By The Epoch Times - Beth Brelje - 8/7/2023

From a distance, many Christian churches look alike. They may have a steeple and stained glass windows and sing familiar songs, but the theology is increasingly different as independent churches and some denominations adopt a woke worldview, splintering denominations and splintering what it means to be a Christian.

Today the United Methodist, United Church of Christ, Episcopal, and some Presbyterian and Lutheran churches are among those that fly the rainbow flag to welcome the LGBT community. Some in the LGBT community have become preachers. Some dress in drag in the pulpit. Many of the same churches are telling their congregations when to support abortion. They speak of racism, climate change, and politics.

The term "woke" is used by both liberals and conservatives to describe a number of radical progressive ideologies, including critical race theory, social justice, and gender theory.

“If you want to boil down what tokenism is, it's all based on sex. And that is homosexuality, it is transgender sex, same-sex marriages. It is couples living together outside of marriage, and of course, don't want to be condemned. Wokeism is trying to accommodate sin and make people feel good about their sin,” the President of Samaritan's Purse, Rev. Franklin Graham, told The Epoch Times.

“What is so important for everybody to understand is the doctrinal position of the church that they're attending," Mr. Graham said. "And for me, I want to attend a church that believes the Bible to be the word of God—not just contains the word of God—but believes from cover to cover that the Bible is holy and it's inspired by God and that every word of the Bible is true.”

The Bible clearly says homosexuality is a sin, Mr. Graham says, and transgenderism is a lie; it doesn’t exist. Why Everyone Is Wrong

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“This whole notion that we are male, female, and transgender is just not true,” Mr. Graham said. “It is the church trying to appease people who want to live in sin—adopting sin as to be the norm—and the Bible says we should resist sin. We should repent from sin and turn from our sins. As Christians sin, we should not be happy about it, not boasting about it, not flaunting it. We should be repentant.”

This is why traditional Christian churches don’t celebrate LGBT pride. They don’t celebrate anything the Bible describes as sinful.

"We certainly want to love people and be gracious to people,” Mr. Graham said. “But we don't have to agree with people. What happens with the LGBT folks— If you don't agree with them, then they get angry, and they say that you use hate speech if you say that their lifestyle is wrong. It's not that I say their lifestyle is wrong; it’s what God says. I think that's where we come back and stand on the authority of the scripture.

Here's what God says. God says murder is a sin. God says stealing is a sin. God says giving a false witness or a false testimony is a sin. And God says that adultery is a sin, and not honoring your parents is a sin. We have to keep going back to the authority of scripture and what the Bible has to say about that particular issue.”

When trying a church for the first time, attendees may ask someone for a doctrinal statement; often they can find it on the church’s website.

Division and a Diminished Role in Society

“You see a lot of division today and churches splitting apart,” Mr. Graham said. “Take the Church of England. Most of their African congregations have broken away because of sex, and the church accepts a moral code today that is contrary to the teachings of the Bible.”

Division and more people turning away from faith have diminished the church’s historical role in society.

“Say 100 years ago, if you were living in a community and your house burned down, the church would be where you went to find housing. It would be the church that would take you in and put you with another family that would feed you, help get you clothes, and men of the church would come out and try to help rebuild your house,”

Mr. Graham said. “Of course, [the] government has tried to take those responsibilities from the church. We've seen, in the last 100 years, all these various social programs that the government has adopted. Unfortunately, the government can't do it as well or as [effectively] as the church. So the church has lost its standing in the community, as it was once, maybe 100 years ago.”

As faith and politics become more deeply intertwined, culture changes. The book “How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World” includes numerous mentions of how the destruction of faith is a hallmark of communism.

“Communism teaches people to oppose belief in God and to cast out the divine. It simultaneously launches attacks on religions from the outside while manipulating people to corrupt religion from the inside. Religions have been politicized, commercialized, and turned into entertainment. Numerous morally corrupt clergymen put forward fallacious interpretations of religious texts, misleading their followers and going so far as to commit adultery with their lay members, or even pedophilia,” the book says. “

This chaos has left sincere religious believers bewildered and bereft of hope. Just a century ago, an unwavering belief in God was a sign of moral decency. Now, religious believers are considered foolish and superstitious. They keep their beliefs to themselves, not even discussing their faith among friends, for fear of being mocked.”

Gospel Issues

Sermons rife with political activism and preachers teaching children there are more than two genders can be seen on the Facebook page “Woke Preacher Clips.” The page includes a congregation reciting the “Sparkle Creed’ which prays to a “non-binary God, [whose] pronouns are plural.”

To maintain anonymity, the founder of the page would not share a name, but he told The Epoch Times in a text chat that the page was started in August 2020. It contains clips of sermons from around the United States.

“I was focused mostly on [collecting clips on] antiracism, racial justice, reparations, that sort of thing,” he said, adding that there have been some trends in messaging. In 2021 and 2022, there were a lot of sermons spreading government talking points on COVID restrictions and vaccine mandates. “That has also quieted down with no public repentance. Also big in 2022 was abortion, with a lot of people saying the only valid way to be pro-life is to also support cradle-to-grave government welfare programs … What I've focused on lately is organizations spreading government talking points on climate change.”

“The topics change, but the message stays the same: conservative Christians should reconsider who they vote for because issues like racial justice, public health, pro-life womb to tomb, etc. aren't partisan issues, they're Gospel issues. True debates on these topics don't really happen in the platforms of top evangelical publications … the conversation is between hard left and center-left to depict left-wing politics as the norm for Christian thought.”

Mr. Graham reminds us that comfort and meaning do not come from a church building.

“It is not the church that gives the comfort. It is God, if we are obedient to Him, and if we live our lives for him, and obey His Word,” Mr. Graham said. “He's the one who provides the comfort, and when we lose a loved one, or we go to the doctor and we have a bad report, and he says you got six months to live, we can take comfort in knowing that our life is in the hands of an almighty God.

         Beth Brelje - Author (Reporter)

Beth Brelje is a national, investigative journalist covering politics, wrongdoing, and the stories of everyday people facing extraordinary circumstances. Send her your story ideas: Beth.brelje@epochtimes.us