Church Rot Update: Wolves in Pastor’s Clothing Edition

Have we reached a tipping point?

Andy Stanley of North Point Community Church in Atlanta

The amount of wickedness and heresy in the so-called “Evangelical” church has once again reached new heights that would have been unthinkable even one year ago. In my last post on this subject, it took six months of looking back to produce that update. Now, just 35 days later, I can fill this post with ten more instances of people pretending to be “pastors” who proclaim the wickedness of this world as good and acceptable instead of protecting their flocks. This foolishness isn’t new, but we may be at a tipping point. Efforts to make Christianity more “inclusive” have rejected Scripture and the Gospel and opened the door for all sorts of blasphemy and false teaching. They are genuinely pastors in wolves’ clothing...

• Recently, at First Church Somerville, Massachusetts, the pastor gave the microphone to a man dressed as a drag queen named Ruby Sims to sing “Peace on Earth”. The most sickening part about it was the congregation applauded in approval when the pastor introduced the drag queen.

• Pro-abortion Methodist pastor John M. Swomley has said this... “Abortion is a positive decision and not a lesser evil... Abortion is therefore pro-family and pro-life.” I’m sure God doesn’t see it that way.

• Rev. Raphael Warnock, the pro-LGBTQ and pro-abortion U.S. senator and so-called pastor, recently preached a sermon claiming that Isaiah 40:5 is about having queers and homosexuals offer their perspectives on God’s glory so that the rest of us might see it better. A few days ago, Atlanta’s “The Dream Center” recently invited Senator Raphael Warnock to the Dream Center’s 2022 ‘Thankful’ service. The entire service seemed like a pep rally to get churchgoers to vote for Raphael Warnock in the upcoming Georgia Senate run-off. During one part of his sermon, Woke Preacher Clips reported Murphy preaching, “I’m decreeing and declaring that folk who had no intention on voting for Raphael Warnock…the Spirit of God is going to arrest them.” Apparently, Warnock thinks he can tell God what to do.

• Rev. David Selzer of Concerned Clergy for Choice has written the following for the blessing of abortion clinics... “Bless this building and those who work here… who provide safe, legal, caring, and loving reproductive services, including abortion… they are doing God’s work.”

• Rev. Karen Vannoy, former “pastor” of Travis Park United Methodist Church in San Antonio, has spoken in support of abortion... “I am willing to take whatever heat would be generated by my support of what I think is right and in God’s will.” Rev. Vannoy is a former member of her local Planned Parenthood board.

• In a recent interview, Father Hermann Backhaus, a priest of the Diocese of Münster, Germany, said that consuming pornography “can have a relieving effect” on celibate clergy. “As a psychologist,” he said, “I do not judge or condemn porn consumption.” Backhaus said, “I work as a psychologist who is also a priest—and not the other way around.” In other words, for Fr. Backhaus, secular psychology trumps the Bible.

• Two weeks ago, Mega Church Pastor Andy Stanley said that pastors need to learn to preach in a way that allows people not to believe. Stanley consistently trashes Scripture by claiming that the Scriptures are nothing but a collection of ancient declarations put together by “superstitious men.” He teaches that because they aren’t really that important, and it isn’t what Christianity rests on. Stanley has also denied the existence of any revealed divine standard of morality to which we must all submit. His father, Charles Stanley, must be beside himself.

• Pope Francis is defending his choice of pro-abortion economist Mariana Mazzucato for the Pontifical Academy for Life, insisting that she will add some “humanity” to the Academy. Catholic Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has also defended the Pope’s appointment of Mazzucato, declaring that her positions may be “pro-choice,” but they are not “pro-abortion.” Pro-choice always was and always will be pro-abortion…

• Despite the evidence that the shooter at the Colorado Springs gay nightclub is non-binary who uses they/them pronouns, queer “pastor” Mike Angell from the nearby Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion says it’s time to hold anti-queer pastors accountable. Angell has stated, “as a queer pastor, as a gay priest, I feel like it’s also time that those of us in the religious community start holding homophobic clergy accountable. If you are in a church where anti-trans or anti-gay or otherwise homophobic material starts coming out of the mouth of your pastor on a Sunday morning, I encourage you to stand up and walk out. If you’re part of a denomination where you have colleagues who share anti-queer sentiment, especially if they do so from the pulpit, it’s time to call them out.” His words, not mine…

• A week ago, from the pulpit of the famed Trinity College chapel in Cambridge, England, Joshua Heath sermonized that non-erotic portrayals of Jesus’ penis in historical paintings “urge a welcoming rather than hostile response towards the raised voices of trans people,” according to the Daily Telegraph. “In Christ’s simultaneously masculine and feminine body in these works, if the body of Christ as these works suggest the body of all bodies, then his body is also the trans-body,” Heath said. Heath claimed that in the 14th-century Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg, pictured here, the depiction of Jesus’ side wound “takes on a decidedly vaginal appearance.” Dr. Michael Banner, the dean of Trinity College, has supported Heath in this apostasy. I don’t know how to respond to something that stupid…

Sadly, sexual perversion is being normalized in churches today with drag queen story hours and openly homosexual “pastors” teaching that the Bible doesn’t REALLY say anything negative about sexual perversion. Any thinking person will find passages condemning sexual perversion, including homosexual acts, throughout both testaments. (See a list here). This brings to mind what the serpent said to Eve as sounding very familiar...

3 Now the serpent was more cunning than any animal of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God REALLY said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden?” (Genesis 3:3)

Why does this seem to be getting worse month by month? One explanation is the secular leftist additions to seminary curriculum. For example, Union Seminary now offers a Master of Arts in Social Justice that consists of “theological, theoretical, historical, ethical, critical, practical and contextually accountable foundations for pursuing a more just and equitable world. The program centers on studying existing power dynamics and structures regarding gender, sexuality, race, class, and identities targeted for oppression, and how they shape and are shaped by religion, spirituality, and theology.” Not line-by-line Bible teaching for sure.

In 2nd Timothy, Paul warned that a time would come when people would no longer endure sound doctrine but instead turn to things that make them feel good about themselves in a world filled with rebellion against God:

2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. (2 Tim 4:2-4)

Apparently, that time has come...