Category: Op-Ed

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Evangelical Stuff News Op-Ed

Christianity Today and Russell Moore: A Match Made in Hell

‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.’ Revelation 3:14-15 (ESV).

Call me old-fashioned, but I still think words should mean something. Take Christian for instance – a word which identifies a person who believes in and practices the doctrines of Christianity. A Christian is a person saved by faith in Jesus, and who bears fruit in keeping with true repentance. And not just any “Jesus,” but the Word who became flesh (John 1:14) and whose authority comprises the entire counsel of holy scripture (Revelation 22:18). Christians believe and practice God’s truths.

So imagine my surprise when the long-published evangelical magazine Christianity Today (CT) made the decision to promote their most notorious unbeliever – “Baptist” grenade tosser Russell Moore – to the position of editor-in-chief. After all, if the word Christian means anything at all, having non-Christian employees at a Christian publication would seem to undermine the supposed purpose – especially if those employees held a position as important as editor-in-chief.

Obviously, I wasn’t surprised at all.

In truth, CT is being consistent with its original purpose, which according to founder Billy Graham was to, “plant the evangelical flag in the middle of the road, taking a conservative theological position but a definite liberal approach to social problems.” According to Graham, CT would “combine the best in liberalism and the best in fundamentalism without compromising theologically.” While Graham’s understanding of liberalism was undoubtedly different in 1954 than the unapologetic Marxism the term denotes today, the magazine was purposefully founded to stand in the middle of the worldly road and bridge the divide between truth and falsehood – a biblically offensive concept (2 Cor. 6:14). Rather than shine a light into a darkened world, Graham’s evangelicals and the newly-defined evangelical establishment embraced a middling third way that more closely resembled the Christian Democracy-style communitarianism that defines the ethics of Russell Moore. In other words, having an editor-in-chief who advances social justice, bullied Christians into submitting to compelled vaccination, and ripped churches that grew due to their faithfulness in not closing down during the “pandemic” fits CT perfectly.

Moore himself who claims to have begun reading CT at age 15, being “electrified” by columnists like gay-partnering former CT editor-at-large Philip Yancey, who helped Moore see the racism, immorality, violence, and legalism occurring in “Christian subcultures.” Moore’s life as a confessional and convictional chameleon (Democrat to Republican, Baptist to Presbyterian and/or Anglican, Calvinist soteriology yet world capitulation) prepares him perfectly to head up a publication whose name implies sensitivity and concern with the latest thing, and Moore’s jaw-bending southern delivery is primed to disarm all but the most vigilant Bereans.

Much like founder Billy Graham, Russell Moore sees CT as the voice of the evasive third way – conservative on paper, liberal in practice – befriending all and loving none. Rather than the Christianity once and for all delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3), CT will continue to promote a “Christianity” of today – bending to the desires and lofty ideas of the culture it inhabits. Russell Moore is an ideal person to lead a publication that has one foot in the church and the other in the world, and an ideal representative of modern evangelicalism’s unholy union between light and darkness.

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Op-Ed

Op-Ed: The Might of the SBC is Raging Against Megan Basham

As the Southern Baptist Convention downgrade proceeds at a roaring pace, institutionalist SBC elites continue to play defense, in response to allegations that certain prominently featured sex abuse accounts in the commissioned guidepost sex abuse report were never properly corroborated. Protestia previously reported on the story of Jennifer Lyell, who allegedly received $1.5 million for incidents surrounding her alleged sexual abuse. Baptist Press originally characterized the incident as a 12-year-long morally inappropriate relationship with a seminary professor that began when Lyell was 26, during which Lyell moved multiple times. After leftist advocates pressured the convention with the threat of bad press, Baptist Press issued a retraction and apologized for characterizing the incident as an adulterous affair. The incident revealed a shift in the SBC from a scriptural view of sexual abuse to what could best be described as Critical Sex Abuse Theory. Consensual adultery plus power plus the regret of a subordinate party in the affair now equals sex abuse, even in cases where the regret is 12 years after the fact, and all parties are consenting adults.

In the wake of the 2022 SBC Convention, the Daily Wire’s Megan Basham released an investigative report that shed light on the questionable actions of SBC leadership in its treatment of the Jennifer Lyell incident. The report has been met with much ire from the institutionalists within the SBC, as it revealed that Lyell’s account of abuse was never corroborated by any real first-hand accounts, but rather “believed” by those to whom it was confessed in a manner reminiscent of the way that leftists demanded that the public “believe all women” during height of the #metoo movement. While Lyell was believed by SBC denominational leaders and characterized as a victim in part due to her status as a student at Southern Seminary, Basham noted that Lyell at times held power over Sills, as her position at Lifeway gave her power over negotiating Sill’s book deals.

That incident, she says, began a pattern of abuse that lasted 12 years until she was 38, continuing even as she moved to Chicago in 2006 and, later, Nashville, to further her career in publishing. During the time that Lyell was a publishing executive, she often worked with Sills, contracting with him for books, and, arguably, holding more power over his career than he did over hers.

Megan examined Guidepost’s account of the Lyell incident critically, attempting to corroborate Jennifer Lyell’s story by contacting those who claim to be SBC first-responders to the incident. Al Mohler, who as President of Southern Seminary received Lyell’s account of the incident in 2018, claims that the contact information she used to reach him is no something he frequently checks.

The specific questions that Basham, a former World Magazine film and television editor asked Mohler, the current World Magazine Opinions Editor, reflect a desire to accurately report on a story that has been purposely distorted and misreported by Baptist Press in a pravdaesque manner. The fact that Jennifer Lyell claimed in a recorded interview that David Sills threatened Al Mohler with a gun is an issue that should be investigated. Either the statement is false, which puts Lyell’s character into question, or a serious crime that involved a weapon should have been reported to the police, in consideration of the safety of the students and faculty of Southern Seminary.

Mohler’s refusal to field questions from Basham is reminiscent of the way that SBC elites like Russell Moore respond to difficult questions, that if answered truthfully, yield inconvenient answers. Mohler doesn’t like to be called on the carpet for refusing to confront what is clearly unscriptural, as he revealed in his agitated response to Phil Johnson’s question about Social Justice in conservative reformed circles, at the 2019 Shepherds conference. Under pressure from Basham’s statement, Mohler issued a short carefully crafted statement that answered none of the questions posed by Basham. Mohler refused to clarify the exact nature of the abuse and whether he was threatened by David Sills as alleged by Jennifer Lyell.

Other more forthcoming parties to Basham’s investigation, like Dr. Bill Cook, reveal that the basis for belief in Lyell’s account was a second-hand judgement that “found her allegations credible”. 

