Lutzer's Trumpite Christianity and its Message of Peace, Peace

https://www.vcyamerica.org/crosstalk/2020/11/27/we-will-not-be-silenced-2/

The episode description indicates that America isn't really bad at all. There's nothing about America that 'we' should be ashamed about.

From the onset the pronoun confusion begins with no distinction being made between being an American and having a conscientious mindset about being American versus that of a Christian who has an identity wholly separate from America and its culture – never mind the fact that the Christian identity calls us to a different set of ethics and goals. The two notions are wholly confused and this error dominates the interview as indeed this theology dominates the American Evangelical world.

For Lutzer (and CrossTalk) these concepts are confused and thus for him an attack on America is tantamount to an attack on the Church. This has been the governing narrative and driving purpose of his ecclesiastical career. It's nothing new. I was on to him decades ago and his 1986 Exploding the Myths that Could Destroy America even now sits on my heresy shelf. The book is filled with myths and distortions every bit as spiritually dangerous as the evils and perceived evils he wishes to counter.*

Lutzer wants to defend America and its system, and he wants to lionise its history. But if Lutzer had a genuine Biblically-informed worldview he would understand that America will perish in the fires of the Parousia. America is a vapour, the creation of men, deeply flawed and sinful, a Beast akin to Babylon, Assyria, and all the other hydra-empires depicted in Revelation.

As opposed to Lutzer, I want to defend Zion the Kingdom of Christ and its system and I want to understand its history. Lutzer conflates and confuses these things with America and thus in many respects (though he presents himself as a Christian conservative) he presents a far greater and subversive danger to the Church than the pure secularism of the Left or the rank godlessness of the political class he so despises – and yet so painfully (and sometimes laughably) does not understand. Like so many others he has fallen for disinformation in some cases and in others he has put on display a woeful ignorance of both history and the Scriptures. He is morally blinded by his idolatrous devotion to America and its narrative.

Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden represent no real threat to the Church. No Christian will be deceived by their message. All they can do is remove power and status which were sidelines anyway. They can take our coin – it's Caesar's anyway as Christ taught. But Lutzer and those like him – they can sink their hooks into the hearts of believers, lead them astray and cause them to lose their way. He's the greater threat.

Lutzer's message is pretty simple. America is great and the best thing a Christian can do is acknowledge that fact and celebrate it. America's done nothing substantively wrong. It's glorious and should be honoured. The wrongs in the world are for the most part found elsewhere and to be blamed on those who criticise America.

In the Old Testament the false prophets ran around saying 'Peace, Peace' to the people. The true prophets were calling the people to rend their clothes and douse themselves with ashes. They were calling them to repentance for their idolatry, their immorality, their avarice, and their hypocrisy. The prophets said the people were under judgment and they should submit to Providence and the call to political subjugation – a call suffering and a deferred Kingdom.

The false prophets countered this message. Peace, peace – you've done nothing wrong. God is not angry with you. He affirms you as you are. Fight Providence and grasp for power and glory in this age.

"That's not my message!" Lutzer would surely say. He's thundering against the Liberals and their support for abortion, sodomy and the like. He has no message of peace to America in that sense.

I don't mean to put words in his mouth but I've been down this road so many times and I already know where Lutzer is coming from so it's hardly a reach. The answer to such a protest is very simple.

We're not talking about America. They're lost. They already stand condemned. We're talking about the Church of Jesus Christ.

And in that capacity Lutzer is a false prophet calling 'Peace, peace'.

The Christian Church (or to be more specific his understanding of it) as a Christo-American entity has nothing to repent of – apart from its failure to zealously embrace Right-wing values. It's idolatry of power and money are pleasing to God – they are gifts, blessings. Its hypocrisy is nothing more than isolated incidents. Avarice? No, it's just good capitalist ethics being applied. Warmongering and the murdering of nations? No, that's Just War and ethically justified defense.

No, Lutzer is a modern version of those false prophets described by Jeremiah. He strengthens the hands of those that do evil. He teaches God's people to focus on and obsess over the profane. Indeed modern Evangelicalism is in many ways a theological ratification and sanctification of the profane. Because of their idolatry, the false church becomes as Sodom to God – an aberration, an adulteress. All the false church imagery on display in the New Testament is found in the false prophet descriptions in the Old – the men who said to Israel 'peace, peace' reaffirming their idolatries and wicked conduct – their syncretism of paganism with the religion of God.

