It is the beginning of winter in Philadelphia tonight. The usual signs are telltale: the shortening of day; the lengthening of darkness; the deepening of bone-chill; the dropping of temperature; the hardening of topography; and the increasing of distrust and emotional distance among this city's denizens.

There are signs of a deepening winter ahead for America as well--in the political realm. The most obvious sign of trouble is the developing quagmire created by Neo-Conservatives in the Iraq War, perhaps to be soon expanded in Iran and Syria and accompanied by the resumption of the military draft; the burgeoning budget and trade deficits, and the threat of interest rate increases is another indicator; the continued onslaught of illegal immigration, the exportation of manufacturing jobs abroad, and burgeoning cultural degeneracy is another.

I believe the deepest winter and darkest night is also beginning to enshroud the American evangelical church. The threat is real and long-term. Left to present course, its spiritual condition will move from the dead of winter to the final throes of terminal cancer. In his critically important essay entitled, Effeminate Gospel, Effeminate Christians: From Authority to Influence, church historian Aaron D. Wolf says as much in the July 2005 edition of the paleo-conservative Chronicles Magazine.

Wolf insists that the center of the crisis is rooted in the contemporary church's denial that the "very essence of Christianity is masculine, an expression of patriarchal authority." This denial has been a direct result of two (2) perversions of Biblical manhood. The first involves a twisting of heterosexual masculinity and its accompanying utilization of physical strength, not for the protection and provision for "weaker vessels," but for "self-gratification." The second perversion is an overt acceptance and celebration of homosexual orientation, tagged by Wolf as an "open rebellion against God and His created order. . . . warring against the very essence of Christianity."

The Chronicles church historian notes that these anthropologies, shaped by contemporary American hedonism, have been accompanied by a gutting of masculinity in the institutional church, tracable to the disestablishment of Congregational and Episcopal churches on the American East Coast in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the predecessor Great Awakening of the 18th. The emphasis of Jonathan Edwards and Samuel Hopkins on "religious affections" was in the spirit of the Enlightenment, the underscoring of an individualism which centered on the emotions. This individualism dovetailed beautifully with the disestablishment of the churches. For Wolf, "Yankee pastors increasingly turned into salesmen, and women, not head of households, began to play dominant roles in churches, trading authority for 'influence.'"

This emasculating trend was continued by yet by another Edwardean thinker, Nathaniel Taylor, in the early 19th century. The historic understanding of original sin was denied (sin was defined as the "acquired habit of selfishness"); the effeminate "moral influence" theory of the Atonement was simultaneously embraced. This led Taylor to the conclusion that Christ's Passion was a "placard of just how much God cares--an invitation for a heartfelt response of faith." This conclusion, placed in the hands of Charles Finney in the Second Great Awakening in the 1830s, was conducive to the development of a mass circus-atmosphere context of evangelism in the North, and in the South after Reconstruction. It deemphasized the objective work of Christ and placed at contemplative center the feelings that Christ engenders within. The Biblical Christ who rules, protects, gives, and saves, was replaced by an effeminate "Christ" who woos, begs, pleads, and offers.

The value of Effeminate Gospel, Effeminate Christians is clear: it provides us with a succinct historical microcosm and analysis of one of the most obnoxious trends within contemporary American Evangelicalism--a femmy, limp-wristed, narcissistic view of ministry and worship which has manifested itself in the mass-marketing gurus of the age, including Bill Hybels and his Willow Creek Community Church, the Promise Keepers, and the "Prayer and Praise" charismatics and Pentecostalists of our time. Creeds, liturgy, sacramental mystery, and propositional dogmatic truth are out. Feelings, hugs, accountability encounter groups, behavior-modification, Clown Eucharists, arm-waving, Dr. Phil, and Oprah are in. To what extent has the American Evangelical Church begun to embrace what Paul describes as a "different gospel" (Philippians 1: 8)?

Wolf's case for an emasculated Evangelicalism is prescient, but one-dimensional. There is yet another threat to the Churches of Smyrna and Philadelphia, and what Jude refers to as the imperative to "contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints" (Jude, verse 3).

As I told Covenant News in Bankrupt Country Led By a Bankrupt Republican, this lethal threat is embodied in the dangerous link of Establishment Evangelicalism to the trappings of Empire: George W. Bush, the Neo-Conservative wing of the Republican Party, American Corporatism, and the Israeli Lobby. The fingerprints of the players, and the sobering implications, are everywhere.