The same unbiblical standard of proof for determining that Lyell was innocent of adultery and deserving of $1.5 million as an abuse victim is the same standard of proof that Guidepost and the institutionalist SBC elites want to establish for putting an individual on a ministry sex abuse black list, a mark that would last for life. Leftists and institutionalists who railed against conservative executive committee members for refusing to waive attorney-client privilege are now demanding strict privacy for alleged sex abuse victims and believe that common church members in the SBC don’t deserve to know the details of why $1.5 million of their cooperative fund giving is being handed out to someone in a settlement, instead of being allocated to missions.

In response to the kerfuffle, pastor Jared Cornutt stated that those who believe Megan’s investigative reporting over the vague answers of seminary Presidents who received Lyell’s accusation should leave the SBC.

Cornutt’s argument was quickly husked as a logical fallacy, as Twitter followers recognized that Cornutt and others who criticized Basham only criticized her because she questioned the institutionalist narrative. Cornutt points to former SBC presidents as if they are paragons of virtue and honesty, and yet the guidepost report calls out former SBC presidents Steve Gaines, Johnny Hunt, Jack Graham, and Paige Patterson as being abusers or complicit in abuse. Plus Ed Litton just resigned after a scandal, so their title alone doe snot have the shine he supposes it does.

The standard for credible witness amongst institutionalists has shifted from a Biblical position that questioned whether there were any firsthand witnesses with actual knowledge of the incident in question, to a highly politicized fallacy-driven process that says believe all women (except for conservatives that work for the Daily Wire) and believe all seminary presidents and seemingly credible power brokers in the denomination (except for those who hold inconvenient conservative viewpoints).

While the waters surrounding the Jennifer Lyell case have been substantially muddied, the Biblical principles in God’s law for establishing whether such a case is sex abuse or adultery are present in scripture. As .AD Robles explains, these principles can be seen in the general equity of Genesis 22:23-27. 

If the leadership of the Southern Baptist is so antinomian and worldly that they can no longer discern right from wrong and ignore the plumbline of scripture in a case such as this, how can they be expected to properly discern other matters of law or Gospel from scripture?

Sadly, the axe appears to be laid at the root of the Southern Baptist Convention. 

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News Op-Ed

Op-Ed: Praise God for 10-Year-Old Rape Victims Being Denied Abortions

Two things happened to a 10-year-old Ohio girl in the last few months. The first- someone committed an incalculable evil against her. She was violently raped and put into a state of terror and fright as a grotesque monster of a man violated her and forever changed her life. 

The second- she, along with her parents, in turn committed a more horrific act of violence. Discovering she was unable to kill her child in her home state, she traveled to Indiana, where she ended the life of the soul growing inside of her. In doing so, her parents became complicit and seemingly the driving factors in the death of an innocent victim, compounding the tragedy of the situation. 

With the story causing worldwide outrage, it’s given abortion-right advocates a hard case to hang around our necks. Abortion in cases of rape or incest is incredibly low, making up less than 1% of reasons for abortion, but to hear some of these people, that’s all the want to talk about. Their strategy is simple: beat us up with the bad ones until we reveal our heartlessness. Despite their haranguing, being pressed with imagery of a child with legs in stirrups and with a distended belly should not cause us to flinch or falter. If a life is a life is a life, then consistency would demand that all abortions be abolished, without exception, even for children who become pregnant through no fault of their own.

This is not an easy position to take in the face of our accusatory culture. Activists wield “edge cases” as weapons, bringing up the blistering incongruity of child rape as a means to batter the abolitionist imperative, seeking to shock the conscience and have us swallow back the words of defense, turning a stammer into silence. 

Don’t let them. Don’t stay silent. Shout! The fact that Ohio so far has not bent the knee to these fiery darts should give us cause to celebrate. Don’t let them use sanitized language when describing what these parents and bloodthirsty baby butcher have done to this child: keep the graphic nature of it at the forefront of your mind and tongue. 

In the book 1984, Orwell envisioned a language called ‘Newspeak’ which culled truthful yet subversive speech out of the vocabulary over a period of decades. As the vocabulary diminished, so did the ability to articulate known truths, so that only approved language remains. Anyone seeking to fight back was stopped by an inability to express themselves or mount a needed offense.

This is what has happened with the language surrounding abortion over the last 40 years. Both culture and then nice Christian leaders asked us to tame our tongues and temper our rhetoric, turning what should be prophetic protestations and fiery declarations into nuanced niceties, adopting the language and expressions of the enemy to make it more difficult to combat them.

“Don’t call it ‘murder.’ Don’t refer to clinics as ‘murder mills.’ Don’t call the medical centers ‘abortuaries.’ Don’t deny the humanity of clinic workers by calling them ‘deathscorts’ or ‘bloodworkers.’ Don’t call abortions providers ‘abortion ghouls.’ Don’t you know that’s inflammatory and unchristlike?

By doing so, we are told that we are loving women, being sensitive to their feelings, and ensuring that they will be emotionally attuned and receptive to our conversations when the topic of the fate of their fetus is finally broached. This genteel broaching and watered-down witness is what the principalities, the powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, and the spiritual wickedness in high places want more than anything.

Every time we play this game by pulling our punching, curbing our words, and make exceptions for edge cases, we coach the culture to blunt abortion’s scandal and minimize its horror by maximizing the inoffensiveness of what is a bloody and barbaric practice. If it’s ok to kill a baby in cases of rape or incest, then it’s not really a baby. This is also why those at odds with us find graphic images so infuriating, because it squarely brings into focus a burnt-into-your-brain depiction of what we’re really talking about here- a human life in high definition.

Yes, a 10-year-old or 11-year-old giving birth, almost certainly by C-section and almost certainly prematurely, would be traumatic. It would be undeniably, immeasurably painful and fearful; nearly too much to bear. But ending a life is also traumatic, particularly for the little one growing inside who is about to have his or her existence destroyed. What do we do with that pain? What do we say to that image of God growing insider her tiny womb? This is how we love them both, by not compounding and adding to the young girl’s anguish with the memory of a murder to one day haunt her.

The phrase “they’re taking a young girl to the clinic to get an abortion” should never come out of our mouth. Instead, we should say “they’re taking the young girl to destroy the child inside of her, using chemicals, curettes, and surgical steel to slice up the baby’s body and turn it into a slurry of blood and bone to be poured down the drain or tossed into a dumpster.”

This should be the standard and not the exception, thereby reclaiming language that never should have disappeared, and honoring the victims whose blood has been shed by the tens of millions.






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News Op-Ed

Statement on the Disqualification of JD Hall

The following statement is to announce the removal of pastor JD Hall from ministerial association with Protestia.