In our day this is most poignantly evidenced in the narratives and power of Enlightenment America being combined and conflated with Biblical doctrine – resulting in a double lie.

They believe God has spoken through America's founding and its history but have ignored the fact that America was founded in sin, in rebellion and murder, and its history is one of sinful exploitation, theft, and slaughter. It is but another Babylon, another Beast rearing its horn. But for Lutzer and those like him, America is a New Zion, akin to the Kingdom of Christ (or a manifestation of it) and they back up this heretical narrative with bad theology and a host of myths and distortions of both history and God's revelation.

Lutzer and the other false teachers have (as Ezekiel described) built a flimsy wall that cannot stand a real assault and thus their phony American Zion has quickly collapsed. Ease, attractiveness, marketing, and vile contrived patriotic display in defiance of the judgment due their nation – these are the tools and wares of the modern Evangelical community and they too have now increasingly come to rely on women as a means of marketing and the fulfillment of leadership roles. The patterns of apostasy are always repeated and indeed 1 Corinthians 10 tells us these Old Testament patterns would be repeated in the context of the Church and thus passages like Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 13 are fully relevant to us – if read and understood through the lens of Christ and the Church. The context is different but the patterns and lessons are the same.

And indeed we see the apostle Peter take up this narrative in his final warnings to the Church. Our era, the last days would be plagued by false prophets who sometimes openly sometimes functionally deny the Lord that bought them. What else can we say about a supposed Church that rejects the teachings of Christ and his ethics, imperatives and warnings? The Evangelical community won't have them, in many cases the New Testament teacher they are most strongly opposed to is Christ Himself – it is a repeat of Roman Catholicism in a post Enlightenment Protestant context. It has become a type of Catholicism 2.0.

Because of their errors the way of truth will be evil spoken of. Indeed when one considers the likes of Lutzer and his allies and the larger movement they're part of it – what it has sponsored and supported in the political and geopolitical realm – then we see there is a functional apostasy at work. The movement has supported avarice, usury, theft on a global scale, war, political scheming and subversion along with draconian laws and censorship. They have made the name of Christ an occasion for pagans to blaspheme.

As always it comes back to money, those that think godliness is gain, those that can be bought and will ally themselves with evil and promote the agendas of the powerful for gain, for fame, and access to power. They've done it over and over again.

Their zeal to conquer the Earth and bring about God's Kingdom through their political machinations, exploitation, and war results in bondage, blindness, and condemnation.

Don't listen to them. Don't follow them. Their path is one of destruction. Our society is certainly given over to evil – in part because of the failures of these Christians and the knee-jerk response they've generated. At the end of the day we can say American society is evil – but you can't fight evil with heresy.

His disingenuousness is further on display in his quoting of Martin Luther King. Lutzer is certainly old enough to remember when King was hated by Evangelicals, excoriated by Fundamentalists, and generally despised by the White Christian community. Whether right or wrong, he was viewed as a communist subversive and the Civil Rights movement was opposed.

Today we have revisionist history at work. King is celebrated. It's the Democrats who are the racists. After all it was White Southern Democrats that opposed integration and formed the backbone of the KKK. This spurious, ridiculous, and disingenuous argument is utilised by the ignorant and charlatans. I leave it to the reader to decide where Lutzer falls on that spectrum.

Though they've tried to deny the reality of Nixon's Southern Strategy or the realignment of the parties in the South, the facts are there. Southern Democrats, the racists of old migrated en masse into the GOP throughout the 1960's, 70's, and 80's. Southern stalwarts such as Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, and Trent Lott all started as Democrats and then moved into the Republican Party. Today's solidly Red Republican South is the direct cultural heir of Jim Crow and the political order that backed the KKK. I'm sorry this fact offends them but the truth isn't served by continuing to promote lies. Lutzer can try to tie fascism in with the Left all he wants but the real truth about the American Right and the fascistic flirtations of the Christian Right are plain for all to see.

