By Joseph Mattera

In this article, Joe identifies the unfolding secularism that is overtaking our cities and calls for concerted action by believers to take a stand against this onslaught.  I could not agree more with Joe’s conclusions.  Let’s take a stand together!

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As a Christ-follower who has lived in New York City all his life, I have witnessed the increased secularization of our great city, especially within the past year. For example, not only was same-sex marriage made legal in our state, but there were also laws passed that put undue regulations on pregnancy crisis centers, laws making it necessary for churches to renew and prove their tax-exempt status annually (or face the consequence of having their tax-exempt status revoked), a policy enacted by the mayor that banned nativity scenes and Christmas trees from the Staten Island Ferry terminal, a decision by the mayor to ban clergy from participating in the ceremonies marking the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001, and most recently, the mayor and city officials have given our churches notice that they can no longer rent publically funded community facilities and public schools for Sunday worship. (Note: This past week, the New York City Housing Authority reversed course because of the pressure put on them by our churches.)

I’m sure there are even more examples of secularization that I am not remembering at this time. The point is, there is an underlying ideology that we must understand so people of faith can proactively resist these trends instead of always being on the defensive and reacting to the anti-faith bias of many cultural elites.

It is not as though Christians are in the minority in New York City. There are more than one-and-a-half million Evangelicals in our city, not including mainstream Protestants, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believers, which may bring the number up way past half of the eight million residents of our city!  Thus, it is a minority of people in power who want to rid the city of any religious influence in the public sphere.

The trend towards secularization first started after the Protestant Reformation in Europe in the 17th century, when the so-called Enlightenment first separated faith from reason. This began with Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, who first taught that discovering truth is possible outside of divine revelation. Hundreds of years later, this resulted in elevating human reason over faith as a reaction to the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church and also to the horrible religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, e.g. the Thirty Years War in the 17th century which devastated Germany more than the two world wars!

This trend towards elevating humanity and human reason over and against God and all gods is continuing to be unpacked today in society. It is primarily disseminating its false gospel in universities that Christian parents pay thousands of dollars per year to fund! (Many saints don’t tithe to God yet they will pay +$30,000 annually to fund an education that robs their posterity of their faith!)

The following are some of the traits of the secular city:

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment is twisted to mean the exclusion of church from state, or the exclusion of God from state

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which has to do with Congress not establishing a religion for the nation or any of the states, has been said to teach the separation of church and state. This is not true. This term really came from a private letter Thomas Jefferson sent to Danbury Baptists in 1802. Jefferson was not a writer or signer on the U.S. Constitution. (He was in Europe during the Constitutional Convention of 1787.)

The secularists then broaden the meaning of the Establishment Clause to justify using the judicial system to disallow any exhibition of religion and faith in public buildings.

The most sacred values are human autonomy and human rights

Christ-followers agree with having respect for all human beings, irrespective of their sexual, cultural and religious orientation. But we believe, like the original Founding Fathers of this nation, that a democracy cannot work without morality and religion, and that the only God-given right we have for human freedom is the ability to practice virtue.

Secularists believe human rights include a right to be independent from both God and man, that we are free to live any way we want, even if it is destructive to the overall health of society.

But if everyone in our city observed the Ten Commandments we would be blessed and the quality of life would go through the roof!

Sex has been successfully separated from marriage, procreation and family

When the sexual revolution hit the United States in the 1960’s it sowed the seeds of family and societal destruction. An ideology of sex for pleasure prevailed over the previous model, in which sex was primarily for procreation within the bounds of a man and woman committed to each other in holy matrimony.

Separating sex from marriage has resulted in millions of fatherless children, 50 million aborted babies, an outbreak of AIDS, hundreds of STDs, more fragmented families, and millions of fatherless men who are now populating our prisons!

Alternate forms of family and marriage now replace the nuclear family

Every vesture of the Judeo-Christian value system starts with God and marriage. Before there was a church or human government there was a man and a woman committed together in marriage (Genesis 2:29-22).

If a city is going to be secular then its main goal would be to legalize unbiblical forms of marriage so the nuclear family structure would no longer be the norm but only one of many family structures. This in turn continues to disempower families and gives more power to the state, which wants to be savior and god for every individual.

Strong biblical family structures depend less on big government entitlements. Thus same-sex marriage really has nothing to do with homosexuality but everything to do with the ideology of the secular city.

Religion has been relegated to the lower realm of subjective feelings as distinct from the higher, more important realm of scientific fact

The secular city enthusiasts don’t want to rid the world of religion. They believe, like Marx, that religion is the opium of the people: it calms us down, gives us some morals, and makes us better citizens.

They don’t want to rid the world of religion; they want to relegate religion to the realm of the mystical, subjective and impractical realm, which has no influence upon the two steering wheels of society: politics and economics. With this done, religion would never be taken seriously regarding public policy, which would threaten their view of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

The state replaces the family as the main provider, educator and moral advisor of children and all citizens

A secular city takes the place of mothers and fathers by giving education, moral values and an overall worldview to its citizens. This is why the secular state discourages the practice of home schooling, and in some cases even charter schools: because they are not totally under the control of the city and state.

The idea behind the welfare system is to make more people dependent upon the secular city so that individuals can survive without honoring their parents—and living independent lives—knowing that even if they are not in good graces with their biological families the city will support them anyway!

The secular city wants to control education, morality and the trajectory of all its citizens. It disempowers individual achievement and glorifies the corporate accomplishments of the city citizens.