Update. The church has provided a statement. Please pray for wisdom for the church leadership as the continue to practice church discipline, as well as for all those hurt by Jordan’s actions.

Published June 27, 2022 by FBC Leadership

During the several days following an incident that took place Sunday June 5th, 2022, it came to the attention of church leadership of Fellowship Baptist Church of Sidney, MT that our lead pastor, Jordan Hall, had fallen into a dependency upon prescription alprazolam (Xanax), characterized by use that exceeded his prescribed dosage. As a result, Pastor Hall tendered his resignation from the pastorate shortly thereafter on June 8th, under the assumption that he had become disqualified from eldership as detailed in 1 Timothy 3.

In a subsequent business meeting, the church body voted to accept his resignation from his role as pastor and elder at Fellowship Baptist Church.

This resignation, however, was distinct from an earlier resignation that was tendered on May 14th, 2022, due to an incident in which Pastor Hall had been arrested and charged with a DUI after failing a field sobriety test during a routine traffic stop. Due to the testimony of Pastor Hall regarding a known vitamin deficiency that he insisted was to blame for his lack of coordination, the church had voted unanimously to reject his resignation, believing that the situation did not disqualify him from the pastorate.

The church decided, instead, to insist that Pastor Hall submit to a minimum 3-month sabbatical to address his physical health issues. The results of a toxicology screening requested by law enforcement were pending (the results of the screening are still outstanding at the time of this writing), and the church agreed to revisit his qualification if the report found problematic substances in his system, but no member vocalized any suspicion of drug abuse.

If the church had been aware at that point of Mr. Hall’s prescription drug abuse, the decision regarding his tendered resignation would likely have been different. However, we believe that we acted appropriately given the information we had at the time.

Mr. Hall and his family are now being ministered to by church leadership. Through the application of church discipline as prescribed in Matthew 18, we are exhorting him to seek professional treatment and work toward the restoration of his mind and body, and the reconciliation of his relationships with God and family.

Your prayers for the Hall family along with wisdom regarding this situation as it unfolds, are coveted.

Signed,

Leadership of Fellowship Baptist Church, Sidney MT

Earlier this week, the team at Protestia received allegations of serious sin committed by our brother JD Hall. After correspondence with leadership at Fellowship Baptist Church, we learned that JD was determined by the church to have disqualified himself from pastoral ministry, had resigned from the pastorate, and submitted himself to a process of church discipline. Due to JD’s removal from pastoral ministry, we likewise have removed him from ministry with Protestia.

While the church’s decision to accept JD’s resignation from pastoral ministry leaves us no choice but to consider the allegations against him to be credible, we are unable to determine their truth with certainty and therefore cannot speak to all of the specifics of the accusations lest we be guilty of gossip.

As Protestia is a ministry comprised of believers from across North America, we rely on our local churches to exercise the biblical process of church discipline in the lives of our writers and team. We defer to the judgment of men God has placed in positions of local church authority, and a determination of disqualification from ministry for any of our team will result in removal from this ministry as well.

This is heartbreaking news for the Protestia team, and we pray for wisdom and courage for the leadership of FBC Sidney as they follow the process of church discipline with the goal of repentance, reconciliation, and restoration to fellowship for JD. Similarly, we are praying for his family during this trying time. In accordance with our commitment to transparency and impartiality, we will continue to stay apprised of further developments.

Effective immediately, the following changes will take place:

  • Protestia will cease to be a ministry of Fellowship Baptist Church in Sidney, Montana. This decision was made both by the church and the team at Protestia, and not because of any disagreement between us and the church.
  • JD Hall’s writings and work on this site will be removed, but archived and available if needed for reference.
  • The Polemics Report podcast will cease but will be replaced soon with a companion podcast/video ministry.

Please pray for all involved as we seek clarity and endeavor to shepherd this important ministry going forward.

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News Op-Ed SBC

The SBC Has Been Assimilated for Years

On the first official day of the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in Anaheim, pastors and church members from all over the United States who spent thousands of dollars to travel to Southern California were greeted with a jolting reminder: Rick Warren and his army of church growth drones still own the SBC, and the cancer of doctrinal compromise has spread to every part of the Body.

The Invasion of Pragmatism

Since the early 2000s and the explosion of the Purpose Driven Life, evangelical churches have been overrun with Warren copycats, each new character utilizing the same basic lost person pleasing recipe for church, albeit with a slightly different take on the formula. We’ve seen hip deconstructionists, potty-mouthed and sex-obsessed “tough” guys, and prosperity gospel-lite, music-driven international “ministries” – all utilizing some form of Warren’s metrics-driven salesmanship.

Those who came up in the church during the last 20 years or so might be forgiven for not realizing the impact Warren’s customer-focused methodology has had on Evangelicalism. While Saddleback Church is officially affiliated with the SBC, its biggest contribution to the Convention has been the viral spread of seeker sensitivity and the postmodern subjectivity essential to its propagation. This man-focused methodology has taken over the Evangelical church and spawned a long list of symptomatically related movements – the now-integrated emergent church, #churchtoo feminism, and the infiltration of social justice/Critical Race Theory all owe their presence in the church (at least in part) to the worldly capitulation that seeker sensitivity unapologetically promotes as the essence of Gospel ministry.

Warren’s Druckerite brand of evangelism – which in the name of numerical success has made common cause with every fad of false doctrine including contemplative mysticism, fad diets, globalism, naked ecumenicism, and excusing homosexuality – has only one guiding principle, which is to give the lost world exactly what its wicked and depraved heart wants. Warren preaches a false gospel complete with an ignoring of sin and a Jesus who is merely an alternative method for achieving self-actualization and a better life. His best-selling book (which he brags is right up there with the Bible in popularity) presents his false gospel this way:

Right now, God is inviting you to live for his glory by fulfilling the purposes he made you for.

Real life begins by committing yourself completely to Jesus Christ. If you are not sure you have done this, all you need to do is receive and believe. Will you accept God’s offer?

Wherever you are reading this, I invite you to bow your head and quietly whisper the prayer that will change your eternity: ‘Jesus, I believe in you and I receive you.’ Go ahead. If you sincerely meant that prayer, congratulations! Welcome to the family of God!

A “gospel” absent the existence of sinful culpability and the need for repentance fills pews with lost people, or at best infantile believers “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Eph 4:14).

Credentials Don’t Matter

Last year’s motion, referred to the Credentials Committee entitled, To break fellowship with Saddleback Church was adjudicated not by scripture, but by a (misapplied) application of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, which states in Article VI:

While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.

