because they’re facing increasing pressure from their own ostensibly evangelical student bodies—their students who are the poorly-discipled products of an evangelical church that has no good news left to share. For too long, these students have had their bellies filled with therapeutic Pablum.
   2. But it’s not just the colleges & universities: if you’re a Christian public school teacher, unless you’re willing to lose your job, it’s difficult to see how you’ll have any other choice but to go along with the sexual revolution. While the presssures may not occur in your daily math class, there’ll be that special assembly where you’ll be expected to encourage your pupils to explore their perhaps confused feelings on sexuality, and you will be forbidden to alert their parents. More broadly, you won’t be able to call the children in your class “boys and girls”; you’ll have to go along with the gender-indoctrination of the masses. And there will be other tests. If our culture is going to insist on having government funded schools, then it is probably a good thing to have Christian adults represented there. But remember the warning of our Lord in Luke 17: “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.”
   3. How about the medical profession—anyone in any medical field: maintaining an orthodox Christian position on sexuality, on life issues, on sin, will cause you to be targeted. Orthodox Christian understandings of humanity don’t jive with the current therapeutic culture, and your insistence that sin and a fallen world are the root causes of many, if not all, pathologies will mean you are not intellectually fit to practice in your chosen field. If you refuse to provide marital counseling to sodomites or lesbians, if you don’t support and encourage transgender surgery for that six-year-old girl who would rather be a boy, if you refuse to go along with the growing movement to categorize pedophilia as a normal expression of sexuality, you won’t be allowed to be a psychologist or psychiatrist. You won’t be able to practice basic medicine as a physician or nurse. You’ll be required to perform that abortion or assist in that suicide as well. Unless you’re willing to dispense abortifacients (and who knows what else down the road), you won’t be able to run that cash-cow pharmacy, either. If their perceived to be hindering someone else’s pursuit of erotic liberty, your religious scruples will afford you no protection
   4. What about lawyers? The ABA has already said it wants to make subscription to the reigning orthodoxies of madness a requirement to maintain one’s license to practice law, and that refusal will be considered discrimination. If Christian lawyers don’t have a law license, they can’t practice law.
   5. What about you managers comfortably ensconced within large American corporations? Does your company actively push “diversity” training on its managers and employees?( I worked for one that now does.) The corporate world used to emphasize “tolerance,” but now “tolerance” is being discarded as insufficiently enthusiastic. In fact tolerance is downright cowardly. We don’t just tolerate “diverse” employees; a just work environment where they can flourish requires that we embrace their lifestyles. Modern HR departments are like the gestapo or the Communist Party political officers who had the assignment of assuring that all persons in all units were thinking the right thoughts. So, as a manager, your HR representative will tell you that you are responsible, not only for preaching the gospel of gay marriage, but promoting the celebration of transgenderism and making sure that any of your female employees who are offended by the new all-inclusive bathrooms understand that if they make waves about it, they will be reprimanded or terminated. All of this will be done to avoid potential discrimination lawsuits within the workplace and to placate potential consumers.
   6. Some of you still believe big business is the heart of what it means to be a patriotic American…baseball, apple pie, Chevrolet…big capitalism represents all that’s good with America. But remember who killed the Indiana RFRA in 2015? It wasn’t the wicked liberal Dems or the ACLU. It was big business threatening to pull their operations, their business, and their events from Indiana. This is what caused the Indiana legislature and our VP-elect Mike Pence to withdraw their feeble attempt at a statewide protection of religious liberty. Big business is not the friend of the Church. And perhaps one more observation: I said earlier that the sexual revolution is a popular revolt. The fact that American businesses have recognized this before most pastors or Christian intellectuals have is telling about who is actually in touch with the common man. Big business is about profit; and what line do we all know? “Sex sells.” Big businesses wouldn’t cater to the sexual revolutionaries if they thought they’d lose market share by doing so. They cater because their own market research indicates joining the revolution will get them new customers. With this in mind, expect a continuing coarsening of public advertising; it can and likely will get much worse. [Pompeii as an example?]
   7. Interestingly, the big corporations have begun to insist that their customers buy into their sexually revolutionary agendas. Witness the recent actions taken by AirBnb where they’ve stipulated that, if you want to rent a room using their service, you must sign a statement that says you support their progressive sexual commitments. As Rod Dreher puts it: “So, let’s get this straight: the state can force a florist to arrange flowers for a same-sex wedding, in violation of her religious beliefs. And if this Airbnb policy is legal, a homestay network can force its customers to affirm certain beliefs to have the ability to purchase its service. Crazy times.” Crazy indeed and who knows what other corporations may be planning to do. [And I’ll admit, this one threw me for a loop.]