A religious ecumenism with primary allegiance to obeying the state is set up as the new recognized state religion

Mayors of secular cities don’t want to do away with religion. What they despise is absolutism in religious groups. They want every religion to be equal so there is a kind of smorgasbord faith in which every road leads to god and to heaven. The claims of Christ being the only way to God are anathema to the state! If the ground is level and every religion is relativized then the city knows that people will not have an ultimate commitment to any god but the state!

Whether we like it or not, this is going to become the picture of every city in the United States unless the church stands up, becomes politically active, and seeks the face of God for revival, renewal and restoration of our call to disciple the nations.

This article was printed in it’s entirety.  You can read the original article on Joe’s website here.

By Joseph Mattera

In this article, Joseph identifies the striking differences in the mindsets that exist between a biblically correct New Testament “Ecclesia” Church and the typical congregation we find in America today.

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As we examine the New Testament, we see that Jesus called for the formation of the ekklesia in Matthew 16:18. In Greek culture an ekklesia was the ruling body that governed the polis or city state. Thus Jesus didn’t create a new word but borrowed from a common political word to describe His goal for those who would be His disciples: that they would represent His kingdom will on earth with binding and loosing powers that would govern the heavenly principalities (Ephesians 3:8-10, 6:10-18) and thus transform earthly communities where each ekklesia was established. This is a great difference in function from the typical congregational idea of simply assembling together as found in Hebrews 10:25.

The idea of conversion was not merely meant to fill seats for church growth on Sundays but to nurture disciples who would turn the world order upside down (Acts 17:6). Since the late 19th century the idea of church as a ruling ekklesia has largely been lost and replaced with rescuing sinners from this world and living secluded pietistic lives to make it to heaven. We went from changing the world to resisting the world, from engaging the world to protecting ourselves from the world.

This is totally contrary to the original Greek meaning of the word ekklesia, which means being called to engage the world and govern it. Now, pastors are happy to have a lot of people show up on Sundays, whether they affect the culture or not. Thus, church attendance in this nation is at an all-time high but cultural effectiveness is at an all-time low!

If the church is going to recapture its cultural commission of discipling nations and having global influence, as found in Genesis 1:28 and Matthew 28:19, it has to learn the difference between building an ekklesia and a mere congregation that assembles together.

This also explains why God has had to raise up some parachurch ministries that function more like “special forces” with a call to reach cities. It may not be a pure New Testament model, but until local churches stop being inwardly focused and effectively reach their cities, God will continue to call special forces out of its ranks.

This also explains why sometimes a smaller-sized church can have more cultural influence than a megachurch that compromises the gospel. Many megachurches are not ekklesias but are merely gathering places that have very limited influence in the heavenly and earthly realms.

Furthermore, this also explains why some churches experience more strategic-level spiritual warfare and others don’t; mere congregations have lower-level spiritual warfare than those that function as the ekklesias of communities.

The following are some of the contrasts between the two concepts:

• The ekklesia challenges the status quo; the congregation assembles to find peace in the midst of the cultural environment.
• The ekklesia demands a commitment that involves the vocational calling of all its members to represent the kingdom in all of life; the congregation demands a commitment that involves Sunday ministry and church programs.
• The ekklesia trains people for all of life; the congregation trains people for church life.
• The ekklesia effects change in the surrounding community; the congregation only affects change in individual souls.
• The ekklesia is at war against demonic entities in the heavenly spheres; the congregation is at war to have church growth and bring deliverance to some individual members.
• The ekklesia sends out people to serve their communities; the congregation calls for their communities to attend their Sunday worship experiences.
• The ekklesia is only satisfied with bringing the kingdom on earth; the congregation is satisfied if their members have joy in their hearts.
• The ekklesia expands kingdom influence by converting people to be Christ-following disciples; the congregation appeals to the felt needs of people so they will continually depend on a 90 minute Sunday worship experience to feel good about themselves.
• The ekklesia is outwardly focused on stewarding the earth; the congregation is focused on making it to heaven.
• The ekklesia engages in Spirit-empowered humanitarianism; the congregation on Spirit-empowered pietism.
• Those in an ekklesia know they have been sanctified to serve others; those in a congregation believe they are saved for the sake of sanctification.
• The ekklesia embraces God’s sovereign human design for the saints since their physical birth (Ephesians 1:4); the congregation only honors what God has done in saints spiritually from the time they were “born again.”
• The ekklesia preaches Jesus rose from the dead to “fill all things” (Ephesians 4:10); the congregation preaches Jesus rose from the dead merely to save individuals from hell.
• The ekklesia believes in a divine cosmic plan that includes this present earth; the congregation believes in a (postponed) cosmic plan that (largely) excludes this present earth.
• The ekklesia disciples whole nations (Matthew 28:19); the congregation disciples individual ethnic people groups.
• The ekklesia has a vision for the whole community; the assembly for their whole congregation.
• The ekklesia aspires to influence each of the seven cultural mountains of society; the congregation aspires to function only in the mountain of “religion.”

This article is reprinted in full from Joseph Mattera’s website.  Consider becoming a premium member if you enjoy Joe’s insights.

By Joseph Mattera

Again, another excellent article, reprinted in full from Joseph Mattera’s website.  Here, Joe offers some very relevant commentary on why we must learn to be governmental in the church if we are going to bring transformation to our culture.  There is a reason for the moral decline in our nation, and this identifies the strategy to turn things around.  Keep up the good work, Joe!

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There is a seismic shift taking place today in the marketplace and the church. We need to understand how to respond if we are going to bring systemic transformation. This article deals with how the church should apply the gospel in response to cultural shifts.