The Credentials Committee returned the following to the 2022 Convention:

 It is the unanimous opinion of the Credentials Committee that the majority of Southern Baptists hold to the belief that the function of lead pastor, elder, bishop, or overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture and that this was the intended definition of “office of pastor” as stated in Article VI of the Baptist Faith & Message 2000.

The Credentials Committee has found little information evidencing the Convention’s beliefs regarding the use of the “title of pastor” for staff positions with different responsibility and authority than that of the lead pastor. For this reason, the Credentials Committee makes the following report and recommendation:

Report: The Credentials Committee reports to the Southern Baptist Convention during its June 14-15, 2022, annual meeting, that pursuant to SBC Bylaw 8 and SBC Constitution Article III, that it is unable to form an opinion regarding the relationship of Saddleback Church to the Southern Baptist Convention, until clarity is provided regarding the use of the title “pastor” for staff positions with different responsibility and authority than that of the lead pastor. Therefore, the Credentials Committee makes the following recommendation:

Recommendation: The Credentials Committee recommends that the Southern Baptist Convention during its June 14-15, 2022, annual meeting in Anaheim, California, form a study committee, the members of which shall be appointed by the President, to report to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting, June 13-14, 2023, in New Orleans, Louisiana, a recommendation providing clarity regarding the “office of pastor” as stated in the Baptist Faith & Message Article VI, The Church, given the many different offices within Baptist churches which include “pastor” in the title, though often with very different responsibilities and authority.

Noticing the editorial addition of the “lead” qualifier, messengers audibly and procedurally pushed back. Still, the Committee followed through with their recommendation to “study” what “office of pastor” means in light of the multitude of extra-biblical interpretations in use by present-day churches.

While it is common to see SBC churches employ functional female pastors by simply referring to them as “directors” or “ministers” and not allowing them to preach (the function without the title), Saddleback used the reverse approach – namely calling their ordained women “pastors” while claiming the title wasn’t indicative of the function. Language – like the meaning behind it – is simply a tool to be leveraged for numerical growth, and Warren realized he could please egalitarians by using the term “pastor” while placating complementarians by reassuring them that the word didn’t carry the traditional biblical meaning.

The Last Insult

While we argued that Ed Litton parading his suit-coated female worship pastor director to lead the convention in Dominionist-lite and sin-censoring music was his last insult as SBC president, he had one more in the form of “extending a courtesy” to Rick Warren, who spent six uninterrupted minutes insulting and lecturing the Convention. While Warren spent the bulk of his time “not defending himself” by listing all of the numerically superior accomplishments he achieved while building his church (versus the lesser accomplishments of the SBC seminaries everyone is fighting over), he argued that women “pastors” was not worth dividing over.

The fact that for decades the false gospel-driven growth propagated by Warren and his customers/clones changed nearly everything about their churches seemed largely unknown to the messengers, many of whom offered Warren a standing ovation after he lied to and insulted them for six straight minutes. This was distinct from the knee-bending platformers like Litton, who ostensibly understand what Warren represents and can’t afford to care. They owe their full but doctrinally ignorant pews to the marketing innovations infused into the church by Warren and his ilk, and Ed Litton stood compliant behind the main microphone audibly affirming Warren as he lied over and over.

The Proof Was in the Pews

Warren’s horrifyingly narcissistic list of lies was bad enough, but the fact that so many in the convention hall clapped in agreement and stood to their feet to laud the Purpose-driven Pope was a watershed moment. It demonstrated beyond any doubt that the most involved and invested Southern Baptist church members are largely ignorant about the single biggest reason the SBC shrugged off the conservative resurgence and continued the downgrade, and are entirely unequipped to have a doctrinally-informed conversation, much less fight the liberalism that will soon render their denomination unrecognizable.

Yes, conservative leaders within the SBC have proven entirely impotent – incapable of calling men like Akin, Barber, and McKissic out for the wolves they clearly are, never mind woke charismatics like Matt Chandler or worldly compromisers like John Piper. They are as likely to attack polemics/discernment ministries as “divisive” when we say the things their respectability won’t permit. And they continually wonder why the invested SBCers (often ignorantly) side with the Platform and conservative pastors who secretly read Protestia won’t rally to their side. They are incapable of understanding that we are called to make every man a liar if necessary to obey God, and this means not breaking bread with His enemies – even when they show up at our conferences.

Most tellingly for the demise of the SBC, the unbiblical, infantile, and cowardly infection has reached stage 4 within the pews, and faithful believers must not be yoked with any of the likely lost people who offered Rick Warren praise.

It is too late to fight alongside these conservative leaders or on their charitable terms. The only remaining option is to break these institutions and re-form new ones, and it must take the form of not sending SBC leadership another dime. Leave these institutions, the ERLC, and the now-fully woke Executive Committee to the goats and focus on your local church. Fund missionaries directly – away from the woke demands of NAMB or the IMB. Plant churches that will stay open in obedience to Christ, willing to face down Caesar in obedience to the Lord. Protect your people and their faithful giving from the hands of men willing to debate truths God’s Word settled long ago. Do not listen to the woke compromisers who are frantically gaslighting, claiming conservatism, and “welcoming” you (and your funding) to stay under their big tent.

Shake the dust off your feet and never return.

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Featured Op-Ed

OP-ED: Put A Fork in It: The SBC Is Done

A large number of conservatives entered the 2022 SBC annual meeting with high hopes to change the course of the nation’s largest protestant denomination. Tom Ascol, a pastor and ministry leader with solid conservative credentials who battled for the SBC presidency was rejected in favor of a left-of-center institutionalist in Bart Barber, who garnered 60% of the vote in a run-off with Ascol. For the conservative camp in the SBC, the defeat confirms that the denomination is on an increasingly liberal trajectory.

The 2021 race between conservative Mike Stone and leftist Ed Litton resulted in a 52% to 48% loss for conservatives. As more conservative churches make the decision to pull the plug on SBC affiliation, this deficit is certain to increase on an annual basis. The SBC Presidency is not the sole defining factor in whether conservatives have influence in the SBC, but virtually all of the other conservative candidates, including Voddie Baucham lost their 2022 election contests.

A Tale of Two Messengers

The state of the convention could best be described by the different ways in which Ed Litton treated Rick Warren and Tom Buck, as both came to the microphone to make statements against their opponents. Tom Buck was afforded three and a half minutes to speak but was continually interrupted by Litton several times, as Buck sought to make a point about how victims can’t trust the SBC establishment to not politicize their situation. In contrast, Litton rolled out the red carpet for Rick Warren and gave him six uninterrupted self-aggrandizing minutes to criticize his opponents on the grounds that he considers the ordination of female “pastors” to be a secondary issue. These different treatments of a conservative pastor and a leftist pastor illustrate the way that SBC conservatives will be treated in the future, as they become an increasingly small minority in the convention.