What if we Christians stay outside of the professions or major corporations? Won’t we have some freedom to live and work within the dictates of Scripture?

1. Maybe, but that too will be increasingly difficult.
   1. If you’re a tradesman, your future license may depend on your willingness to conform. It is more difficult for the society at large to police the smaller members, and so this is one area of making a livelihood about which I am less pessimistic.
   2. Small business owners who are suppliers or contractors to larger entities will likely have to demonstrate that they are complicit with the sexual revolution; that they’re socially acceptable. This will especially be true if you’re bidding on public projects; you’re HR policies will have to conform in order to be eligible to bid.
   3. The recent persecution of Christian photographers, bakers, and pizzeria owners should be enough for you to think that small businesses will not be immune to public pressure and potential ruin.
2. Next, what about the future of Christian education? Will it be abolished?
   1. I don’t predict that it will be abolished, but rather that in several devious ways it will be co-opted.
      1. First, the elite institutions (and the not-so-elite) could decline to admit students who have high-school diplomas from conservative Christian institutions. I wonder what that will do to upwardly-mobile parents who send their children to prestigious Christian schools and academies that work to get their students admitted to the “best” schools?
      2. Couple this with the likelihood that large corporations and government agencies will discontinue recruiting at orthodox Christian schools. Suddenly, degrees from small, culturally defiant Christian colleges that charged students $40k a year won’t be worth the paper they’re printed on. These schools won’t be able to provide a degree that is marketable within the American business community. And what an awful spiral this will lead to:
         1. Small Christian college maintains orthodoxy.
         2. Small Christian college loses its accreditation.
         3. Small Christian college loses federal loans for tuition.
         4. Family of student at small Christian College can’t afford outrageous tuition, can’t get ridiculous loan (and even if they could, what’s the degree worth now?).
         5. Small Christian College goes out business and the country says “good riddance. (In terms of maintaining their ability to survive the loss of federal funding, the smart Christian colleges—and Cedarville is one example—are already preparing for this contingency. But at this point, it’s hard to see how they avoid the public stigma that dramatically reduces the value of their degrees.)
      3. At the local level, in order to maintain their accreditation, Christian primary and secondary schools will have to show that their curriculum meets state standards. As long as you are teaching what the government thinks you should teach (take human sexuality as one example), you’ll be able to retain your operating credentials. But if you don’t, you’ll lose your accreditation. And if the state withholds your accreditation, how big a step is it to say that, if you don’t meet accreditation standards they will revoke your license? Remember, institutions that are viewed as antithetical to the aims and goals of the state will be treated as enemies to be eliminated.
      4. What about homeschooling as an alternative? Well, you’re going to face the same situation as the Christian institutions. Colleges will likely not accept the homeschool diploma—that could be the first pressure. The more serious threat to homeschooling, however, will likely come from your local Children’s’ Services department. In Ohio, it’s already been proposed that every homeschooling family be assigned a Children’s’ Services representative to “monitor” their educational progress. While that proposal didn’t pass, you should pay attention to the growing chorus of folks who want to eliminate the intellectual independence that homeschooling represents. Homeschooling can be co-opted too, of course. Personally, I don’t think homeschooling will be made illegal; you’ll just have to make sure your curriculum coforms to what the local public school is teaching.
      5. One final comment about education; if you don’t think this will be a primary target of the sexual revolutionaries, you don’t know your 20th century history very well. The Bolsheviks, the Nazis, the Chinese Communists, and—apparently—the NEA, have all realized that fundamental changes to a culture require going after the children. Thus when the Bolsheviks wanted to break the power of the Orthodox church in the Soviet Union, they didn’t just put pressure on the Church, directly; they also made sure the peasants were in government schools and members of the Pioneers or Komsomols. Indoctrinating Soviet children was the way to change the future. The Hitler Youth operated under the same principles, and thus some of the most vicious and senseless fighting in late World War II was carried out by children thoroughly committed to Hitler. Mao’s cultural revolution was carried out the same way. Oddly, the American public school system quite consciously morphed into a citizen-making enterprise in the early 20th century in order to turn southern European immigrants into fit Americans. Government education has almost never been about teaching young people to understand the glories of God’s creation. Government education has been about conforming people to certain patterns of behavior that serve the interests of the state. Despite what you hear about the pitiful state of public education, it’s actually quite good at fulfilling its principal purpose which is to produce cultural lemmings. Last thing about the schools: a recent conservative went on a rant where he said, “Third and most important, the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle.” To which I respond by pointing out that 87% of Americans have a high school diploma. Your neighborhood public school has the most access and influence upon our future electorate. They have them 6-10 hours a day, 182 days a year, for 13 years or more. And this is in every single community in the entire 50 states, plus the District of Columbia! If, across the history of the United States, there’s a more influential institution than the government school system, I’d like to see it. (Not even television can compete with those metrics—which is not to excuse the entertainment industry which so relentlessly reinforces public school propaganda.) You should be worried about the future of the electorate, but not because we’re adding immigrants to it.
      6. All this to say that those committed to implementing any cultural revolution will target the most impressionable minds, which means our children. Education is discipleship, and it’s sad the sexual revolutionaries understand this better than most evangelicals.

