It is interesting that God has used the whole Trump phenomenon to expose the cleavage that has existed in the Church for quite some time now as between the Biblical Christians on one side and the Cultural Marxist / R2K “Christians” on the other side of the chasm. This has been seen again most recently with the hue and outcry being breathed out by the Liberation theology type Churches over what they consider to be the absconding of their Christian symbols as used in the Trump march. These types expressed by the likes of Wheaton College, and Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville Kentucky (Where Al Mohler attends). These and others have been hyperventilating that Jesus was desecrated by the Christians marching on 06 January 2021 in DC. They are doing all they can to create distance between themselves and those who marched in DC.
Now, as a large contingency of those marching in DC are from the Pentecostal strain of Christianity I have my own problems with many in that crew of marchers – enough so that I also don’t really care to be associated with their erratic theology and behavior. However, on the issue of where the chief danger in this country lies count me a Pentecostal fanboy. On this subject, the Pentecostal ecstatics are far closer to the truth than the “we want to be as close as possible to those who hate Christ and still claim to be distinct” Evangelicals who populate the R2K “Reformed,” Southern Baptist, and Evangelical world. For simplicity’s sake let’s call them the “Soy Boy” crowd.
The Soy Boy crowd communicate that they desperately desire to be neutral in the current kulturkampf that we are experiencing. They consistently suggest that Jesus doesn’t really care about the kulturkampf and that for all they know Antonio Gramsci may be as close to the truth on cultural matters as R. L. Dabney was though they are certain that R. J. Rushdoony is a dunce. On one hand, they present a studied indifference to the kulturkampf while on the other hand, they are constantly letting their slip show that there is more Herbert Marcuse about them on cultural issues than there is John Calvin. They are forever raising dire warnings about “Christian America” theology but are never heard sounding the klaxon on the Sovietization of America. They trip all over themselves rushing to the mic to denounce Pastors who have opened their Churches to worship Christ (looking at you RSC) while at the same time you never hear a peep from them in denouncing those who are forbidding us from worshiping Christ and doing so via contrived reasoning. They seem to be blind to the irony of strip joints and pot dispenser businesses remaining open while the houses that are responsible for Word and Sacrament remain under tight closure orders in many states. John Knox wouldn’t recognize them as ministers of Christ. Neither do I.
These chaps spent too much time reading Harvey Conn, Meredith Kline, and the Frankfurt authors and not enough time reading Calvin, Knox, and Rutherford. Their studies find them more beholden to humanist authors than Christian authors. They are passing that legacy on to those who will pilot pulpits in the West today.
The Reformed Church in the West needs another grand Reformation and it needs that Reformation as coming out of the “conservative” Reformed denominations.
Tell me how you know that the majority were pentecostal
I don’t know it with an ontological certainty. However, Pentecostals have a distinct feel when you press them all together and the clips I saw demonstrated that feel.
Interesting. I would enjoy your reasoning about this at a later time when you are not so busy. P.S> I’m a 6 point calvinist, that’s a joke, I’M really just a plain ole 5 point.