Ralph Reed's increasingly exposed dalliance with Jack Abramoff, the direct public links of John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio to the Anti-Defamation League and other Zionist organs, the Falwell-La Haye ties to past financial contributions from Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church, the ownership of Zondervan Publishing Company by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, and the particulars of Pat Robertson's Corporate Empire (made more visible by the latter televangelist's public advocacy of the assassination of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and the pursuit of clandestine diamond mining in Zaire with "mission" funds) all beg the larger question: Is the ministry of the leading denizens of the Christian Right, and the churches of their respective followers, characterized by the spirit of the prophet Jeremiah or of Hananiah (Jeremiah 28)?; the exilic stance of the Apostle John on Patmos (Revelation) or the accommodationists to Emperor Nero? Who provides the witness of potential or real martyrdom against the System of the Beast? And who has really clandestinely taken his mark to buy, sell, trade, and prosper with him?

One thing is clear: within contemporary American Evangelicalism today, the main trends and players follow the contemporary American culture which mimics the ancient Roman Empire. They do not contradict it in a Biblically countervailing direction. The government which subsidizes and promotes gay marriage and abortion-on-demand is the same government which launches preemptive wars for false or specious reasons, jettisons basic Constitutional protections with the USA Patriot Act, employs a state-run educational system to inculcate participants in worship of the Cult of Caesar, and exports the jobs of its citizens abroad to benefit a Corporate Elite and the New World Order. Understandable fear and the threatened withdrawal of the 501C3 tax exemption have kept the disgruntled Evangelical in line to this point in time. Reed, Hagee, Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson are present to promote televised mass obeisance for the faithful and to enshroud the Boys of Empire with the aura of an unfurling Old Glory. But the question is this: will this brand of pump-priming continue to work?

This is a critical, pivotal question as the Empire moves closer to an expansion of the war in the Middle East and Central Asia. Are the stakes really the defeat of Islamic Fundamentalism globally, or the purloining of oil and natural gas reserves and pipelines near the Caspian, Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean? Is the Modern State of Israel the theological and spiritual equivalent of Old Testament Israel in covenant obedience to Yahweh, or a nation founded in post-Enlightenment principles articulated by founders primarily enamored of atheism and socialistic ideology? Are staggering numbers of American deaths and the infliction of massive casualties upon the wider world a price that should be paid in the pursuit of these goals and in obedience to the boardroom leaders who have framed them?

These questions will not be asked in the average American Evangelical congregation's Sunday School room or explored from the Sunday morning pulpit. Aaron Wolf's agents of "influence," not authority, have too much to lose: tax-exemptions, medical coverage packages, educational endowments, FCC broadcasting licenses, clergy housing allowances, and other perks. This sad reality is compounded by a culture of Evangelical Effeminacy among emasculated church leaders incapable of resisting the carrot and stick methodology of Nebuchadnezzar and Nero. In some well-documented cases, fear of Empire has been replaced by a marriage to Empire, for the mutual convenience and profit of both the powerful and their well-paid ecclesiastical front-men. It is a marriage which has swapped allegiance to Christ and love for His sheep for a bank account with the Gnomes of Zurich. The Agents of Influence and Empire comprise an institutional American Evangelical Church that has terminal cancer. It cannot be revived, nor should it be.

My advice to the real evangelical Christian in these dark times? Swap the Agents of Influence and Empire for an underground, unincorporated, home fellowship of believers seeking Biblical truth and insight in an age of deception and demonic activity on a feverish increase before the eschatological return of Jesus Christ. Pray for more of the Holy Spirit's discernment than ever before. Encourage those most in need of receiving God's love and forgiveness. And "pray without ceasing" (I Thess. 5: 17).

   (Mark Dankof is a Lutheran pastor and free-lance journalist, occasionally contributing to Iran Dokht, Al Bawaba, Nile Media, CASCFEN, and other Internet news sites. Once a 3^rd party candidate for the United States Senate in Delaware [2000], he maintains the web-site Mark Dankof’s America while pursuing post-graduate theological education at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.)  His commentary may be found regularly on SARTRE's Old American Right and Republic news site, Breaking All the Rules and at DixieInternet.com.

[ Homepage & Biography || Articles & Essays || Contact Mark || Links || Photo Gallery ]

Copyright © 2002 Mark Dankof
Site Design by Aurora WDC