First of all, it is a mistake to believe that the culture will shift because of a church revival or a societal awakening. Often, we as believers think the key to societal transformation is to convert masses of people. But the truth is that everyone is led by the decisions of the approximately 3-5% of people who make up the cultural elite in a society. Thus the only way to affect cultural change is to convert the elite who formulate culture in every sphere of society.

Second, it is a mistake to think that political victories will bring transformation. For example, abortion was legalized in 1973 yet the fight still rages on; same-sex marriage has been legalized in several states in the Northeast but the battle will never stop; homosexuality has been normalized by art, media and entertainment yet the rank and file of America still reject it.

The truth is that politics is only one expression of societal power. We need to influence the other mind-molding sectors of society if we are going to dictate the direction of culture. For example, we need to influence the Ivy League universities—especially Harvard, Yale, and Princeton—to change public policy, education, science, views on economics, etc. We need to influence major news outlets like the New York Times, CNN, MTV, etc. and not write only for Christian newspapers and appear only on Christian television stations like TBN.

Hence, we need to train the ekklesia to take the lead, not only in church but by actually being professors, board members and chief executives of leading elite entities in art, music, entertainment, education, media and public policy (for example, the Hoover Institute and the Manhattan Institute).

Having famous athletes and entertainers getting saved and giving testimonies is not nearly enough. We need revivals and multigenerational strategies to place our leading thinkers and practitioners in the highest levels of highbrow culture—like God did with Daniel and the three Hebrew youths in Babylon—if we are going to see societal change (read Daniel chapter 1).

Third, we need to nurture and/or convert those who are part of the emerging “creative class” who comprise between 12-30% of the population but have by far the most wealth producers and will drive the economy for generations to come (read Richard Florida’s book The Rise of the Creative Class). Those in the creative class used to be considered mavericks and non-conformists but are now part of the mainstream and part of a movement that has radically shifted the future of business and culture! Some of the characteristics of this new creative class-driven economy are:

• Businesses are moving towards creative urban centers such as New York City and San Francisco. Thus geography is essential because it is moving from corporate driven to people driven; companies are moving to where the most creative people live, not just where there are tax incentives and highways.

• Typical hierarchical structures are fast becoming a thing of the past. New companies accommodate creative people who like to be self-managed, set their own hours, and are free to think, create, and dress informally. Autonomy, diversity and self-identity are valued more than conformity, conservatism, and group think. These people like to play at work and work at play; the lines between work and leisure are becoming fuzzier.

• Top-down autocratic leadership, which expects people to just follow orders and not think on their own, is no longer effective. Companies are now encouraging creative people to join their ranks who are semi-autonomous and self-managed with leverage to set their own hours.

• A person being loyal to one community and one company for the rest of his or her life is a thing of the past. People are now moving from company to company every several years based on new opportunities to accommodate their interests, increased skills, need to meet new friends, creativity, and desire for change and advancement. (Because of the information age we are in, there are now also virtual communities with much information changing and being exchanged every day. This is making it harder to have cohesive communities and set societal norms which results in fragmentation and postmodernism.)

• Diversity is in; conservative values are respected but not the norm. Only 23% of the families in the United States are nuclear families. Alternate family structures are now becoming the norm.

How should the church respond?

• The church should build authentic communities to model the city of God before we attempt to transform the city of man. We have to honor unity, family, and kingdom unity with churches in our regions before we can transform the pagan systems and cultures around us.

• World-changers need to experience creativity, leadership, covenant, unity, purpose and kingdom power in the church community (ekklesia) so they can be adequately discipled to recreate these things in the secular arenas to which they are called.

• We need to start investing a good portion of our monies towards educating and cultivating the most creative people in our churches and place them in every leadership sphere of society starting with the Ivy League schools.

• We have to understand that prayer, fasting and revival among masses of people will not shift the culture, similar to how the 1857 Prayer Revival, the Azusa Street Revival in 1906, and the numerous Voice of Healing, Toronto Blessing and Pensacola revivals have not shifted culture. Only when revivals affect cultural thinkers who prove influential like Marx, Lenin, Freud, Darwin, and Gates will culture shift.  (This is not to say that prayer, fasting and revival are not important. Of course, reaching and renewing masses of people and Christians is important. In this article we are discussing how to truly experience societal transformation.)

Even as we examine the Scriptures we see that God has used people that were already in high places of authority and/or culture before a nation was transformed. (I will deal with this more in a forthcoming article.) As we do a quick review, we find that Moses already was a prince in Egypt before he was called to confront Egypt and deliver the people of God out of slavery; Daniel was serving as a top political advisor to the King of Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar) and later as a prime minister in Persia which positioned him to speak truth to power and transform culture; Nehemiah was the cup bearer of the King of Persia which enabled him to receive the favor necessary to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem; Samuel was the first in a line of great Jewish prophets who also served as the political judge of the nation; David his protégé may have been a great psalmist but he also became a king. Finally, all the great prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah, Elisha, Micaiah, Ahijah, Amos, etc.) did not just prophesy to small crowds of people in the temple or synagogue; they had access to political and cultural elites, even to the highest political office of the land.

