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Russell Moore’s New Curriculum Exists to Give Pastors ‘Plausible Deniability’ For Avoiding Politics in Pulpit+ Sneak in Beliefs Without Taking the Blame

Months after former ERLC President and current Editor of Christianity Today Russell Moore joined forces with David French, who recently came out in support of gay marriage and child genital mutilation, and Curtis Chang, who launched the website ‘Christians and the Vaccine’ where he routinely shamed Christians for refusing to get vaccinated to launch ‘The After Party” a teaching curriculum to educate Christians on how to have a proper view of politics, we have begun to see the rotten fruit of their ministry endeavor.

At The Evangelical Covenant Church’s Midwinter 2024 Conference, Curtis Chang reveals that the purpose of “The After Party” is to take the “bullseye” off pastors by moving political teaching from the pulpit to small groups, so that pastors can share their political beliefs without congregants getting mad at them for it. 

“It’s tempting to think, oh god, I’ve got to preach the sermon, the sermon that will like, you know, reframe everything, solve all my problems. And that turns out to be, for most pastors, a really flawed process because the Sunday morning sermon is actually a really bad way to deal with something like politics.

It’s one-to-many communication. It’s limited. People are bound to misunderstand even a small thing you say. People will filter what you’re saying through their existing political biases. In 30 minutes, I guarantee you, if you go up on Sunday morning in most congregations and you try to preach the one sermon on politics that you haven’t been preaching on for a long time, your Monday morning inbox is going to be an ugly scene.

And that’s honestly why most pastors or many pastors don’t preach on politics on Sunday morning because they instinctively know ‘my Monday morning inbox is going to look awful if I do that.’ So the challenge we need is to give churches and pastors a way to head in towards healthy Christian politics that doesn’t force them to preach this magical Sunday morning sermon that will solve everything.

And The After Party is our attempt to do that so that you don’t have to do all the heavy lifting and also, frankly, you don’t have to take the bullseye, right?

You don’t have to take the bullseye, right? Because this way, if you run The After Party in your small group community, in your Bible studies and so forth like that, then if people get mad, they get mad at Curtis, Russell and David. They get less mad at you. You can have plausible deniability, right?

You could just say, ‘Hey, you know I don’t agree with everything these guys say, but I think they’re worth listening [to].’ That’s the classic move, you know, you do make as a pastor, right? To, uh, you want to inject something but, you know, not have to take all of the shots for it, which you shouldn’t have to take all the shots for. That should be part of our job, is to do that. This is, that’s the partnership here.”

Commenting on the clip, Josh Daws notes that “This clip is representative of how many of these gospel-centered parachurch organizations work. They encourage pastors to focus narrowly on the gospel while these organizations disciple people with bad application that smuggles in leftism and egalitarianism.

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Lifeway Research: Half of Churchgoers Want Their Congregation To Share Their Politics

According to a new Lifeway Research Poll, most Christians say they’d prefer if their church votes the same way they do and have the same political identity; results that are hardly surprising given the current climate we live in. 

The research found that “Half of U.S. Protestant churchgoers (50%) say they’d prefer to attend a church where people share their political views, and 55% believe that to be the case at their congregation already.”

While these statistics are not dissimilar from a previous 2017 poll, what has changed is the adamancy of “worshipping alongside political peers,” with 19% “strongly agreeing” that they’d prefer not to worship next to someone whose political perspectives are completely contrary their own, a 7% increase from 2019. 

Though there are several biblically defensible perspectives on which party or candidate to vote for, from Republican to Independent, write-in to Libertarian, to even not voting at all, who one votes for does reveal something about the spiritual state of a man or woman. For this reason, no Christian should feel kinship and comfort when surrounded by people who consistently vote for a certain party that is rabidly and unapologetically pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ, pro-child grooming, pro-theft and pro-tyranny.

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Ligon Duncan Suggests Pastors Should Conceal Their Political Leanings from Their Congregations

Dr. J. Ligon Dunan III, is the Chancellor and CEO of Reformed Theological Seminary who has been drifting in a big way for years. He took a pot shot at John MacArthur for telling Beth Moore to ‘go home’ a few years ago, partnered with gay priests at conference events, had a CRT syllabus at his University, and famously lamented that his black friends have a really good reason not to trust him: because he was a white man, drinking the bitter lies of the burgeoning progressive movement. Ligon Duncan is not someone to be trusted, as Justin Peters recently covered.

