Evangelicals & Parochialism

My Country!

My Country, Right or Wrong!

My Country!

Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown,” says the LORD (Jeremiah 6:14).

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul (Mark 6:36-37)?

1) African Americans, especially those who present themselves as Evangelicals, shamelessly enter into political alliances with the most depraved African American political and cultural figures with seemingly no awareness of their blatant and sinful dissonance from the long-held and previously almost universal agreed biblical principles held by the Professing Church since the Advent of Jesus Christ.

My Country! My Country, Right or Wrong! My Country! and its ubiquitous permeations are prolific in our highly polarized world. This toxic Parochialism partisanship manifests itself in two troubling ways I want to discuss today:

2) Caucasians Evangelicals acquit themselves no better even as they exhibit conservative principles I fully ascribe and affirm. To my bewilderment, many Caucasian Evangelicals conveniently cast those convictions aside for political expediency. Despite their Conservative bonafides, I find it literally mind-boggling that former President Donald J. Trump still holds significant sway in Republican politics. When former President William Jefferson Clinton exhibited quite similar wanton moral behavior as he ran for the Office of President, Conservatives were quick (correctly, I might) to label candidate Clinton unfit for public office. One uncompromising Christian principle Evangelicals must possess with integrity has to be consistency. One of my spiritual mentors, James White from Alpha & Omega Ministries, is keen to advocate is if one is wrong, then one should be wrong consistently in their thinking.

That spiritual wisdom has forever stayed with me as I sought to accurately contemplate the mind of God concerning His best means for human flourishing, which seeks to honor God’s command for man to exercise dominion over God’s creation. What is good for the goose has to be good for the gander. If William Jefferson Clinton’s moral foibles disqualified him from public office, then someone, please help this simple ole’ country from Mississippi understand what he is missing as you justify how you cannot, no; must not, take the same position about the candidacy of Donald Trump. As you seek to help me understand your thinking, please do so, remembering then-candidate Trump was shown on NBC news bragging about how he grabbed women’s private parts mere days before election day in 2020[1]. Add Trump bragging he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and still be elected, and now we have someone troublesome seeking the Office of the Presidency at the very least.

Yet, what sealed the deal for me was when Trump openly mocked and ridiculed a physically disabled reporter. That, for me, was beyond the pale. Yet, I most reluctantly came to be persuaded to vote for Trump in 2020, but I have already gone on the record I will not vote for Trump or anyone of a similar moral disposition ever again with fear and trembling if I come to stand before Christ and be found faulty in my thinking.

I am equally concerned, along with many others within the Evangelical community, of an ever-growing Christian Nationalism Ideology creeping into the Visible Church. Christian Nationalism is the belief that Christianity defines the American nation, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way. Popularly, Christian nationalists assert that America is and must remain a “Christian nation”—not merely as an observation about American history, but as a prescriptive program for what America must continue to be in the future. Scholars like Samuel Huntington have made a similar argument: that America is defined by its “Anglo-Protestant” past and that we will lose our identity and our freedom if we do not preserve our cultural inheritance.[2]

Unlike the proponents of Post-Millenniumism, God’s marching orders were never that the Church would eventually Christianize the world to usher in an era of Christ ruling upon the Earth. No, instead, the Bible clearly posits the world will grow in ever-increasing rebellion against its Creator.

Senator Raphael Warnock can brazenly take to Twitter and declare himself to be a Pro-Choice Pastor yet nonetheless garner near unanimous support from the African American community. As a committed Evangelical African American, my only concern is with African Americans who profess hope and trust in the Lordship of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Warnock has not only gained one of the highly coveted and extremely powerful one-hundred U.S. Senatorial seats; he Pastors one of the most well-known and venerated African American Churches in America.

By God’s providential management of human affairs, I am currently working in the great state of Georgia. I become nearly violently ill watching Senator Warnock’s commercials for reelection. Senator Warnock, in total concert with the Jeremiah 6:14 passage referenced in the opening paragraph, has the unmitigated gall to quote from Micah 6:8,

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Evangelicals from the African American community, how do you in good conscience politically align with an ordained minister who brazenly advocates for the unrestricted right to slaughter life created in the Imago Dei? Many in the Church today do not seek to grasp culpability will not be the same when we stand before Jesus Christ. The Word of God explicitly holds pastors to a higher level of accountability. They will be held to a stricter judgment per James 3:1.

Thus, Raphael Warnock retains an outsized responsibility to defend the Word of God. Yet, for political expediency, he promotes the greatest genocide in human history, all with the unvarnished support of African Americans in general and Evangelicals African Americans in particular, though I was mightily encouraged when I read about a coalition of twenty-five African American Pastors who took Pastor Warnock to task for his utterly repugnant support of Roe. Thankfully the triune, thrice-holy God will always have a courageous remnant of men and women who will not bend the knee to Baal, no matter how much the culture runs amok.