If Lutzer and other Evangelicals want to quote King then fine but do not pretend that their movement stood with him. They did not. They opposed him. If you've changed your mind then publically repent and make the shift known. Don't re-write the history to make your political faction look good. Where's the integrity here? Instead what we have is a cultural icon (MLK) that has become something of a name above reproach (itself a myth) and these Right-wing Evangelicals are attempting to appropriate his legacy. It's little more than a dirty attempt at bait-and-switch in order to claim the moral high ground and in political terms, it represents a desperate attempt to reach out to the Black community for votes.

The interview was an exercise in deceit and whitewash – of both Biblical teaching (which wasn't present) and history. The consistent reader of the Scripture will realise just how far removed these people are when it comes to not just money, riches, poverty, and power but the entire spectrum of Christian ethics. They have misread the Scriptures on a massive scale. There's no other way to explain it.

Lutzer wants to cry 'peace peace' to the Christian Right but indeed there is no peace. And their sham-wall will fall and when the Beast turns on the whore – we read that heaven rejoices. Sadly the faithful will also suffer in this coming conflagration. The pattern is always repeated.

This is a dangerous and confusing time in which discernment is needed and yet the 'conservative' Church has been compromised. False Teachers have been given free rein and they are the mouthpieces not for Christ but for a mammon system which has enslaved them. And as the caller segment revealed, there are even more extreme manifestations of this error on the loose within the Church.**

Christians must return to the Scriptures and seek discernment. A better understanding of history is also needed – at the very least for uncorrupted leaders. And yet anyone who would be faithful must contend with a multi-billion dollar media machine which incorporates the Church. We must pray and hope that a remnant will open their eyes and flee this false temple.

There are literally dozens of programmes on Christian radio every single day that echo this line. The hosts and guests are different but the narrative is exactly the same. It garners ratings because it tickles the ears of those entrapped by political Christianity and its sword and coin based concerns – but they do nothing to help the Church actually address the dire concerns of this hour. We (the Church) are in a crisis to be sure but these false teachers are blind guides and the last people on Earth to help the Church work through these problems and this dangerous situation.

----

*Not everything he opposes is in error. I too am concerned about technology which is certainly driven by market capitalism. And yet unlike him I view the sexual decline, collapse, and catastrophe as a result of the same libertarian-capitalist culture. The Communist bloc never indulged sexual wantonness. Such individualism and hedonism were connected with the West and viewed as subversive in their context. If anything the Communist bloc was viewed as prudish.

And yet like many others he has misread and misunderstood the modern protest movement and utilised many discredited quotes and materials. Just by way of example, BLM is charged with wanting to destroy the family and with being Marxist.

The Marxist charge is attached to some of the movement's founders and yet the larger movement being rooted in identity politics is not Marxist by any classical definition. It wants to combat systemic racism but like many groups operating in the capitalist context it is in fact a pseudo-left organisation struggling with identifying the problems of the system itself. There is no real Marxism to be found in the movement.

In terms of the family, the website's agenda is worded poorly and this has contributed to its misunderstanding. What is perceived as a broadside against the traditional family is in reality a pained acknowledgement that the Black community is broken – that the nuclear family has failed for the Black family in the Western context and this is due to levels of male incarceration and chronic poverty. People have spoken of the Black community as being matriarchal and yet (as has been so painfully demonstrated) that model doesn't work either. Boys need fathers and thus the community has been forced to rely on mentorship and the wider community in the form of community organisers, youth leaders, teachers, pastors, and the like.

I don't like reading it but I understand where it comes from. But I can't in any capacity call it Marxist. This is just a gross (if inept) attempt to read an ideology into a statement and an attempt to connect dots that in reality are unrelated.

**As an aside the CrossTalk show always includes a Brannon Howse segment. I have loosely followed this sad, pathetic, and misguided man for years. Certainly corrupt, I do not doubt he believes his own propaganda and it's no accident his segment appears on the Bircherite dog-and-pony show that is VCY's CrossTalk. On the Lutzer episode he decries the fact that Americans have lost faith in their social institutions – a real concern for Christians right? Well, for the Christo-American Howse it is a concern but note his blindness in that he doesn't realise the role played by the Right in this decline. They attacked and discredited the government so viciously under Obama that it helped lead to the election of Trump who only further sought to mock and disgrace these institutions when they didn't bow the knee to him and lick his boots. Howse can decry this decline but he's played his part in it as have the political forces he has allied with. What a case of the blind leading the blind!