Speaking with Mark Dever during a panel together at the 2022 T4G’s Protecting Christian Freedom When Everything is Politicized, Duncan suggests that there is great wisdom in a pastor never letting congregants know which side of a political conflict he leans or where he stands on major political issues.

DEVER: …poverty and I’ll pray about things like that to the one who can make a difference, and Republicans, Democrats, Independents in the congregation can hopefully say ‘amen’ to the prayers, because we want the welfare of everyone. I’m not getting into the prescriptive- cause SR74 to pass this week – You know, that’s, that’s over to the political process and mysterious sovereignty of God. You know, I’m gonna pray for these ends that we know are biblical.

DUNCAN: Biblical ends, I think that’s huge. And I have a quote, to kind of follow on the idea of sort of the spiritual mission of the church and what you’ve just said, from Samuel Miller, who was one of the founding professors at Princeton seminary, at the end of his life, he said this:

“I resolved more than 30 years ago, never to allow myself, either in public prayer or preaching, to utter a syllable in periods of great political excitement and party strife, that would enable any human being so much as to conjecture to which side in the political conflict I leaned.”

Now, he’s not saying ‘I’m not going to pray against somebody killing 6 million Jews’, or ‘I’m not going to pray when the Emperor Decius tells by people that they have to offer sacrifices to his spirit or die. I’m not going to say anything about that.’

But very often we will elevate matters of political strife to that level, when they are not that level. And Samuel Miller is saying Be very careful about that.

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Free Speech and Free Press under Huge Assault in Montana by LGBT legal Network

(Mass Resistance) A conservative pastor who is the publisher of Montana’s largest and most influential conservative news site is being sued for “libel” by a bizarre transgender lobbyist. The leftist judge assigned to the case is also threatening the pastor with fines and a gag order even before the trial takes place.

This assault on free speech and free press is buttressed by the state’s far-left legal establishment and appears to be funded by the wealthy LGBT and Planned Parenthood lobby. The aggressive legal action, including an invasive “discovery” process of the pastor’s media operation, is clearly aimed to put the conservative news site and its subsidiary voices out of business. The radicals would even like to dictate what the pastor may say in his own church.

Background

Montana Democrats are still reeling from the Republican blowout victory in the 2020 election. Republicans now have a super-majority in both houses of the Legislature, and hold the Governorship and all statewide offices (Attorney General, Secretary of State, Supervisor of Public Instruction, Auditor).

Paradoxically, the judiciary in Montana is dominated by leftists. The state’s only law school is at the very liberal University of Montana and the state’s lawyers – and thus the judges – are far more left-wing than the general population.

Just as in DC back in 2016, the Democrats’ response to the Republican sweep has been to lash out wildly. Leftist attorneys are using the liberal courts in Montana to challenge conservative bills passed in the 2021 legislative session (pro-life laws, the ban on transgender boys in girls’ sports, strengthening parents’ rights, reining in sex ed, strengthening election law, and banning discrimination on the basis of vaccination status). They are also contesting Attorney General Knudsen’s and Supervisor of Public Instruction Arntzen’s policies banning Critical Race Theory and declaring masks optional in schools.

One news site stands out

As in other conservative areas, the news media across the state is also horribly left-wing. The one prominent exception is the Montana Daily Gazette, published by Jordan (“JD”) Hall, who is also a Baptist minister. The Gazette is bold and straight-shooting, with a down-to-earth style – and is definitely not “PC.” It has caught the attention of Montanans tired of the other news outlets. On many days, the Gazette often claims the highest readership of any news source in Montana. Some say its fearless reporting contributed to the Republican sweep in the 2020 election.

Hall is also very influential in Montana through his other conservative Christian media. He runs the well-respected religious blog Protestia, the podcast Pulpit & Pen, and a radio station. He shares Christian truth without reservation.

While many conservatives are becoming reluctant to speak out publicly on hot-button issues, Pastor Hall is fearless – and has definitely become a thorn in the side of…

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Editor’s Note. This article was written and published at Mass Resistance.