I steadfastly remain flabbergasted how so many from the professing Evangelical African American community remain wedded to the ever-increasing Godless Democratic Party. It is with no exaggeration whatsoever we can regard the current leading Democratic figure at any given time in human history as the most progressive liberal politician in human history. Look at the arc of Democratic politics, just since the 1980s. Bill Clinton’s position on abortion when he ran for POTUS was abortions should be safe, legal, and rare.

So, despite God’s clear and unmistakable duty for His official spokesmen (Prophets in the O.T. & Pastors in the N.T), Pastor Warnock, all without the capacity to blush, promotes the legal sanction of murder in the womb. Now, just watch the political support he will garner from African Americans in general and Evangelical African Americans in particular in Georgia, come election day.

History plainly reveals once society throws off the restraints of moral piety, the culture never reverts to its previous moral compliance with God’s means of human flourishing. The Democratic Party was never serious about abortions being rare. Barack Obama soon became known as the most Pro-Abortion President in U.S. history, only to be surpassed by Hilary Rodman Clinton, who current President, Joseph Biden has surpassed. Not surprisingly, very little has been made of Biden’s shameless reversal of his long-held support for the Hyde Amendment, which forbade the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions. Overnight, Biden capitulated and abandoned his stalwart support of Hyde when he saw his candidacy cater toward certain withdrawal in 2020. Biden threw all of his political chips in the center of the proverbial poker table in South Carolina and went on to win the Democratic nomination and eventually the Presidency. No big thing that all it cost him to gain the world was his very Soul. Nothing eternal riding, right?

Let me quickly make clear my denouncement of Raphael Warnock does not equate to a full-throated support of the Republican candidate, Herschel Walker. I repeatedly espouse that sometimes Evangelicals, seeking to be faithful to the Word of God, are presented with a real dilemma of whether they can support the candidate from the Republican Party. Troubling allegations have been brought forth, considering the moral fitness of Walker as a prime example of that reality living in a fallen world.

I never advocate there are never genuine, troubling issues Evangelicals seeking to be faithful to the Word of God do not have to wrestle with. Like many major voices in the Conservative Party, I affirm the candidacy of Donald Trump was and remains to this day very problematic. I did not vote for Trump in 2016 and very reluctantly voted for him in 2020. Eternity awaits as to whether I was right in either case, but I am supremely confident voting for any candidate from the Godless Democratic Party is something I can find no legitimate path as I understand the Holy Writ with full humility coming to the proper political position takes hard works and soulful contemplation.

Thus, if I lived in Georgia and became convinced of the redemption of Herschel Walker because he currently advocates positions the Bible affirms and denounces positions the Holy Writ regards as repulsive, I could, in good conscience, cast my ballot for him. Postulating all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God is correctly posited when we refer to someone’s past actions. Consequently, Walker’s past discretions do not automatically disqualify him from serving in political office. Yet, when Evangelicals assess the fitness of Warnock for public office, let alone spiritual oversight, it can do solely based on Warnock’s current self-disclosed political positions.

As always, I have bitten off more than you can chew in one session, so I will park it here and cover the second troubling issue in my next post. There I will discuss my angst with the Caucasian Evangelical community. For reasons I did not understand or agree with, Donald Trump is still considered a legitimate voice in Conservative politics. If the Conservatives present Donald J. Trump as the flag carrier for the Republican Party in the 2024 Presidential election, they will do so without my ballot. I will attempt to press my case in my next blog, Lord willing.

For the sake of relative brevity (at least for me😁), I will only mention Georgia Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams in passing. With complete confidence it would not cost her any political currency in the African American community, Abrams took to social media to denounce solid media evidence of the detection of the heartbeat as early as six weeks of development in the womb during pregnancy. It appears there is no limit to what a Democratic can allege and still retain African American political support.

Joseph Biden was equally supremely confident he could actually espouse out loud for all to hear, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black” during his now infamous appearance on an African American radio program called the Breakfast Club during the 2020 Presidential Election and without any real fear of losing African American support. What will it take for the African American Evangelical professing community to blush?

As always, let me know what you think. Until then, keep your hands to the plow and seek to serve for an Audience of One.

With fear and trembling,

Ricky Kyles, DEd.Min

[1] I remember hearing about this NBC New reports shortly before the November 2020 though it was probably first reported much earlier in the election cycle.

[2] What Is Christian Nationalism? | Christianity Today