A Leftward Trajectory

Aside from the election of candidates, the SBC has taken increasingly pragmatic positions, as it follows a leftist trajectory. Institutionalists in the convention, like newly elected SBC President Bart Barber claim to be conservatives, but their conservative claims are made purely on the basis of not embracing overtly leftist ideology in the world. Everyone knows that Southern Baptists who openly embrace Side A homosexuality are a tiny closeted minority in the convention, but how many embrace a Side B position and how many years will it take for the downgrade to progress from an acceptance of unbiblical same-sex attraction identity to an acceptance of overt homosexuality?

In the same way, openly pro-abortion Southern Baptists are unicorns in today’s convention, but pragmatic incrementalists are a dime a dozen. With Southern Baptists uniting with Catholics and non-Christians in national right-to-life organizations, how will the integrity of the Gospel be maintained as the goal line is shifted from the total abolition of abortion to “uniting to make abortion unnecessary”, as the ERLC has proposed? The leftist policy items that can be stuffed into the trojan horse of “making abortion unnecessary” are endless.

 If every issue with the exception of the Gospel is considered secondary and no longer an issue to be taken into consideration by the credentialing committee, as Rick Warren insinuated, what is the purpose of the credentialing committee? Such a position would open the door to accepting churches that deviate from Baptist theology in significant ways. Can Joel Osteen join fellowship with the SBC if he says that he loves Jesus? Can prosperity preachers and wild charismatics like Kenneth Copeland join the SBC as long as their church uses the sinner’s prayer? Is a paedobaptist Southern Baptist Church in the cards, if secondary issues are irrelevant in the future?

The SBC is done as a conservative, Bible-believing institution. You can put a fork in it. By this, I mean that the leftward momentum is so great that the only thing that will stop the downgrade is a direct intervention from God. Does this mean that individual SBC churches or missionaries will not make an impact in the world? Of course not. However, the general state of the convention and its entities is in steady decline. Pragmatism, institutionalism, wokeism, and leftism are on the rise; while conservatism, sufficiency of scripture, and local church autonomy are being increasingly marginalized.

Hope for the Future

As the hymn writer Edward Mote stated in his famous hymn, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness.” The foundation of the local church is not a para-church organization like the SBC, but rather the righteousness of Christ and his atoning blood. Institutions will rise and fall, but the local church will remain strong. Jesus promised in Matthew 16:18 that the “gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Our savior promises to protect the church, but he makes no such promises for organizations like the SBC.

As David Morrill frequently reminds us, “Jesus didn’t die for the SBC.”

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News Op-Ed SBC

The SBC’s Scandalous Year

Southern Baptist messengers from all over the country are gathering in Anaheim this week for the 2022 Annual Meeting. Much has happened since James Merritt reminded us that “the world is watching” and played the gospel card at last year’s meeting. Here’s a quick recap:

Moore Departs

Leading up to the 2021 meeting, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Convention (ERLC) and lifelong Democrat Russell Moore finally left the SBC for woker pastures (despite his claim to be a “lifelong Baptist”), but not before he rolled a #metoo grenade under the SBC’s “big tent.” This grenade took the form of a “leaked” letter to then-president JD Greear, in which Moore claimed to be aware of multiple cases of sex abuse in SBC churches and entities (that he somehow failed to report to civil authorities) and that “some people” in the SBC wanted him to “live in psychological terror.”

Conservatives celebrated Moore’s exit, as his true nature as a theological liberal and SBC swamp creature had been well known to us for years and we welcome any development that helps evangelicals see the true beliefs of embedded institutionalists. Yet Moore’s letter provided the accusatory ammunition – largely directed towards unspecified SBC actors – for Moore’s progressive allies to open fire on anyone not sufficiently committed to their growing list of worldly, progressive demands on the SBC.

2021 Convention’s “October” Surprise

Attacks from Moore’s allies culminated in the “October surprise” of conservative presidential candidate Mike Stone being questioned in the convention halls by Hannah-Kate Williams, who later claimed to be brought to tears by the interaction with Stone and that SBC messengers were calling her a “whore” while walking by in the hallways.

Williams’ narrative was uncritically accepted and leveraged by insiders like North Carolina pastor (and ERLC “Religious Liberty Award” winner) Griffin Gulledge and Tennessee pastor Grant Gaines. Gaines brought Williams up to cry next to him at the convention microphone while he presented the motion that created the Sex Abuse Task Force to investigate the SBC Executive Committee – the same Executive Committee that Russell Moore had unspecifically accused of widespread wrongdoing (Mike Stone filed and later withdrew a $750,000 lawsuit against Moore). Messengers overwhelmingly voted to commission the task force in a motion that included a demand for the Executive Committee to abandon the common law practice of attorney-client privilege.

Sermongate

The messengers (with a healthy boost from cooperative program-funded NAMB plants) narrowly elected Alabama pastor Ed Litton – a man who planted his ministerial flag on racial reconciliation in response to the false “Hands up, don’t shoot” Michael Brown narrative. Almost immediately after Litton’s election, it was revealed that he had been plagiarizing sermons from other pastors including previous SBC president JD Greear and Gospel Coalition founder Tim Keller. A subsequent investigation revealed the widespread employment of Docent Research Group by pastors looking to outsource their sermon preparation to largely theologically-compromised seminary graduates. Litton’s plagiarism was subsequently excused by pastor Bart Barber, who claimed that Litton shouldn’t be in trouble for not citing sources (despite the fact that the issue was Litton copying entire sermons and claiming others’ personal stories as his own).

Abortion was also on the menu at the 2021 meeting, with the James Merritt-chaired (and Bart Barber-membered) Resolutions Committee bringing a pragmatic abortion resolution before the messengers that targeted abortion doctors while absolving abortion-seeking women of any moral responsibility. The messengers responded with a forceful rebuke, bringing to the floor and passing a morally-consistent resolution that recognized the culpability of mothers choosing to abort their children.

Of note: Barber – now running for SBC president – continues to support the morally indefensible pragmatism of treating mothers as unwitting victims of the (clearly male) operators of the abortion industry. His FAQ pushes a strawman version of abortion abolitionists as those who “dishonor” the pro-life movement, he promotes the false claim that ectopic and life-of-the-mother premature births are abortions (which would necessitate abortion remaining legal in some cases), and he deceptively leaves out the fact that SBC messengers passed an “abolitionist” resolution in 2021 as he refers only to the fact that the weaker Hyde Amendment resolution was not amended to include abolitionist language.

