Three groups following the statistical data — the Barna Group, Gallup, and the Pew Research Center — record the growing disinterest in formal religion and that of church membership. The growth is identified specifically in persons seeing themselves as religiously unaffiliated. Together with that, there is a bear trend, a decline, of evangelical church attendance. This is striking because there was a time in the 2000s when liberal protestants’ attendance was declining but evangelicals’ attendance was rising. The conventional logic was that the loss of the central and defining beliefs, doctrines, and traditions that make Christianity bold and unique were marginalized by liberal protestants. As such, those churches looked more like charities, functioning on broad principles and generic “virtues,” which more often than not were politically agreeable and correct.

This is a neat description of liberal churches becoming captured institutions. They fulfill the will of the State rather than the will of God. This is the story of the State’s take over of these churches, a repeated cycle in history and not just for the Church but among all religions. More shocking is when the Church became the State itself, as is clearly the case with the Catholic Church at different times throughout its history. Why does the State have such interest in the subversion of the Church? It is the Church’s theology that is so damnably dangerous for the State: authority, providence, judgement day, objective morality, omnipotence, immutability, omniscience. In a word, the danger is, ‘stabilization.’ There is a modern battle plan developed by the State for bringing the Church to kneel. The question we have is whether the evangelical churches are being subverted in the same way as the liberal ones although proceeding differently.

In 1963, Congressman Albert Herlong Jr. read the 45 goals of communism for the United States. Their overt intent is the destabilization of America, a confusion of culture, and its unraveling through indirect and unrestricted warfare (sometimes called irregularly warfare).

Goal 27 states, “Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion.””

The Naked Communist

Let me distinguish these a bit.

The information in revealed religion comes through revelation and it comes from the outside of the world (revealed religion); the information in social religion is community constructed and comes from within the world.

Revealed religion studies and proclaims an immovable set of Scriptures; social religion repackages Scriptures to make it palatable to the modern audience or uses modern concerns and events to redefine the meaning (by changing the context) of the Scriptural texts.

Revealed religion seeks to discover the meaning in the Scriptural text; social religion seeks to discover the meaning in social movements, and it may or may not use Scripture to support those social trends.

Revealed religion produces and uses theology; social religion does not produce its own set of “theory” but simply uses social tactics, psychological pointers, or marketable techniques.

Revealed religion’s main task is kerygma, proclamation of the Word; social religion’s main task is providing psychological comfort.

Revealed religion is necessarily exclusive; social religion is inclusive.

Revealed religion understands morality as objective and immutable; social religion understand morality as a community agreed to set of rules, a sociological phenomenon.

Revealed religion elevates doctrine; social religion elevates social acceptance.

Revealed religion is seeker “will be transformed if they touch this truth, uncomfortable or not”; social religion is “seeker friendly.”

Revealed religion expects growing conformity with the religious community’s Scriptures’ rules; social religion adapts to the rules inserted into the religious community from culture, politics, and economics.

In a “revealed religion” church, you will learn more about God than the pastor or the ministry; in social religion, you will learn more about the pastor, ministry, or other societal groups.

There is much here of concern. Seeker friendly is a model that is almost synonymous with evangelicalism.  Careful exposition of Scripture on a weekly basis, or even on a bi-weekly basis, which is then taught on Sunday, is certainly on the decline in evangelical churches. More likely, the pastor will tell you stories about himself (or others), some marketable “joking,” sprinkle in a verse or two, and make sure there is a dopamine, psychological benefit too. There is little, and I mean little, place for theology in any evangelical context I have ever been involved with: anecdotal for sure, but not unmeaningful. This bespeaks the underlying root disease of “aversion to sustained and detailed teaching of the biblical text.” Theology will always arise from serious investigation of Scripture because theology is the serious thinking about Scripture and organizing what the person is learning. Evangelicalism puts lots of resources into how to grow the church, marketing, programming, production, citing of societal figures, interesting points from psychology, and maybe personal piety tactics. The unchurched know that evangelicalism might say this or that sexual deviance is “evil” while allowing (non-biblical allowed) divorced and remarried people to populate their chairs. This is a simple way of putting a very complex issue; my point though is that psychological comfort colludes with selective morality as a kind of tactic to maximize church growth. All this, it seems to me, is of ill repute and distances the “rules of the religious community” from what Scripture/theology demands. Common among evangelicals is the use of “grace” as a biblical idea to justify acceptance of others, inclusivity, etc. Evil is to be rejected; humans seeking grace will willingly see their evil as evil and try to leave that evil behind. It works together: if the “revealed religion church” proclaims what is good and identifies what is evil, then the ‘seeker’ can decide if they agree, and if so, adopt the rules of that church and work towards abandoning their evil behavior. Grace has then changed their life for the better. When grace is used to accept evil behavior, grace is no longer grace; it is now a means of prolonging evil and spreading that evil round about.

This is enough. The communistic tactics now belong within wokeism. Churches that become social religion should be rejected. The growth in the unchurched, then, might be a positive indicator. So long as wokeism pushes acceptance of virtually everything no matter how evil and churches make room for those behaviors inside its doors, the conversion of churches from revealed religion to social religion will advance. Evangelicalism has many indicators already that it is well on its way to being largely a social religion institution. Although evangelical churches’ slide towards social religion looks markedly different from its liberal protestant and catholic correlates, the social religion “packaging” is demonstrable and becoming more dominant.

Primus Theologoumenus