So we’ve talked about potential issues for churches, for professions, for businesses, and for education. None of this should surprise you. Just about everything I’ve said so far has either been seriously suggested, has already happened, or has been implemented at some point on the globe in recent history. It’s bleak, I know. So, I think there are two natural questions that arise: why is this happening and what can we do about it?

Why is this happening?

First, because Satan has been at war with God’s people from the beginning. We’re not special; this is just the latest iteration of the original cosmic conflict.

Second, to our great shame, the evangelical Protestant church had done a horrible job at developing and teaching a theology of the body. Does anyone else find it remarkable that Western Civilization is coming undone over the issue of sexuality? That fact says much about Evangelical understanding of the importance of biblical anthropology; we have become de facto dualists, denying the important link between soul and body. Take kneeling for example: as a posture of prayer, kneeling is a physical act that underscores a deeper spiritual reality. We are less than God, and we show our lesser-ness by humbling our bodies into a position of vulnerability and obeisance in His presence. Kneeling is an act that unifies body and soul into the same attitude. If your church kneels, that is. Unfortunately, as evangelicals we’ve become so focused on the spiritual that we’ve ignored one of the great Christian distinctives—that we’re embodied souls and that what we do with our bodies impacts/impairs our souls. Perhaps because of this lack of attention, the Enemy has succeeded in breaching our defenses in this area. What we’re doing with our bodies, sexually, is destroying the church.

But primarily, I believe this is happening because it is God’s judgment. Consider the election of last Tuesday; is it reasonable to compare the essential choice between two evils the country was given to the choice God gave David when David had to choose a punishment for his sin of taking a census of the people? I think a case could be made for this. I also think Romans 1 is an overlooked definition of the kind of judgment God employs. It’s not always invading armies, natural disasters, plagues, etc. Sometimes, it’s just being given over to the sins that beset us. It’s not a stretch to say our current trajectory is similar to the story of the Tower of Babel. In our hubris, we attempt to be like God. Thus God has confused our minds and we pursue our own destruction. How else do you describe a nation, a civilization, that delights in killing its unborn, its weak, and its old? How else do you describe a Western world that seeks to turn the created order on its head and redefine the very rules of nature with regard to the essence of being human? Do we not deserve the judgment?

Where has the Church been in the midst of all this rejection of God’s good creation? Apparently no one listens to us anymore, and why is that? Could it be that the world doesn’t listen to our defense of Biblical sexuality because we’ve demonstrated that we’re hypocrites – that we don’t listen to God, either? How often do the sons of the Church indulge the scourge of pornography? How often do the daughters of the Church seek abortions? How many of the wrongfully-divorced sit in our pews enjoying full communion with the Body? How many of our married couples have sought to severely limit, or even to eliminate, the gift of children from their lives? Remember when modesty was a Christian virtue? How often is it commended on the Christian college campus today? In our sanctuaries on Sunday morning? We have turned a blind eye to so many of Scripture’s teachings on this important area of sexuality.

Do you disagree with my assessment of sexuality’s paramount importance?

Apparently the pagans find it important. In fact, so important that they will upend the created order so they can pursue a deviant version of it. The world demands our full-throated support of its decadence and reacts violently against our hypocritical protests.

So why is it happening? All of this is judgment against our culture’s rejection of God’s law in nature as well as the Church’s failure to be the witness we’re called to be. God tells us judgment begins with the household of God. We get it first.

What can we do about it?

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Source: Tim Bayly Blog