Even church history reiterates this. For example, it took the conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine to legalize Christianity, placing it in a position to transform the whole empire. St. Augustine was first the professor of rhetoric for the imperial court, the most visible academic position in the Latin world, before converting and becoming the Bishop of Hippo, which platformed him to become the greatest theologian and thinker of his age. In 800 AD it was Christian Emperor Charlemagne who laid the groundwork for the first cathedral universities, which were the forerunners for all modern universities. Both primary leaders of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther and John Calvin, received educations that included vast knowledge of the classics, not only the Bible. (Calvin at one point actually considered becoming a lawyer.) The two leaders of the First Great Awakening (which saved England from the destruction that France suffered later in their revolution, and was also the impetus for the American Revolution), John Wesley and George Whitefield, not only knew the Scriptures but graduated from Oxford. Thus they were already positioned to have the respect of the top decision makers of society.  Furthermore, Whitefield’s American counterpart Jonathan Edwards was a graduate of Princeton and later became the president of Princeton. The abolition of slavery in the British Empire was affected by the Clapham Sect which included William Wilberforce, who was a parliamentarian and a close friend of William Pitt the Prime Minister of England and many other cultural and political leaders. The Second Great Awakening in the United States was led by Charles Finney, a capable lawyer whose preaching was able to relate to many lawyers, judges and top decision makers in culture. He affected the course of our nation which led to the abolition of slavery, the implementation of child labor laws, women’s suffrage and many other things.

As we have already stated, the Azusa Street Revival and other 20th century revivals did not have significant cultural impact because they primarily converted masses of people without touching the cultural elite and top decision makers of society.

• We must understand the delicate balance between infiltrating and engaging the cultural elites and highbrows of society without losing our souls and becoming elites in heart and purpose. The “Be Attitudes” of Matthew 5-7 teach us how to interface with others in our communities.

• The church needs to learn how to avoid the extremes of the Christian Right, Christian Left, and the pietists who avoid cultural engagement altogether.

The Christian Right thinks the answer is only political. This approach clothes the gospel of Christ with a particular political party and pits us against people in the world who we are trying to save. This results in us trying to exert power and control people through legal means and changing laws. Although I believe the laws of a state should be based on the Ten Commandments, and that the law is a school master that brings conviction of sin (and is an emblem of what a particular society values), that in and of itself the law is a very weak line of defense because of the vicissitudes of democratic elections.

This approach also smacks of Constantinianism. Although Christianity became the favorite religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, this resulted in weakening the church from within because unconverted pagans joined the Christian community without abandoning their lifestyles and core beliefs.

The Christian Left only accommodates the gospel to the prevailing culture which results in losing the biblical distinctions of salt and light. A church that recognizes same-sex marriage and values the environment more than the Ten Commandments has already lost its soul and reason for existing as a Christian community.

The pietists or Anabaptists take the approach that the church should only build alternative sub-cultures that don’t engage or affirm the prevailing culture.

The kingdom alternative is to take the approach of the Celtic Church in the 6th to 8th centuries. They incorporated the Anabaptist strategy of building an alternative community that was a model for the pagan communities they lived among. However they also recognized God’s favor upon His created order (God blessed His creation and called it good) which many theologians refer to as common grace. Thus their communities of faith embraced the non-believing communities, loved them, and won them to Christ by demonstrating the gospel in everyday life.

The church is called to build what James Davison Hunter, in his book To Change the World, describes as communities of faith that both affirm the good in their surrounding societal structures (hospitals, art, police, transportation, commerce, music, science, education, etc.) while also demonstrating the antithesis against that which is sinful and corrupt, not necessarily only in word but how we live our lives as Christ followers. Davidson also calls this approach having a “faithful presence” and bases it on what God prophesied to the Jewish exiles in Babylon and Persia in Jeremiah 29:4-7. In that passage God told the exiles to build houses, build families, settle down and live normal lives, seek the welfare of the city they lived in, and pray to the Lord for those around them, because as the city was blessed they would be blessed.

• The church must also maintain a balance between honoring the traditions of the church and relating to contemporary culture. We are also called to model the power and blessing of the traditional nuclear family and marriage if we are going to be the antithesis to the fragmentation and curse of the alternate family structures of the present pagan world system.

In summary: If we are going to transform culture we need to engage and shift the influencers toward biblical values at the highest levels in every major sphere of society. We cannot only reach masses of people and change political elections. If we don’t reach the 3-5% who are the decision makers, then we will never reach our goals of societal transformation.

As we think about the Scripture in Jeremiah 29:4-7 we realize the most important thing we are called to do is to live exemplary lives that are good witnesses to our surrounding communities. We need to embrace, serve and love our cities and communities, while at the same time train our children and those with the greatest potential in our churches to take the lead at the gates of every sphere of society.

by Daniel L. Dreisbach
Professor of Justice, Law and Society,
American University

Professor of Justice, Law and Society is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C., as well as the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. He received his D.Phil. from Oxford University and his J.D. from the University of Virginia. He is author or editor of numerous books, including Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State; The Founders on God and Government; Religion and Political Culture in Jefferson’s Virginia; and Real Threat and Mere Shadow: Religious Liberty and the First Amendment.

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on September 12, 2006, during a Center for Constructive Alternatives seminar on the topic, “Church and State: History and Theory.”

No metaphor in American letters has had a greater influence on law and policy than Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state.” For many Americans, this metaphor has supplanted the actual text of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and it has become the locus classicus of the notion that the First Amendment separated religion and the civil state, thereby mandating a strictly secular polity.

More important, the judiciary has embraced this figurative language as a virtual rule of constitutional law and as the organizing theme of church-state jurisprudence. Writing for the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948, Justice Hugo L. Black asserted that the justices had “agreed that the First Amendment’s language, properly interpreted, had erected a wall of separation between Church and State.” The continuing influence of this wall is evident in the Court’s most recent church-state pronouncements.

The rhetoric of church-state separation has been a part of western political discourse for many centuries, but it has only lately come to a place of prominence in American constitutional law and discourse. What is the source of the “wall of separation” metaphor so frequently referenced today? How has this symbol of strict separation between religion and public life become so influential in American legal and political thought? Most important, what are the policy and legal consequences of the ascendancy of separationist rhetoric and of the transformation of “separation of church and state” from a much-debated political idea to a doctrine of constitutional law embraced by the nation’s highest court?