Deacongate

Fast forward nearly a year, and Ed Litton announced he would not be running for a second term as SBC president, breaking with the tradition of a president serving two years. SBC institutionalists immediately put forward Florida pastor Willy Rice as their choice for president. Soon after, Rice revealed in a video that his church had employed a deacon who had abused (groomed and committed adultery with) a student years ago, that Rice’s church had determined that the sin happened prior to the deacon’s conversion, and that the deacon was fully repentant and that he had been serving faithfully for years. Yet due to a “new understanding” of abuse dynamics, he was being removed from service as a deacon. The man was later determined to be Jeff Ford.

Subsequently, it was revealed that Texas pastor Tom Buck was the one who brought the issues with Jeff Ford to Willy Rice in private prior to Rice going public with the video dismissing “the deacon.” Rice initially did not believe the accusations about Ford, but upon confirming their truth (and discovering that Ford had more likely than not committed his sin after professing faith in Christ), Rice pulled his name from consideration and took up residence on Victim Place, changing his stance that Tom Buck had done the right thing to a claim that Buck was trying to “score points” against him. Following the same pattern of next man up, SBC insiders called in Bart Barber to take Rice’s place.

“Pridepost” Solutions

The Sex Abuse Task Force unanimously chose Guidepost Solutions in September of 2021 to conduct the investigation into the Executive Committee motioned by the messengers at the 2021 Annual Meeting, and after wrangling with the Executive Committee on the particulars of waiving attorney-client privilege began the formal investigation in November.

In May, Guidepost released the final report, which contained largely known instances of abuse and approximately 400 people currently or formerly connected with the 14 million-member SBC that were convicted or credibly accused of sexual abuse. Guidepost offered recommendations to the Task Force that mostly boiled down to creating a list of likely abusers to be voluntarily referenced by SBC churches in hiring and a compensation fund for apparent victims pulled from money given to the Cooperative Program – a recommendation that effectively holds innocent churches accountable for the misdeeds of others.

The big “bombshell” in the report was the revelation that pastor Johnny Hunt stood accused of forcing himself on another pastor’s wife while on vacation – an incident the wife claims was forced but that Hunt claims was mutual. Hunt was recently suspended from his position at his church.

Most importantly for the scope of the investigation, it was clear that there was no organized coverup or malfeasance from the Executive Committee, even as former EC General Counsel Augie Boto was revealed to have been keeping a list of established and potential abusers with connections to the SBC while claiming (correctly) that the SBC had no authority over cooperating churches.

Soon after the release of the full report, it was discovered that many of the cited documents in the report were inaccessible via the published hyperlinks and that the report contained quotes and information about pastors who had never been contacted by Guidepost during the investigation. Guidepost stealthily retracted at least one paragraph quoting a conversation between former ERLC vice president Phillip Bethancourt and Jim Richards of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention concerning scheduling. The conversation seemed to be included to reinforce the divisions between leaders in the SBC, but had nothing to do with sex abuse according to Richards.

Mere weeks after the release of the full report, Guidepost Solution’s commitment to the LGBTQ agenda was brought to the attention of Southern Baptists, causing many to question why a Christian organization would commission a secular firm holding views hostile to scripture would be allowed to investigate churches. The revelation forced the Sex Abuse Task Force into damage control, with SATF Chair Bruce Frank and Vice-Chair Marshall Blalock explaining that Guidepost’s spiritual convictions do not matter in the face of the company’s professional reputation. Yet the damage was done, and multiple state conventions including Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Florida publicly called for the SBC to cut ties with Guidepost.

Guidepost’s recommendations to the Executive Committee included direct attacks on Baptist church autonomy, notably including a recommendation to form a so-called Offender Information System (OIS) which would track “known offenders,” including not only ministers who have been convicted of crimes but also those who have been “credibly accused,” which according to the report simply means an accusation is “not manifestly false or frivolous.” The recommendations also suggest creating a “Survivor Compensation Fund Program,” which would use Cooperative Program giving from churches to pay the alleged victims of abuse at other churches. Selling of SBC properties to replenish the fund was recommended. In total, Guidepost offered seventeen recommendations to the Executive Committee and sixteen to the Credentials Committee.

SATF Recommendations

In response, the Sex Abuse Task Force boiled down Guidepost’s recommendations to two:

  • Creation of an Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force (ARITF), which would study the recommendation to establish a survivor compensation fund and the recommendation to create a new, permanent SBC entity for the express purpose of dealing with abuse in the convention. The ARITF would report to the 2023 Convention.
  • Creation of a “Ministry Check” website, which would be “a record of pastors, denominational workers, ministry employees, and volunteers who have at any time been credibly accused of sexual abuse and who have been or are associated with a cooperating Southern Baptist church or entity.” The recommendation does not outline specifically how a determination of “credibly accused” will be reached, but it does specify that local Baptist churches or entities wishing to investigate someone may apply for grant money if needed to fund the investigation.

Left Versus Right

For years now, two general coalitions have existed in the SBC.

Conservatives, who have lined up behind pastor Tom Ascol of Founders Ministries, remain concerned with the encroachment of Critical Race Theory in SBC institutions, social justice, ministerial egalitarianism (Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, for example), and the SBC’s seemingly insatiable appetite for bending to the demands of the prevailing culture around it. Churches and pastors in this camp are more likely to be Calvinist, hold to the regulative principle of worship, and emphasize the sufficiency of scripture. This camp was much more suspicious of government intrusion into the church during COVID, and many churches in this camp grew during the last two years.

Progressives – now represented by former ERLC official and institutionalist poster child Bart Barber (who claims conservatism) and partnered with the Evangelical Intelligentsia – are concerned about winsome engagement with the culture, racial reconciliation as a primary component of Gospel ministry, and moral disconnection of the church from secular politics. This camp is populated by SBC institutionalists, seminary graduates, and megachurch pastors, and emphasizes a “big tent” version of the SBC that welcomes anyone not explicitly denying the foundations of the Gospel (and even some who do). This camp is strongly Arminian, holds to an unapologetically innovative normative principle of worship, and while claiming to hold scripture sufficient often moves beyond it to synergize with the dominant political leanings of the day. This camp resents conservative Christian involvement or alignment with Republican politics, and often claims a “third way” exists which allows professing Christians to vote any way they want without any effect on their Christian witness. Southern Baptists who are Gospel Coalition contributors are exclusively in this camp, and they united in opposition to churches that remained open when the government tried to force them to close.

The next few days will likely reveal the future trajectory of the SBC. Will there be a similar resurgence and return to general faithfulness in the face of a hostile, demanding, and lost culture? Or will the SBC continue its precipitous slide into capitulating compromise and land the organization (ironically) among the largely irrelevant and apostate mainline denominations?

