A pastor from Sioux City, IA has released a new movie called
Enemies Within the Church. When I lived in Sioux City, I knew of the church but
do not remember ever meeting the pastor. If we ever did meet and if the movie
is any indication, we would agree on some things like the true definition of
the Gospel and we would disagree on some things like their claim that Marxist
ideology is taking over the church, which is the main premise of the movie.
Cary Gordon is the pastor of Cornerstone World Outreach
Church and is a third generation preacher. In the movie, he describes his
family’s ministries and it is clear he has a passion for the Gospel of Christ.
At the end of the movie, they include an extended clip of Gordon preaching on
how pastors need to preach the Gospel and how Christians need to live by the
teachings of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. He rightly
criticizes Pastor Andy Stanley for his comment that we should be “unhitched”
from the Old Testament. The OT is where God gives humans his law and as Paul
points out, the law is what makes us realize how sinful we are and how we
cannot do anything about our sin problems on our own. This then points us to
the Savior Jesus Christ and the work he did on the cross to pay for our sins.
This is the Gospel and it includes both the OT and the NT. I applaud his
passion and see that this movie is based on this message.
There are, though, a number of places where I struggle with
the ultimate goal that this movie has and feel it is presenting a myoptic view
of how the Gospel is applied to different cultural issues. As an example, the
movie shows a clip of Pastor David Platt saying that he does not want to preach
parts of the Bible that he, as a white pastor, prefers and neglect the parts
that the black community prefers. They present this as a negative preaching of
the Bible and point to it as he is bowing down to the “leftist” agenda. This
could not be further from the truth. Platt’s comment is admitting that there
are passages that people read differently and we should preach the whole Bible
and not just the portions we like. This is one of the ideas behind the push to
go through whole books of the Bible and not just preach topical sermons. There
are hard passages and they need to be taught to our congregations.
The movie makes a lot of claims about what different leaders
and pastors are doing and they all boil down to a Marxist agenda is taking over
the church and thus, water-down the message of Christianity to the point where
it is ineffective. What America needs is the Church to get back to preaching
the Law of God. This will show people how lost they are, have them turn back to
God, then they will follow the rules of God, and we can then get back to our
conservative Christian principles, which is the basis of America’s prosperity
and status in the world. Anything that does not align with their view of what
should be is deemed as part of this Marxist shift in the church and needs to be
called out and rejected.
While I understand the push and love the call to get back to
following God with our whole heart, the makers of the movie fail to see that
much of what they are “calling out” is actually people trying to live out the
Gospel with their whole heart, just in different ways than Gordon, et.al.
Thinking hard about racial reconciliation and religious freedom do not come
from Marxist ideals and are not “woke”, as they use the term pejoratively in
the movie, but by looking at the Gospel and seeing that God made each person in
His image. This gives them value and should be treated as such. Christians
showing people they have value helps them see that God gave them value and has
a purpose for their life. In order for that plan to be realized, they need to
be reconciled to God because of their sin, as the Gospel says.
There are many examples but this one portion stuck out as a
microcosm of the movie and illustrates the struggles I have with it. After
spending the majority of the movie pointing out what they feel is a leftist
shift in the church and calling out many different organizations and leaders
for pushing this evil agenda, they stop and ask why would anyone teach this
when it is so obviously against the Bible message. Michael O’Fallon is the
founder and CEO of Sovereign Alliance and gives the answer to this question. He
says that the reason that people are spreading this message is because these
leaders are in search of power.
This answer comes across as lazy and arrogant. It is lazy
because if one spends anytime reading Russell Moore, Tim Keller, and David
Platt, their thinking about the Gospel is deep, rich, and fundamentally
Biblical. To assign this motivation to
them is not being honest to their writing and their ministries. They may apply
the Gospel differently than the makers of the film, but to say they are
anti-Gospel because of how they apply the Gospel to current events is meant to
be a “gottcha” argument because to the makers of the film, there is only one
correct understanding and application of the Gospel.
This leads to my second point of the answer being
arrogant. Instead of trying to
understand where these leaders are coming from and their definition of the
Gospel, which is very similar to Gordon’s, they assume that anyone that does
not agree with them is unbiblical and wrong. They gloss over any idea or stance
that they disagree with as harmful because they cannot understand that they
themselves may have an incorrect view of that issue and their approach may not
be Christ-like.
For example. in the movie, it is presented that Russell
Moore and the ERLC (Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern
Baptist Convention) worked to overturn zoning laws so that Muslims could build
a mosque and used as evidence that Moore is working against the Gospel by
supporting this false and dangerous religion. What they failed to present is
that Moore was acting in complete agreement with the belief in the Baptist
Faith and Message (the Southern Baptist Statement of Faith) on Religious
Liberty in fighting against unfair zoning laws that discriminated against any
religion. This statement is deeply rooted in how the country was founded and is
based on the power of the Gospel that is only present in Christianity. Thus, if
there is a level playing field with regards to religion, Christianity has the
power of God and will ultimately win. So, the government should not be
“stacking the deck” in the favor of one religion over another. Besides, like
political power, this only works for the party in control. As soon as the other
side takes over, they will be crying foul.
Please remember, the Pilgrims did not come over to America
so that they could be Christians. They were able to be Christians in England.
They came over to America because they did not want to be told which type of
Christian they needed to be. They wanted the government to stop favoring one
brand of Christianity over another or one religion over another.
Unfortunately, the makers of Enemies Within the Church see
their perspective as the only one and everything else as “Marxist” and
“leftist”. They throw many accusations up on the screen. Some are valid and
some are not. Some are supported well and others are supported inadequately and
even use distortions and spin instead of honestly presenting the facts. In the
end, this movie is about making Christians into people that support
conservative values on social values as indicators of a changed heart. The end
goal is not holiness to God through a changed heart but that changed heart as a
means to a society that holds conservative views. This is why I think this
falls flat. They are accusing others of using the Gospel message as a means to
change society when they are doing the same thing only in the opposite
direction. The Gospel is not to be used in this manner.
The Gospel should lead us to Christ so that the Holy Spirit
can change our lives so we can bring others to Christ, all stop.