The Wall that Jefferson Built

On New Year’s Day, 1802, President Jefferson penned a missive to the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut. The Baptists had written the new president a “fan” letter in October 1801, congratulating him on his election to the “chief Magistracy in the United States.” They celebrated his zealous advocacy for religious liberty and chastised those who had criticized him “as an enemy of religion[,] Law & good order because he will not, dares not assume the prerogative of Jehovah and make Laws to govern the Kingdom of Christ.” At the time, the Congregationalist Church was still legally established in Connecticut and the Federalist party controlled New England politics. Thus the Danbury Baptists were outsiders’a beleaguered religious and political minority in a state where a Congregationalist-Federalist party establishment dominated public life. They were drawn to Jefferson’s political cause because of his celebrated advocacy for religious liberty.

In a carefully crafted reply, the president allied himself with the New England Baptists in their struggle to enjoy the right of conscience as an inalienable right-not merely as a favor granted, and subject to withdrawal, by the civil state:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

This missive was written in the wake of the bitter presidential contest of 1800. Candidate Jefferson’s religion, or the alleged lack thereof, was a critical issue in the campaign. His Federalist foes vilified him as an “infidel” and “atheist.” The campaign rhetoric was so vitriolic that, when news of Jefferson’s election swept across the country, housewives in New England were seen burying family Bibles in their gardens or hiding them in wells because they expected the Holy Scriptures to be confiscated and burned by the new administration in Washington. (These fears resonated with Americans who had received alarming reports of the French Revolution, which Jefferson was said to support, and the widespread desecration of religious sanctuaries and symbols in France.) Jefferson wrote to these pious Baptists to reassure them of his continuing commitment to their right of conscience and to strike back at the Federalist-Congregationalist establishment in Connecticut for shamelessly vilifying him in the recent campaign.

Several features of Jefferson’s letter challenge conventional, strictly secular constructions of his famous metaphor. First, the metaphor rests on a cluster of explicitly religious propositions (i.e., “that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship”). Second, Jefferson’s wall was constructed in the service of the free exercise of religion. Use of the metaphor to restrict religious exercise (e.g., to disallow a citizen’s religious expression in the public square) conflicts with the very principle Jefferson hoped his metaphor would advance. Third, Jefferson concluded his presidential missive with a prayer, reciprocating his Baptist correspondents’ “kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man.” Ironically, some strict separationists today contend that such solemn words in a presidential address violate a constitutional “wall of separation.”

The conventional wisdom is that Jefferson’s wall represents a universal principle concerning the prudential and constitutional relationship between religion and the civil state. In fact, this wall had less to do with the separation between religion and all civil government than with the separation between the national and state governments on matters pertaining to religion (such as official proclamations of days of prayer, fasting, and thanksgiving). The “wall of separation” was a metaphoric construction of the First Amendment, which Jefferson time and again said imposed its restrictions on the national government only (see, e.g., Jefferson’s 1798 draft of the Kentucky Resolutions).

In other words, Jefferson’s wall separated the national government on one side from state governments and religious authorities on the other. This construction is consistent with a virtually unchallenged assumption of the early constitutional era: the First Amendment in particular and the Bill of Rights in general affirmed the fundamental constitutional principle of federalism. The First Amendment, as originally understood, had little substantive content apart from its affirmation that the national government was denied all power over religious matters. Jurisdiction in such concerns was reserved to individual citizens, religious societies, and state governments. (Of course, this original understanding of the First Amendment was turned on its head by the modern U.S. Supreme Court’s “incorporation” of the First Amendment into the Fourteenth Amendment.)

The Metaphor Enters Public Discourse

By late January 1802, printed copies of Jefferson’s reply to the Danbury Baptists began appearing in New England newspapers. The letter, however, was not accessible to a wide audience until it was reprinted in the first major collection of Jefferson’s papers, published in the mid-19th century.

The phrase “wall of separation” entered the lexicon of American law in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1878 ruling in Reynolds v. United States, although most scholars agree that the wall metaphor played no role in the Court’s reasoning. Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, who authored the opinion, was drawn to another clause in Jefferson’s text. The Reynolds Court, in short, was drawn to the passage, not to advance a strict separation between church and state, but to support the proposition that the legitimate powers of civil government could reach men’s actions only and not their opinions.

Nearly seven decades later, in the landmark case of Everson v. Board of Education(1947), the Supreme Court “rediscovered” the metaphor and elevated it to constitutional doctrine. Citing no source or authority other than Reynolds, Justice Hugo L. Black, writing for the majority, invoked the Danbury letter’s “wall of separation” passage in support of his strict separationist interpretation of the First Amendment prohibition on laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” “In the words of Jefferson,” he famously declared, the First Amendment has erected “‘a wall of separation between church and State’. . . . That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.” In even more sweeping terms, Justice Wiley B. Rutledge asserted in a separate opinion that the First Amendment’s purpose was “to uproot” all religious establishments and “to create a complete and permanent separation of the spheres of religious activity and civil authority by comprehensively forbidding every form of public aid or support for religion.” This rhetoric, more than any other, set the terms and the tone for a strict separationist jurisprudence that reached ascendancy on the Court in the second half of the 20th century.

Like Reynolds, the Everson ruling was replete with references to history, especially the roles played by Jefferson and Madison in the Virginia disestablishment struggles in the tumultuous decade following independence from Great Britain. Jefferson was depicted as a leading architect of the First Amendment despite the fact that he was in France when the measure was drafted by the First Federal Congress in 1789.

