I’ve started and stopped writing this post countless times. First I tried to find some of the quotes from the current Wise Men De Jour which could highlight the places where my tension with the evangelical church started to grow. I kept coming across more and more content and the message got messy.
I next thought I’d outline my path through church-related participation, employment, and membership. Maybe that would demonstrate that I have a long experience in church. I’ve had tension between my beliefs and church since I was young. I thought that explaining my background would give weight to my departure or at least stave off claims that I was taking some kind of easy way out or falling down a slippery slope of culture-driven value compromises.
This morning I remembered that only a small handful of people are reading here and I don’t have to justify myself to you. Anyone who needs that from me wouldn’t be convinced by my quotes or history. All this is to say that I’m going to share what I saw – and see more and more now that I’m out – in the evangelical church.
Hubris
One time I told my pastor at my reformed Acts 29 church that if I believed God predestined only some people would be saved from hell, then I would not want to believe in that God. When I first started attending there, Calvinism was much less pronounced. It was presented as a tertiary doctrine during my membership class. I have a long history of opposition to predestination. I still chose to become a member at a reformed evangelical church, partly because it wasn’t a central focus early on, and partly because I accepted that there is no such thing as a perfect fit in churches.
Most of the time I didn’t feel ostracized by this divergent view. I was still asked to be a small group leader (alongside my husband of course) and coordinated our children’s classes and curriculum. I never hid my disagreement and I let the pastor know I wouldn’t lead the discussion at our small group when we were covering these topics.
Being active in a church that was part of the Acts29 / Gospel Coalition / John Piper stan community, I was exposed to a lot of the modern reformed content. The hubris is outlandish. The reformed content factories don’t just believe their view of salvation is correct, it bothers them when other Christians don’t. They make straw man arguments about how it’s wrong that you think you earn your salvation even though you absolutely do not believe that.
Reformed thinkers believe that your lack of endorsement of their theology is evidence that you are immature in your faith. They think you don’t take the Bible seriously and that as soon as you do, you will realize the error of your ways. They write 10,000 word missives about a single verse in Romans or dismantling John 3:16.
The reformed evangelical church is just another fundamentalist Christian sect.
Systemic Chauvinism
One time, John Piper said a Christian woman who wants to follow God should not take a job where she tells a man what to do. I expressed my frustration about Piper’s view of women (and his platforming of Doug Wilson!) with my pastor. I said that when he quotes Piper from the pulpit, it feels like he is endorsing that view of women too. Piper has said a lot of other terrible things about women, but he’s not the only one pushing misogyny. The Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is a creation of the modern reformed movement. Kevin DeYoung’s recent book on men and women’s roles is another gem of willfully misogynist readings of scripture. John McArthur, The Gospel Coalition, 9Marks, the Danvers Statement, Wayne Grudem, the SBC and on and on and on.
In the premarital counseling we received, my pastor recommended Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage book. This was after Driscoll had been forced out of Acts 29 and being publicly accused of abusive leadership practices. But even if that all hadn’t been happening, the book, and Driscoll’s views about the specific roles allowed for men and women, are horrible.
I’m not going to get into the weeds fighting about whether or not Paul actually wrote Timothy I&II or Titus, why it’s required to read the requirements for elders as literal but the requirements for head coverings in view of cultural contexts, or whether the women listed as apostles in the Bible were Apostles or more like just really good helpers.
I am going to focus on the systemic component. In this world, only men can be pastors, only men can preach, and only men can be elders. Decisions about the church are being discussed and decided without any women at the table. Can’t imagine why we have so many issues with abuse, harassment, and cover ups!
It gets worse. Did you know that a bunch of reformed complementarians got together and decided that none of the hundreds of English translations of the Bible was good enough and created the English Standard Version which was then adopted by the likes of Piper, Kevin DeYoung, RC Sproul, and broadly throughout the Acts 29 network including my own church? Critics have pointed out that the ESV repeatedly chooses gendered language and reinforces a complementarian viewpoint which diminishes women’s presence and role in the historical church.
It’s turtles all the way down. They create a Bible to align with their views about women and men. They create parachurch organizations which are all run by men and pump out a stream of “resources” for pastors which all reinforce their teachings about gender. Acts 29 requires complementarian views from churches in its network with no women preaching. The churches are all led by men and the elders are all men. They create membership covenants and put women under “church discipline” when they attempt to justly leave marriages or speak out about abuse. They justify it all as just trying to live out the early church model as described in scripture – the same scripture that they translated with gendered intent!
