None of this should be new if you have followed me for the past four years. I made these diagnoses both during the lockdowns as well as during the aftermath. I read voraciously and studied extensively looking at everything from medical journals, interviews with medical and research staff, world history, church history, political theology, and the text of Scripture. 

In no particular order the reasons why most churches were wrong on Covid are as follows. I will list them here in a group and then expand on each idea below. 

• Tim Keller and Winsome Cultural Engagement
• The Effeminacy of the Evangelical Pastorate
• Deferral to Big Eva Influencers like TGC, CT, and the ERLC
• Deferral to Big Pharma and Big Government
• Historical and Theological Ignorance

Tim Keller and Winsome Cultural Engagement 

Probably a good overview on this is James R. Wood’s article “How I Evolved on Tim Keller” over at First Things. 

“[Keller] has famously emphasized that Christianity is “neither left nor right,” instead promoting a “third way” approach that attempts to avoid tribal partisanship and the toxic culture wars in hopes that more people will give the gospel a fair hearing.” 

Keller was a pastor in New York City so this strategy wasn’t designed in hopes of avoiding tribal partisanship so that conservatives would give the gospel a fair hearing. No, this was an intentional strategy that catered to the sensibilities of leftist cultural elites. So how bad was it? USA Today columnist Kirsten Powers wrote that Keller never spoke of homosexuality or abortion being sins from the pulpit and that eventually she left the church and the faith once she found out these were key beliefs. What Keller peddled as winsomeness was little more deceptively pandering to leftists that inevitably lead them to be justifiably bitter and resentful. 

The go along to get along methodology of Keller carried over into how many evangelicals addressed Covid. Again, they are not worried about offending conservatives. This is a big city strategy designed to patronize leftists. The majority of churches did what would impress leftists; they locked down, masked up, got the jab, and never spoke a word of discontent. 

Deferral to Big Eva Influencers like TGC, CT, and the ERLC 

This is clearly connected to Tim Keller above as these organizations and those like them have fully embraced Keller’s third way methodology. But thanks to the research of Megan Basham we know it didn’t just stop at the third way no there was something far more sinister and far more lucrative at play within these organizations. Every one of these organizations was bought by and caught up in a web of leftist cultural elites, corporations, and organizations funneling millions of dollars into transforming the ideology and theology of denominations, parachurch organizations, publishers, churches, and mega church pastors. Megan Basham has thoroughly documented these efforts in her book “Shepherds for Sale.” 

The end result of all this was mega churches championing lockdowns, Big Eva elites pushing the vaccine, publishers weaponizing empathy in various poorly reasoned love thy neighbor arguments. One of the most disgusting acts of betrayal was the articles written by TGC slandering and denigrating faithful Canadian pastors, several of whom I went to seminary with, who defied lockdowns and were jailed. 

These organizations proved somewhat trustworthy for years on basic theological issues providing occasionally helpful cultural commentary along the way. But for over a decade they have been infiltrated and bought by leftists. These were poisoned wells, and undiscerning evangelicals were drinking their lies by the bucket full with disastrous consequences for the people under their care. Our evangelical elder statesmen became little more than puppets, mere mouthpieces of the regime. 

The Effeminacy of the Evangelical Pastorate 

The effeminacy of the pastorate is nothing new. It has grown dramatically worse over the past century as feminism metastasized throughout the cultural landscape. This phenomenon is nothing new as Charles Spurgeon noted over a century ago saying: 

“I am persuaded that one reason why our working-men so universally keep clear of ministers is because they abhor their artificial and unmanly ways. If they saw us, in the pulpit and out of it, acting like real men, and speaking naturally, like honest men, they would come around us… We must have humanity along with our divinity if we would win the masses. Everybody can see through affectations, and people are not likely to be taken in by them.” 

If ministers were effeminate in the 1800s imagine what Spurgeon would say today as feminism has run rampant through evangelical seminaries, publishing houses, and churches. Whatever Spurgeon’s rebuke to our current leadership would be I guarantee that many would critique his tone. To which he would boldly reply, “Oh, my brethren! Bold-hearted men are always called mean-spirited by cowards.” 

And cowardice is what we experienced in 2020. C.S. Lewis warned us about this very thing. 

“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” 

You could drive through entire cities and possibly even entire states on a Sunday morning during the lockdowns and see closed churches led by geldings; men without chests who lacked the courage and honor to live in bold-hearted defiance of tyranny. We expected virtue and enterprise and got only silence and compliance. 

Deferral to Big Pharma and Big Government 

We were told over and over to “trust the science” and “trust the experts” and the church trusted the experts in Washington, at the CDC, on the TV, and in their very pews; unfortunately, all the experts were lying. 