Black and his judicial brethren also encountered the metaphor in briefs filed in Everson. In a lengthy discussion of history supporting the proposition that “separation of church and state is a fundamental American principle,” an amicus brief filed by the American Civil Liberties Union quoted the clause from the Danbury letter containing the “wall of separation” image. The ACLU ominously concluded that the challenged state statute, which provided state reimbursements for the transportation of students to and from parochial schools, “constitutes a definite crack in the wall of separation between church and state. Such cracks have a tendency to widen beyond repair unless promptly sealed up.”

Shortly after the Everson ruling was handed down, the metaphor began to proliferate in books and articles. In a 1949 best-selling anti-Catholic polemic, American Freedom and Catholic Power, Paul Blanshard advocated an uncompromising political and legal platform favoring “a wall of separation between church and state.” Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (an organization today known by the more politically correct appellation of Americans United for Separation of Church and State), a leading strict-separationist advocacy organization, wrote the phrase into its 1948 founding manifesto. Among the “immediate objectives” of this new organization was “[t]o resist every attempt by law or the administration of law further to widen the breach in the wall of separation of church and state.”

The Supreme Court frequently and favorably referenced the “wall of separation” in the cases that followed. In McCollum v. Board of Education (1948), the Court essentially constitutionalized Jefferson’s phrase, subtly and blithely substituting his figurative language for the literal text of the First Amendment. In the last half of the 20th century, the metaphor emerged as the defining motif for church-state jurisprudence, thereby elevating a strict separationist construction of the First Amendment to accepted dogma among jurists and commentators.

The Trouble with Metaphors in the Law

Metaphors are a valuable literary device. They enrich language by making it dramatic and colorful, rendering abstract concepts concrete, condensing complex concepts into a few words, and unleashing creative and analogical insights. But their uncritical use can lead to confusion and distortion. At its heart, metaphor compares two or more things that are not, in fact, identical. A metaphor’s literal meaning is used non-literally in a comparison with its subject. While the comparison may yield useful insights, the dissimilarities between the metaphor and its subject, if not acknowledged, can distort or pollute one’s understanding of the subject. If attributes of the metaphor are erroneously or misleadingly assigned to the subject and the distortion goes unchallenged, then the metaphor may alter the understanding of the underlying subject. The more appealing and powerful a metaphor, the more it tends to supplant or overshadow the original subject, and the more one is unable to contemplate the subject apart from its metaphoric formulation. Thus, distortions perpetuated by the metaphor are sustained and even magnified. This is the lesson of the “wall of separation” metaphor.

The judiciary’s reliance on an extra-constitutional metaphor as a substitute for the text of the First Amendment almost inevitably distorts constitutional principles governing church-state relationships. Although the “wall of separation” may felicitously express some aspects of First Amendment law, it seriously misrepresents or obscures others, and has become a source of much mischief in modern church-state jurisprudence. It has reconceptualized-indeed, misconceptualized-First Amendment principles in at least two important ways.

First, Jefferson’s trope emphasizes separation between church and state—unlike the First Amendment, which speaks in terms of the non-establishment and free exercise of religion. (Although these terms are often conflated today, in the lexicon of 1802, the expansive concept of “separation” was distinct from the narrow institutional concept of “non-establishment.”) Jefferson’s Baptist correspondents, who agitated for disestablishment but not for separation, were apparently discomfited by the figurative phrase and, perhaps, even sought to suppress the president’s letter. They, like many Americans, feared that the erection of such a wall would separate religious influences from public life and policy. Few evangelical dissenters (including the Baptists) challenged the widespread assumption of the age that republican government and civic virtue were dependent on a moral people and that religion supported and nurtured morality.

Second, a wall is a bilateral barrier that inhibits the activities of both the civil government and religion-unlike the First Amendment, which imposes restrictions on civil government only. In short, a wall not only prevents the civil state from intruding on the religious domain but also prohibits religion from influencing the conduct of civil government. The various First Amendment guarantees, however, were entirely a check or restraint on civil government, specifically on Congress. The free press guarantee, for example, was not written to protect the civil state from the press, but to protect a free and independent press from control by the national government. Similarly, the religion provisions were added to the Constitution to protect religion and religious institutions from corrupting interference by the national government, not to protect the civil state from the influence of, or overreaching by, religion. As a bilateral barrier, however, the wall unavoidably restricts religion’s ability to influence public life, thereby exceeding the limitations imposed by the First Amendment.

Herein lies the danger of this metaphor. The “high and impregnable” wall constructed by the modern Court has been used to inhibit religion’s ability to inform the public ethic, to deprive religious citizens of the civil liberty to participate in politics armed with ideas informed by their faith, and to infringe the right of religious communities and institutions to extend their prophetic ministries into the public square. Today, the “wall of separation” is the sacred icon of a strict separationist dogma intolerant of religious influences in the public arena. It has been used to silence religious voices in the public marketplace of ideas and to segregate faith communities behind a restrictive barrier.

Federal and state courts have used the “wall of separation” concept to justify censoring private religious expression (such as Christmas creches) in public, to deny public benefits (such as education vouchers) for religious entities, and to exclude religious citizens and organizations (such as faith-based social welfare agencies) from full participation in civic life on the same terms as their secular counterparts. The systematic and coercive removal of religion from public life not only is at war with our cultural traditions insofar as it evinces a callous indifference toward religion but also offends basic notions of freedom of religious exercise, expression, and association in a pluralistic society.

