As Goes the Church, So Goes the Country

Earlier this month, Episcopal Church leaders, at a meeting in Houston, Texas, decided same-sex couples will now be allowed to marry in any diocese, even if the local bishop morally objects to gay nuptials.

Jeff Walton, an Anglican program director for the Institute on Religion & Democracy, said, "I think this is going to perpetuate the Episcopal Church's decline that has already been underway for close to 20 years now, and we'll probably see some people walking away from the Episcopal Church as a result of this."

Surely, the state of true religion is in a bad way. Our nation is also far removed from its moral underpinnings. As goes the church, so goes the country.

Today it's much like the situation described in Hosea chapter 4, where the prophet said that God had "a case against" Israel. He said there was "no truth, no faithful love, and no knowledge of God in the land!" Cursing, lying, murder, stealing, and sexual immorality were rampant; one act of bloodshed followed another.

The Lord laid much of the blame on the priests and the prophets of that era, charging that they were destroying the nation, their "mother." God rejected them because they were derelict in their duty to him, failing to teach the "knowledge" of God to their posterity. Instead, they encouraged others to sin to satisfy their own appetites. Through sexual indulgence and insobriety, sanctioned by religion, the people had lost their ability to think straight.

Doesn't that sound a lot like America today?

May God forgive me for my many shortfalls. But when I survey the landscape of church leadership, most apparent are the Bishops of spiritual and sexual idolatry, Vicars of socialism in their religious garb, Ministers that resemble snake oil salesman more than prophets of God, and Clergy who pretentiously claim some kind of higher spirituality by refusing to address morally reprehensible social and political practices.

It is the latter, which may bear the greatest guilt.

Recently, I came across a Facebook post by a fellow minister. He put up a video clip of a prominent evangelical preacher claiming the church's "mandate is not political, it's not social, and it's not economic." The church is only to focus on the proclamation of the Gospel, he said.

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