Categories
Op-Ed

Op-Ed: The Amicus Brief Filed by Abortion Abolitionists Shows the Failure of the One Filed by the ERLC

A TALE OF TWO AMICUS BRIEFS

You need to know about two very important amicus briefs filed in the #DobbsvJackson case before #SCOTUS. When contrasted they are worth their weight in gold for a Presidential vote at #SBC2022. Let’s consider: (1) @ERLC‘s and (2) Abolitionists’.

Let us contrast each brief on three points: (1) Filers or amici curiae (friends of the court); (2) List of authorities; and, (3) aims. Ask yourself, “Which amicus speaks for me?” For clarity, let’s call them the Roman Catholic/ Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (RC/ERLC) and Foundation to Abolish Abortion (FAA) briefs. 

THE FILERS

RC/ERLC FILERS: The ERLC did not write their own amicus, but signed onto one written and submitted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Filers include three other Roman Catholic organizatons, Lutherans, and the National Association of Evangelicals.

Who’s NAE? supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/1…

The National Association of Evangelicals is a progressive group pushing LGBTQ+ agendas. @DennyBurk rightly exposed their “Fairness for All” campaign: “This is a disaster. . . . I will do everything I can to oppose NAE and CCCU in this.” Read his 🧵.

In comparison, FAA FILERS: Abolitionists signed onto an amicus brief written by Baptist attorney, @bradleywpierce, for the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, @AbolitionistFAA. faa.life/dobbs-brief on behalf of many abolitionist organization, all affirming Sola Scriptura.

AUTHORITIES

RC/ERLC Authorities: Nowhere is God’s Word referenced. You’ll find Pope Francis, Pope John Paul II, & Vatican II but Scripture is absent. @ERLC calls upon papists and progressives to represent Southern Baptists instead of God’s Word?? Thus, why we call it the RC/ERLC brief. 

FAA Authorities: The first authority of the abolitionist argument against Roe v. Wade is the Holy Bible (2 Cor 10:4-5). God’s Word was brought before the Supreme Court as the Abolitionist Movement declared to the justices the higher court before Whom they must bow.



Should the SBC be led by the Roman Catholic Church in this battle, or should the @ERLC lead the SBC to respond biblically instead of depending on the Roman Catholic Church and progressive NAE for its talking points and strategy?

THE AIMS

RC/ERLC AIMS: “The Mississippi legislation should be upheld.” What, you may ask, does the Mississippi legislation determine? Their answer: “Except in a medical emergency or in the case of a severe fetal abnormality, a person shall not intentionally or knowingly perform, induce, or attempt to perform or induce an abortion of an unborn human being if the probable gestational age of the unborn human being has been determined to be greater than fifteen (15) weeks.”

The RC/ERLC brief argues for regulating abortion as healthcare after 15 weeks, meaning: (1) innocent children from the age of fertilization to 14 weeks 6 days are passed over with no protection under the law, and (2) homicide of all children is not included in the homicide codes for all born children. The RC/ERLC letter promotes partiality that God calls an “abomination” (Proverbs 17:15; 18:5). Over and against the RC/ERLC brief, God demands, “You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality. . . . Justice, and only justice, you shall follow” (Deuteronomy 16:19-20). 

The RC/ERLC brief also requests that the court not treat abortion as a Constitutional issue: “If it continues to treat abortion as a constitutional issue, this Court will face yet more questions downstream about what sorts of abortion regulations are permissible.” This argument is based on the assertion that the Constitution is silent on abortion, which assumes that preborn children are not “people.” If the preborn child is a person, then abortion would be outlawed by the fifth amendment, which states: “No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The RC/ERLC brief does not recognize or assert personhood from fertilization. BFM2K states, “Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord.” 

FAA AIMS: “Above all, the purpose of filing the brief was to glorify God. We aim in the brief to be respectful of the constitutional institution of the Court, yet strong and in earnest. God’s image is being slain with impunity and His law is being trampled underfoot. “Children are dying and so is our country unless something seriously changes.” Also, “The brief was an opportunity…to leave a historical record of standing for life and justice against tyranny.”

Which amicus brief speaks for you? Does the RC/ERLC speak for you? 

CONCLUSION

The @ERLC has lost its way. Sadly, instead of principally & powerfully representing Southern Baptists & our Lord according to His Word, they have veiled the Truth, veered from the BF&M2K, & swerved from the heart of and call from the messengers.

Do yourself a solid and listen to @tomascol‘s interview with @bradleywpierce, @AbolitionistFAA amicus author. Come to #Anaheim & vote to #changethedirection

@tomascol has steadfast endurance & hardy resilience due to his settled confidence: “We have a Book!” “Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.” 

This is the kind of resolution that should be a no-brainer for the @ERLC and SBC.

Read and sign your name below:

“Resolution on Equal Protection of the Laws for Preborn Children”

Editor’s Note. This is adapted from a long Twitter Thread by pastor Dusty Deevers, who can also be seen discussing abolition in this documentary below. Minor changes made to fill out a few words and provide context. Full conversation here.




Categories
Op-Ed

Op-Ed: Johnny Hunt Assaulted a Young Pastor’s Wife. Her Husband Should Be Disqualified from the Ministry

If the story is to be believed, Johnny Hunt, the fabled Pastor Emeritus of FBC Woodstock and former President of the Southern Baptist Convention did something unthinkable. In a grotesque act of sexual debauchery, he managed to weasel himself into a situation where he would be alone with another pastor’s wife that had joined them on vacation.

There, without provocation or any indication that he was capable of doing it, he sexually assaulted her. He yanked down her pants and looked upon her naked flesh which caused her to tense up and not be able to move. He then pinned her down on a couch, climbed on top of her, and proceeded to kiss and fondle her breasts. She tried to resist but was frozen, and he came at her again and tried to pull down her shirt, where he groped her and violently kissed her for a while longer. He finally stopped and left. (Hunt says the whole encounter was consensual and disputes many of these details)

This alleged violent sexual assault and (and some might argue attempted rape) was then reported to at least 5 different SBC pastors: the woman’s husband, the church counselor, and according to Guidepost, three other witnesses

Of those SBC pastors, Witness 1 was in ministry for over 40 years. The husband told him shortly after it happened. The second witness is a senior pastor in an SBC church that worked with the husband for 6 years in the same church. The third witness is “a bi-vocational pastor in Southern Baptist churches and worked in local and state conventions. He is currently a minister in residence in a Southern Baptist organization.” According to the Guidepost report:

“Guidepost investigators found all three witnesses to be very credible with clear recollections of Pastor’s statements to them. The witnesses are all still very much involved and committed to Southern Baptist life and the Convention.”