There was a consensus among the founders that religion was indispensable to a system of republican self-government. The challenge the founders confronted was how to nurture personal responsibility and social order in a system of self-government. Tyrants and dictators can use the whip and rod to force people to behave as they desire, but clearly this is incompatible with a self-governing people. In response to this challenge the founders looked to religion (and morality informed by religious faith) to provide the internal moral compass that would prompt citizens to behave in a disciplined manner and thereby promote social order and political stability. The literature of the founding era is replete with this argument, no example more famous than George Washington’s statement in his Farewell Address of September 19, 1796:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens . . . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion . . . . [R]eason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Believing that religion and morality were indispensable to social order and political prosperity, the founders championed religious liberty in order to foster a vibrant religious culture in which a beneficent religious ethos would inform the public ethic and to promote an environment in which religious and moral leaders could speak out boldly, without restraint or inhibition, against corruption and immorality in civic life. Religious liberty was not merely a benevolent grant of the civil state; rather, it reflected an awareness among the founders that the very survival of the civil state and a civil society was dependent on a vibrant religious culture, and religious liberty nurtured such a religious culture. In other words, the civil state’s respect for religious liberty is an act of self-preservation. The unfortunate consequence of 20th-century jurisprudence is that the First Amendment, designed to protect and promote a vital role for religion in public life, has been replaced with a wall of separation that, in the hands of the modern judiciary, has restricted religion’s place in the polity.

Legacy of Intolerance

In his recent book, Separation of Church and State, Philip Hamburger amply documents that the rhetoric of separation of church and state became fashionable in the 1830s and 1840s and, again, in the last quarter of the 19th century. Why? It accompanied two substantial waves of Catholic immigrants with their peculiar liturgy and resistance to assimilation into the Protestant establishment: an initial wave of Irish in the first half of the century, and then more Irish along with other European immigrants later in the century. The rhetoric of separation was used by nativist elements, such as the Know-Nothings and later the Ku Klux Klan, to marginalize Catholics and to deny them, often through violence, entrance into the mainstream of public life. By the end of the century, an allegiance to the so-called “American principle” of separation of church and state had been woven into the membership oaths of the Ku Klux Klan. Today we typically think of the Klan strictly in terms of their views on race, and we forget that their hatred of Catholics was equally odious.

Again, in the mid-20th century, the rhetoric of separation was revived and ultimately constitutionalized by anti-Catholic elites, such as Justice Hugo L. Black, and fellow travelers in the ACLU and Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, who feared the influence and wealth of the Catholic Church and perceived parochial education as a threat to public schools and democratic values. The chief architect of the modern “wall” was Justice Black, whose affinity for church-state separation and the metaphor was rooted in virulent anti-Catholicism. Hamburger has argued that Justice Black, a former Alabama Ku Klux Klansman, was the product of a remarkable “confluence of Protestant, nativist, and progressive anti-Catholic forces . . . . Black’s association with the Klan has been much discussed in connection with his liberal views on race, but, in fact, his membership suggests more about [his] ideals of Americanism,” especially his support for separation of church and state. “Black had long before sworn, under the light of flaming crosses, to preserve ‘the sacred constitutional rights’ of ‘free public schools’ and ‘separation of church and state.’” Although he later distanced himself from the Klan on matters of race, “Black’s distaste for Catholicism did not diminish.” Black’s admixture of progressive, Klan, and strict separationist views is best understood in terms of anti-Catholicism and, more broadly, a deep hostility to assertions of ecclesiastical authority. Separation of church and state, Black believed, was an American ideal of freedom from oppressive ecclesiastical authority, especially that of the Roman Catholic Church. A regime of separation enabled Americans to assert their individual autonomy and practice democracy, which Black believed was Protestantism in its secular form.

To be clear, diverse strains of political, religious, and intellectual thought have embraced notions of separation (I myself come from a faith tradition that believes church and state should operate in separate institutional spheres), but a particularly dominant strain in 19th-century America was this nativist, bigoted strain. We must confront the uncomfortable fact that the phrases “separation of church and state” and “wall of separation,” although not necessarily expressions of intolerance, have often, in the American experience, been closely identified with the ugly impulses of nativism and bigotry.

In conclusion, Jefferson’s figurative language has not produced the practical solutions to real world controversies that its apparent clarity and directness led its proponents to expect. Indeed, this wall has done what walls frequently do—it has obstructed the view, obfuscating our understanding of constitutional principles governing church-state relationships. The rhetoric of “separation of church and state” and “a wall of separation” has been instrumental in transforming judicial and popular constructions of the First Amendment from a provision protecting and encouraging religion in public life to one restricting religion’s place and role in civic culture. This transformation has undermined the “indispensable support” of religion in our system of republican self-government. This fact would have alarmed the framers of the Constitution, and we ignore it today at the peril of our political order and prosperity.

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.  You can view the original article here.

In this two part teaching series, Rich Carey (Lionheart Ministries) examines why Christians have lost their influence in culture, identifies some of the major strongholds in the minds of the Church, and suggests some practical ways to establish Kingdom culture in our nation.

Part 1 – Defining The Battleground

In this segment, Rich provides an overview of the struggle for control of culture, then moves in closer for a practical application.
This is a high resolution video slideshow presentation. You can click on the full screen button in the player to enjoy a larger version of the presentation.

Part 2 – Pulling Down Strongholds

In this segment, Rich addresses the strongholds of Dispensationalism, Pre-Trib Escapism and End-Times Mentality in the Church.
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ENJOY THIS? The slides and study notes for this presentation are available to members of the Lionheart Tribe. Please consider becoming a member and supporting our efforts to bring transformation to the world.