What makes this a tricky situation is you are no longer seeking advice on a medical decision that only has consequences for you and your family. Now entire careers, lifestyles, untold financial incentives, and probably large amounts of unpaid medical debt hung in the balance. How many medical professionals do you know that resigned their positions or were fired for refusing the jab or refusing to comply with arbitrary masking or social distancing mandates? I know several. Men who at a time when it was incredibly difficult to find employment permanently changed their careers and medical students who, despite their student loan debt that would still have to be paid, quit medical school because they refused to comply. 

While I know several courageous medical professionals who sacrificed everything rather than take an experimental vaccine, I know far more blue-collar men who stood their ground during Covid. One’s livelihood is a tremendous thing to have held over your head. Whether they truly believed the medical establishment’s lies regarding the efficacy of the jab, masks, or social distancing or whether they had hesitations and got the shot because they were unwilling to lose their job and the lifestyle it affords the net result was the same. 

By June 2021 the American Medical Association reported that 96% of all physicians had been fully vaccinated while at that same time only half of blue-collar workers had been vaccinated. Trusting those individuals most willing to, though they had medical qualifications for an educated opinion, take an experimental shot to keep their jobs was the wrong call. These men were given undue influence inside of many churches and the voices of blue-collar men were either ignored or silenced. 

Historical and Theological Ignorance 

I have and will continue to read and write extensively on this issue because our failure at this point is inexcusable. I started by tearing through the scriptures for outright examples of civil disobedience like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, for covert ones like Rahab, and for those who would stand before kings and assert their rights like Paul. I found the scriptures to be replete with examples of the faithful who boldly asserted that it is better to obey God than men regardless of the consequences of such obedience. Big Eva and local churches traded the rich wealth contained within the Scriptures for simplistic readings of Romans 13, which deny the analogy of faith, and for poorly reasoned “love thy neighbor” arguments. 

In 1780 Robert Robinson, author of the beloved hymn “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” wrote “Christian Submission to Civil Government” a discourse on Romans 13. Consider this excerpt below rebuking self-interested expositors who have perverted the oracles of God. 

“I freely confess my brethren, I never read the text without emotions of pity. Pity that such writers as St Paul, pity that such a wise and well written period as this, naturally so conducive to the good of society, should be so perverted and misconstrued as they have been by self-interested expositors! In the times of our ancestors, in the days of despotism, thousands and tens of thousands have been expended in hiring pens to pervert, or in rewarding them for perverting, the sacred oracles of God, and thus St Paul has been converted into a conspirator against the rights of mankind.” 

This is not an obscure or unknown individual. And yet his exposition of Romans 13 was completely unknown to evangelicals during the tyrannical lockdowns and mandates. It was there, it was accessible for free on the internet, but most never looked for it or countless works like it because, like those that Robinson rebuked, they were careful to comply with, and even conspired with, tyrants to preserve their own self-interests. 

How common is Robinson’s understanding of Romans 13? Is his an obscure one of-a-kind reading of the text or is he standing upon the shoulders of generations of expositors and drawing from a deep fountain of theological wealth? To answer this question, we turn to a rather unlikely source that has become one of my favorite resources in my study. 

John Lindsay criticizes Protestant political theory in his “The Short History of the Regal Succession and the Rights of the Several Kings Recorded in the Holy Scriptures” by (1686-1768). Specifically, he is addressing William Whiston’s “Scripture Politicks: or an Impartial Account of the Origin and Measures of Government Ecclesiastical and Civil.” Consider the excerpt below. 

“That the magistrate is the minister of God no longer, or otherwise, than while he exercises his office for his people’s good! That in case of idolatry, heresy, popery, persecution, tyranny, arbitrary power, or any mal-administration, the people lawfully may resist, and their representatives are bound in duty, for the public good, to depose, yea to arraign and put to death, ‘any the most rightful prince; being in all such cases (of which also they are the judges) freed from all subjection and allegiance! That such resistance is justifiable by scripture in case of necessity; and there is no obligation to passive obedience in such like cases! 

These, and a great many more of the like them, are Abundantly interspersed throughout the known writings of Calvin, Beza, Knox, Goodman, Suarez, Mariana, Parsons, Penry, Buchanan, Leighton, Burton, Calamy, Marshal, Bradshaw, Milton, Goodwin, Ashcam, Harrington, Hobbes, Ludlow, Baxter, Owen, Locke, Sidney, Hunt, Johnson, Tutchin, and others of the association, as well Jesuits as Puritan-Rebels and Regicides: not to speak of some moderns of Greater note; whom (as a learned divine says) I forbear to ‘ name, both to avoid the loss of time, which Such a long catalogue would take up, and the envy which would fall upon me, for naming some of all professions, who yet live, or whose memory is yet fresh among us. But I cannot omit Mr. Whiston whose Scripture Politics will fall under a particular examination in the process of this work.” 

