Church pledges submission to government

This past Sunday, February 8, was Law Enforcement Appreciation Day at Gold Creek Community Church in Mill Creek, Washington. Pastor Dan Kellogg, decked out in a sheriff's uniform, spent some time onstage interviewing Snohomish County Executive John Lovick and Sheriff Ty Trenary.

After acknowledging the many assorted law enforcement officers in attendance, he launched into his "sermon." It was based on Romans 13, of course, which was written "in the midst of a government that wasn't honorable, like our government is." Um...yeah. You can see where this is going.

Toward the end of the service devoted to worship of the state, Pastor Kellogg led the congregation in the following pledge:

I pledge to do my best to follow the law.
I pledge to thank a police officer or deputy for their service.
I pledge to call 911 if I see someone suspicious in my neighborhood.
I pledge to watch the back of our officers as they fulfill their duties.
I pledge to pray for the safety of all members of law enforcement.

Are there no exceptions to this pledge? Are we to simply dismiss the problem of police brutality? Are we supposed to support the enforcement of each and every law, no matter what? I know I could not say this in good conscience, and I think it's shameful for a pastor to call on members of his congregation to make such a pledge before God.

Upon witnessing this spectacle, I was reminded of the so-called "clergy response team" that would be employed by the Department of Homeland Security in the event martial law was ever declared:


Honestly, I can't decide if Pastor Kellogg is just plain ignorant, or if he is actively trying to turn his church into a tool for the state. Watch the entire service and judge for yourself.

Outsourcing the church's job to the state

Gary North reminds the church that we cannot beat something with nothing:

What has been Christianity's solution to the need for education? It has been to promote tax-funded education. In other words, Christianity has simply deferred to the state, and the result has been anti-Christian education. Today, pastors do not preach from the pulpit against the public schools. They know better. They would lose too many of their congregations members. There are more Baptists teaching in public schools than there are Baptists teaching in Christian schools. In the 1960s, a series of Supreme Court rulings separated Christianity from state education. This did not lead to an exodus from the public schools by Christians.

Christians do not want to write the checks. It's as simple as that.

The solution offered by modern churches to members who are in financial difficulty is to send them to some government welfare agency.

The churches have defaulted, and they have not given guidance to members who might otherwise start charitable organizations. Then the leadership of the churches wail on the sidelines of life, complaining that the world doesn't pay any attention to the church. This has been going on in Protestant circles for about 300 years. Pastors complained about the Washingtonians in the 1840's. They also complained about the Second Great Awakening in the 1840's, just as their predecessors complained about the First Great Awakening in the 1740's. They don't want competition, but they don't want to write the checks. And so it goes.

You can't beat something with nothing. If someone else is doing something positive, and the church has nothing to match it, the church's task is not to criticize whatever is being done. Its task is to get busy. This takes vision. It takes a strategy. It takes money. It takes dedication and leadership.

It is easier to point the finger and complain.

Isn't it about time we put our money where our mouth is?

Beating the State: Third Century Christianity in the Third World Today

Most Christians in places hostile to the gospel aren't confined to buildings, and they don't rely on First World support. The churches in those areas are growing because they are mobile and hard to find, much to the chagrin of government officials.

Gary North discusses these "guerrilla" tactics:

This has received little attention in the West, because this strategy relies on invisibility. The West's intellectuals suffer from a myth of modernism: "If bureaucrats cannot count something, it cannot be important. It it cannot be computerized, it cannot be socially relevant." Call it the NSA's blind spot. Call it the IRS's nightmare.

The strategy is simple to describe: no permanent real estate. There are no permanent church buildings.

If you can't find it, you cannot tax it. If you cannot find it, you cannot regulate it. If you cannot find it, you cannot subsidize it. If you cannot tax it or regulate it or subsidize it, the state cannot suppress it. It's simple. And it is working, just as it worked from Nero to Diocletian. ...

... Consider the challenge of India. There are about 1.2 billion people in India. There is no way to generate capital sufficient to build enough churches to evangelize India in a generation. The same holds true for China. It has to be done with a house church system. There is no other way.

The tremendous advantage that the Communists gave to Protestants in China is that there was either persecution of the church under Mao or the Three-Self movement, which is a government-approved church, whose members meet in buildings that can be monitored by the Communist hierarchy.

This led to the creation of house churches. All over China, Protestants create house churches. Sometimes the government arrests the pastor, but he is replaced immediately from inside the congregation. We don't know how many Protestants there are in China today, but a common estimate is 120 million. In 1973, there were probably fewer than 3 million. We know now what happened. All of this came as a result of the fact that the Communists either tried to stamp out Protestantism, or else they tried to control it by confining it in buildings, where the government could monitor what was going on. This has led to the largest, fastest evangelism explosion in the history of the church.

In terms of percentages, 120 million is 10% of the Chinese population. But Protestant evangelists were in China from the 1860s, and there was not much growth until the serious persecutions began in the aftermath of the cultural revolution of the mid-1960s.

Mao drove all the Western missionaries and pastors out of China in the early 1950s. That was the making of the Protestant church in China. That exodus freed the Chinese church from the legacy of seminary-trained pastors, church buildings, and large congregations.

We're seeing the greatest evangelism movement in the history of the world, yet we're not seeing it. We're not seeing it, because it has no buildings, no seminary-trained pastors, and no hierarchical organizations...yet. There are only local organizations, and they multiply under persecution. They don't have any money, but they don't need any money, so they multiply.

A very interesting read. Check out the full article here.

A Libertarian Perspective on Romans 13

Romans 13 is often used as an appeal for Christians not to resist government. "Reformed Libertarian" C. Jay Engel has written an interesting and thoughtful post on that particular passage. Here's an excerpt:

There are four overall points that can be gathered in this passage.

1. God is sovereign and he has a plan. He can use evil to achieve the ends that he has ordained before the foundations of time. In the original context: God exists over Nero.

2. In our gospel-oriented ministry, we are not seeking to overthrow the government. When Paul wrote this he understood that it might have reached Nero's hands. It was wise of him to make sure Nero understood that there was no Christian movement to take over. All governments from the dawn of time until today, are jealous governments, always scared that someone will steal the throne. In the original context: Nero, we are not aiming for your throne.

3. Government has a mandate to submit to the higher law of God by only punishing the wicked and not the good. Anything beyond that is abuse of power. Therefore, as the absolute libertarians would advocate, it is wrong for the government to forbid the spontaneous arising of other governments. There is no mandate in scripture telling the government that it must have a monopoly on governing services. In the original context: Nero, you have a purpose; submit to it.

4. Turn the other cheek. We must practice daily Christian character. In the original context: Apply my lessons [in Romans 12] to even the government.

To conclude, from a libertarian standpoint, it is important to note that a governing entity is the means by which God has decided to carry out justice. This in no way should be assumed to be a defense of the morality of the State itself. This passage can only be assumed to be a defense of the existence of an entity that practices the pursuance of justice. God has given law. Man has rights to his life and his property because God has entrusted him with those things. And what God has given, man cannot take away. This is the law Justice consists of protecting these rights, this law. This is the only role of a governing institution.

Read the full article here.