This should not be. All these men should be disqualified from the ministry because not one person reported it.

First of all what kind of husband hears from his wife that she was molested, groped, and sexually assaulted, and does nothing about it? Assuming her side of the story is completely true as reported, another man sexually assaults his wife, climbs on top of her, tries to pull off her clothes, and the husband lets it slide?

What a dereliction of duties and failure to be a man. What a failure to be a husband. The fact that he did not go straight to the police and then tell it to the whole church is to his great shame and sin.

Furthermore, who’s to say that his wife was the first person this monster sexually assaulted? The wife testified that it was completely non-consensual. Unless the husband had reason to believe that it perhaps was consensual, as Hunt has claimed, then he let a sexual pervert not only go unpunished but free to continue sexually assaulting other potential victims for the next decade.

With the husband’s silence, he let a molester (as far as he knew) free within the church and who knows how many other women this predator was going to get alone and try to pull down their pants and stick his fingers and hands God knows where. This covering up of sexual abuse, so that the perpetrator can go on abusing others, is disqualifying behavior.

Furthermore, the same goes for those pastors. Guidepost has framed the whole narrative as if Hunt is guilty. It would have been nice if the Guidepost investigators asked these three witnesses how is it that they heard the testimony of a sexual predator within the SBC, and did nothing about it. Why aren’t they named in the report? Instead, we have a bunch of senior pastors and a pastor who is working at a Southern Baptist organization who heard the testimony of a sexual assault and didn’t tell anyone. They should all be fired.

In fact, Southern Baptists have a right to know the name of the SBC organization that is currently employing a man who has covered up this sexual abuse and served as a predator-enabler, having heard that Hunt groped and assaulted another man’s wife, but did nothing other than help keep it covered up. We have the right to know his name, as he works for us, so that we can contact the organization and insist that he be removed from the payroll.

For this reason, we have reported him to the newly formed Guidestone sexual abuse hotline and will let you all know what if anything they say, and how seriously they actually do take sexual abuse.





Categories
News Op-Ed

A Response to The News of Jordan Hall’s MDG Retraction (And How it Affects Us)

Protestia (formerly Pulpit & Pen) has been around in some form for the last decade, publishing over 12,000 articles since 2002. For years we’ve served as a repository for discernment and polemics, garnering tens of millions of page views for people looking for information on the latest false teacher or the respectable leader who has some scurvy theological beliefs. We are a ministry of a local church, where polemics is only a small portion of all we do, and we are deeply committed to being a tool and resource for the believer wanting to navigate their faith in a world full of hucksters, heretics and bible-crooks.

We’re also very, very independent. 

While Pulpit & Pen always had writers, JD was the face of it, banging out zingers on the daily and bringing down empires with his giftings and flair, crafting the ‘wrecking ball” method of writing that would shape our identity for years. Over time he saw what was happening to his state, dominated by liberal news sources, and identified a niche and need for an organization to start punching back, and therefore Montana Daily Gazette ( MDG) was born.

As JD got MDG up and running, and as it gained in popularity, it took more and more of his time away from writing for Christian polemics. He brought on a writer that would be able to focus on Pulpit & Pen while he turned the scrappy upstart paper into a force to be reckoned with. Over the years Pulpit & Pen became throttled and shadow-banned into oblivion – seeing our traffic drop 80% nearly overnight, and so we changed our name and website to Protestia, to escape our social media overlords and get a bit of breathing room, which was in early 2020. During this time, JD’s direct involvement in Protestia waned considerably.

Of the 2500+ articles that we’ve written over the last two years, JD has written less than 20 of them. Not 20%, but 20 articles in total. He has entrusted the direction of Protestia to the Managing Editor, who writes 95% of the articles, creates or sources all the thumbnails, clips all the videos, transcribes all the audio, and oversees all social media, including Twitter, Gab, two Facebook pages, and a couple of other minor sites. Regarding any of Protestia’s social media sites, JD doesn’t have access to any of them and is not listed as an admin or editor, having entrusted them to capable hands. 

We also have several people who work in the background helping to source articles and moderate the bunker, as well as two new writers who post once or twice a week. JD has hosted the Polemics report for years- something he enjoys doing as a relaxing endeavor, but over the last few months that has been taken over by David Morrill, who has been affectionally dubbed ‘the pope of polemics’ and who has likewise written for Protestia.

All this to say that for the last two and a half years JD has been pouring his literal blood, sweat, and tears into his church his family, and his company, to the point that he’s broken down his body and has been worked over in ways few will ever experience, at great personal cost. He’s done that, but he hasn’t been active in creating written polemical content or its distribution.

We have. Faithfully so. 

Last month, JD announced that he was quitting polemics to focus on the pastorate. This is something that needed to happen and we were glad for it. Then weeks later, he was stopped and charged with a DUI, which we’ve addressed here, but whose gist is that he blew 0.00 but was so medically unwell, that he was exhibiting symptoms similar to drug use, forcing law enforcement to take him in. Once out, and with the support of his church, he was put on bed rest, where he has been since, his wife and doctors taking care of him as he recovers.

True to his word, he got a new phone and gave the number to a small handful of people, none of which are us.

Now he’s in the news again for issuing a retraction for an article he wrote about trans activists, with folks blasting tweets like “Hate-preacher admits he made-up false accusations against queer politician” after he acknowledged he got portions of the story wrong, and that certain segments were untrue. Consequently, some people are asking how it affects Protestia and our ministry here. 

The long and short answer is that it doesn’t.

We’re our own thing and are in very good hands. We are supported financially by our beloved and loyal Patrons whom we love the most and thank God for their sacrifices and gifts, followed far behind by our filthy freeloaders who we barely tolerate, and who likely spend half their time “going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it” when they’re not listening in to the free part of the podcast. ; ) 

JD is the publisher of both pages, Protestia and MDG, but they are run very differently. 

Now we have this new retraction story from Montana Daily Gazette, a perfect storm of circumstances for folks to drop a couple of kicks in his belly with their boots, after JD issued a ‘Mea Culpa’ for a story he wrote more than a year ago, apologizing for errors in the article which got him sued for $250,000 and now facing bankruptcy. 

Unfortunately, JDs lawyer. ,Vcçfdddfdfdddfdddfdfdfddfdffdfdddfffddfddfdfdffdfdfddfdfddfddfddfeffeffdf

While many news sites who wrote about

There are a lot of people with old scores to settle leaning into what it doesn’t say in ignorance of what it does. The Lord will deal with them. For us, we’re anxious for the day JD will join us for the Polemic report once again, healthy and recovered after a long and deep slumber.

May the Lord be with you all.

Dustin and David.