The position that Lindsay Is countering states that when governments fail to function within their God designed role, as an agent of God’s wrath upon the wrongdoer, that those governments have become illegitimate and therefore can and should be resisted and overthrown. Governments that have become tyrannical and terrorize those who do good can justly be rebelled against according to this position. This is the position held by Robert Robinson. This is also the position held by the multitude men Lindsay lists and the many more he forbeared to name. 

Writing in the 1700s, when such research was far more laborious than it is today, Lindsay was able to compile a list of some of the greatest theological minds to his time who all supported resisting unjust rulers. And yet not a single big Eva publication weighed the merits of these arguments made by numerous giants of the faith. 

We could also turn to the greatest theological mind America has ever produced and examine Jonathan Edwards 1775 sermon “Submission to Rulers.” He begins by clearly stating the importance of Scripture as the first and final authority on this issue: 

“For if God has revealed his mind concerning the nature, extent, and end of civil government, we may be sure that such a revelation is a perfect and infallible rule for us.” 

What then does Edwards conclude is the clear and authoritative teaching of scripture? 

“Upon the whole I think we may justly infer that the doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance are not the doctrines of the Bible. . . The truth is, and the whole spirit of scripture sustains it, that rulers are bound to rule in the fear of God and for the good of the people; and if they do not, then in resisting them we are doing God service.” 

Just as Edwards was convinced that Scripture sets forth the “nature, extent, and end of civil government” so to Abraham Kuyper spoke to the limits, the sphere as he would frame it, of civil government in his 1898 Stone Lectures at Princeton Seminary. 

“The government may neither ignore nor modify nor disrupt the divine mandate, under which these social spheres stand. The sovereignty, by the grace of God, of the government is here set aside and limited, for God’s sake, by another sovereignty, which is equally divine in origin. Neither the life of science nor of art, nor of agriculture, nor of industry, nor of commerce, nor of navigation, nor of the family, nor of human relationship may be coerced to suit itself to the grace of the government. The State may never become an octopus, which stifles the whole of life. It must occupy its own place, on its own root, among all the other trees of the forest, and thus it has to honor and maintain every form of life which grows independently in its own sacred autonomy.” 

Our forebears had tremendous rebukes for those who were unwilling to resist tyranny and to rightly check rogue governments operating outside of their God-ordained sphere. 

In 1775 Caleb Evans, a Calvinist Baptist minister in Bristol UK, wrote “British Constitutional Liberty” wherein he charges future generations: 

“You are called to the careful preservation of your liberty. It is a trust committed to you and which you are under the strongest obligations religiously to preserve and hand down unimpaired to posterity.  It is the price of blood. It has hitherto preserved not without the severest struggles with the sons of violence and tyranny. And shall we after all be regardless of the precious gem, and unconcerned about its preservation? How can we answer it to posterity, who would then have reason to rise up no to bless but to curse us!” 

Kuyper offers a similar charge to preserve liberty of conscience against tyrants: 

“It has cost a heroic struggle to wrest this greatest of all human liberties from the grasp of despotism; and streams of human blood have been poured out before the object was attained. But for this very reason every son of the Reformation tramples upon the honor of the fathers, who does not assiduously and without retrenching, defend this palladium of our liberties. In order that it may be able to rule men, the government must respect this deepest ethical power of our human existence. A nation, consisting of citizens whose consciences are bruised, is itself broken in its national strength.” 

I could go on, and likely will in the future, but suffice it to say that numerous giants of the faith gone before us have defended both in written and spoken word and often with their own blood and their very lives that civil government is an institution established by God and therefore its nature, purpose, and limits are also set forth by God in Holy Scripture.  Furthermore, we have been charged by God to preserve and to pass down this palladium of our liberties unimpaired to our posterity and will one day give an account both to our children and grandchildren but ultimately our Sovereign God regarding this great responsibility. 

As I have noted elsewhere most evangelicals bought into the lie that these were unprecedented times. Nothing could be farther from the truth. What was unprecedented what the church’s laziness in the face of such a foe as the modern tyrannical technocratic state. They simply didn’t do the research. They didn’t do the reading. They ignored our forebears and the wealth of wisdom they left behind. And they deferred to fools and tyrants and made them de facto pastors and elders at churches across the globe. Their churches could have been a city on a hill amidst the darkness of global tyranny and instead they chose fear and silence. They did not deliver unimpaired to posterity what was once purchased by streams of human blood. They owe the world, their congregations, and their Sovereign the sincerest of apologies.