I don’t want to preach. I don’t want to be a pastor. But I don’t believe God requires that only men can hold those roles. For a long time I lived in that cognitive dissonance because it didn’t personally affect me or my egalitarian marriage. I no longer want to support a system that says someone can’t pursue a specific role because of their gender and I no longer care if that means people from that theological world will say I’m looking for a Build-A-Bear Jesus.
Moral Relativism
Remember in the summer of 2020 how a bunch of pastors gave heartfelt talks over video or text where they told us that people have different views about masks and distancing and we need to have unity and love each other where we’re at?
I know that pastors are aware that covid has caused further breaks for some of us from the evangelical church. I think they believe it’s because we disagree with their decision not to require masks or their pushing for us to resume indoor small groups or whatever. Sure, it was frustrating when my church remained adamant that they would return to in-person services in August 2020 even though the cases were spiking higher than they’d ever been in our community. It was frustrating being told that our small group – which included our infant, two other infants, and three toddlers – should really figure out a way to get back together in person.
But what’s really been frustrating about the church’s relativism about covid is how very much on my ass they’ve always been about the things I care about. Apparently, truth is relative for the church when it comes to covid. With covid and racism, the church isn’t interested in sharing hard truths with their members.
When I have different views about LGBTQIA+ issues, they declare they can’t accept any deviation from their literal interpretation of scripture. Evangelicals side eye my liberal politics. They say abortion is always murder because a poetic prayer in Psalms says “for you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.” They say transgender people are going against God’s design because Genesis says “man and woman he created them.” They say it’s their job to share those hard truths and even advocate for civil prohibitions.
But somehow when covid comes or a black person gets shot by a racist cop, not taking a “side” is more important than the truth. All of a sudden, they say both sides are equally at fault and it’s a distraction from the gospel. Or they say it’s politicized and engaging in politics is immature/trivial/wrong. My old church and The Church won’t stand up and declare the truth is important now on these issues. They won’t declare that covid is real and masks are required and the truth of the science is important. Now it’s all about unity and accepting that people have different feelings about objective truth and that’s okay.
Heads they win, tails I lose.
Lack of Accountability / Transparency
When I first started attending an Acts 29 church plant, it was less than a year old and there were two elders in the church and one outside elder from another church. When I left over eight years later, there were three elders in the church.
The non-denominational church world has a giant problem with transparency and accountability. I think there are a lot of people with good intentions who believe they are following the literal instructions about eldership in the epistles of Paul. But, like, Paul didn’t say anything about sound equipment.
Part of the problem is that in the non-denom world, the church is usually started by one dude who put a lot of sacrifice in and felt called by God and their livelihood is now dependent on the church and the tithes. And maybe they’ve been burned by trusting someone in the past. But having to justify financial and business decisions is not a punishment.
I administer over $500,000 in operational costs and grant awards at my job. I have a board that I show monthly financials to and who I ask for authorization to write checks or sign agreements. That’s not a burden, that’s oversight!
The lack of transparency goes further, unfortunately. Reformed churches have fully embraced covenant memberships and church discipline. I signed a membership covenant when I was 23, single, and at the church for less than a year. My understanding is that the membership class at my church changed each time, but I was never given an update as an active member. I don’t know if my signature was supposed to commit me to only what the church proclaimed it believed at that time or what it included in the membership class eight years later.
Church discipline practices vary wildly. In theory, I’ve always been uncomfortable with the idea that people’s freedom to disagree or leave is limited. In practice, I’ve never heard of a church discipline situation that wasn’t a total clusterfuck.
When you don’t have written policies, it’s easy to shift your practices or beliefs without oversight or awareness by the congregation. When you never have to answer for your decisions to the members or a governing board and you malign anyone who challenges those decisions, you can act with impunity.
Up until April 2021, I’d only ever seriously attended non-denominational churches. I like the music, I like the less rigid format of worship. But I now see the strength of denominational affiliations and guardrails. The church should not belong to the pastor. The decisions should be justified. It’s okay if things happen more slowly because the decision process takes time. It’s good for a pastor not to have the burden of every decision. It’s good for people to know the beliefs of the church and the denomination and not be blindsided by policies that non-denominational pastors create as they believe needs arise.
I even like the liturgical calendar. I like that God can show up in new ways in a reading or prayer or hymn that has historical weight. I like that the sermons are tied to the readings of the church calendar, not driven by the whims of the pastor’s personal spiritual health or whatever book he just read.
If I ever get around to it, I’ll take on part three where I described what happened over the past five years, how did the church respond, and the church treated those of us who responded differently.
If I don’t get around to it, just check out this article: The Six Way Fracturing of Evangelicalism. It doesn’t have the editorial angle I would use, but it covers the facts.
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