In this article, Joseph Mattera provides us with great insight concerning the reasons why Christians should not only not avoid politics, but actually have a biblical mandate to be actively involved.  This article is reprinted in it’s entirety from Joseph’s website.  Your comments are welcome below.

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View #1: The church should not be involved in politics but only concentrate on soul-winning; the rest will take care of itself. This has been promulgated in the Evangelical Church the past 125 years, especially in Pentecostal/Charismatic circles since its inception in the early 1900’s.

View #2: The church should demonstrate its spirituality primarily by getting involved through social and political action. With this view, the inner spiritual life and the supernatural are deemphasized. Many mainline liberal denominations represented by the World Council of Churches have taken this position.

View #3: The classical reformed view (my view) is that God has allotted various jurisdictions of society, with the church and Bible at the center of culture and creation as “salt and light.” Some collapse these jurisdictions (or governments) to five: self-government, family, business, civic (political), and ecclesiastical (church).

Although there are other views which can be mentioned, these three are the primary views with the others being either extremes or variations of these three.

For example, an extreme variation of the third view is a form of triumphalism in which Christianity will take over every government, eradicate all evil, and convert most if not all of the world’s population before the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. Of course this doesn’t properly take into account the consequences of the Fall (Romans 5:12; 6:23), in which the sinfulness of humankind is so deep that we will never have an absolute utopia this side of heaven before the second bodily return of Christ.

Whether Christian or non-Christian, any group that has an unbalanced concentration of power (e.g. the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, or certain points of corruption in Western European history that compromised the Roman Catholic church, such as the Inquisition) will eventually be decentralized by God so that proper checks and balances can prosper both the civil liberties of people and the aforementioned jurisdictions.

As far as I am concerned, the key verse in the entire Bible that explains the mission of the Church is Genesis 1:28:

“Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”

Many theologians have called this passage the Cultural Mandate because this original covenant with Adam, the federal head of the human race, gives the human race the responsibility of stewarding the earth, which involves managing every aspect of life and society. After the Fall, God recapitulated this same command by giving it to Noah in Genesis 9:1-2:

“So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand.’”

This proves that the Cultural Mandate was still in effect after the Fall. Furthermore, Mathew 28:18-20 has been called by some theologians the Second Commission instead of the Great Commission because Jesus as the Second or Last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45) gave the godly seed (the church) another form of the Cultural Mandate when He told the church to disciple the nations.

Discipling whole nations must include applying the commandments of God to all of practical life: politics, business, art, science, history, education, sociology, etc. Thus it is a recapitulation of what God told the first Adam in Genesis 1:28.

When someone wonders whether or not the church should be involved in politics, they are missing the bigger picture of the Cultural Mandate, in which the church is called to be the center of all of culture by influencing every discipline and jurisdiction with the biblical worldview.

Second Corinthians 10:5 tells us to take every thought captive to the knowledge of God. This is not just an individual but a corporate command for the created order.

Although I believe in the separation of church and state, I do not believe in the separation of God and state because we are called to bear fruit, multiply, replenish the earth (consecrate the earth to God), subdue the earth (disarm the enemies of God), and have dominion (work for the reformation of every system and institution on earth so that it reflects the biblical ethos).

Many Christians have an unscriptural belief that the spiritual world is important and the natural world unimportant! Jesus told us to pray that His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven (Luke 11 and Matthew 6). This shows that God wants us to focus on the earth in our life and prayers even though the present “last days” emphasis on “escape, retreat and get caught up to heaven” indicates the church currently emphasizes the opposite of this!

My book Ruling in the Gates shows that the Cultural Mandate in Genesis 1:28 was never annulled but is the common theme throughout both the Old and New Testaments in regards to God’s mission for His covenant people.

The following terms have vast political implications, without which you could never understand the nature and mission of Jesus, the crucifixion, or the church:

1. The Kingdom of God

a. Every kingdom has a king, a land, a political government, laws and commands, a society, and an economy.
b. In Mark 1:15 Jesus told us the kingdom of God is here (see also Matthew 4:17).
c. Paul went about “preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things that concern the Lord (political title) Jesus” (Acts 28:31).
d. The kingdom of God is the whole created order, not just the church (Psalm 24: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.”)
e. The church is in the kingdom but is not the totality of the kingdom.

2. “King of Kings, and Lord of Lords”

a. Jesus is called this title in various portions of Scripture: 1 Timothy 6:15; Revelation 1:5, 19:16.
b. This is the most politically charged title a person can possibly have!
c. Notice, it does not say Jesus is merely the king of heaven or the king of the church, or that He would be the king in the next life.
d. Ephesians 1:21 says that He is above all governments and has a name that is greater than all names in this life and that which is to come.
e. “King of Kings” means that he is presently the President of all presidents, the King of all kings; the Prime Minister over all prime ministers, the Governor over all governors. In other words, Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Spitzer, and President Bush are all presently accountable to Jesus Christ as their Lord and Ruler!
f. This is political, not merely spiritual, because it means Jesus is judging these authorities in regards to public policy, international issues, the economy, taxation, tort laws, etc. In other words, how their policies and laws reflect the law-word of God, especially the laws extrapolated out of the Ten Commandments in the civil laws of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy.

3. Ecclesia

a. Ecclesia is the Greek word for “church” in the New Testament.
b. Jesus chose a well-known secular word with political implications to describe His followers.
c. In Greek culture, the ecclesia were the citizens that came together in a community to enact public policy. Ecclesia, broadly speaking, means to come together to rule. In other words, Jesus called His followers the new congress of His kingdom.

4. The Gates of Hell

In Matthew 16:18 Jesus says the church would assault the gates of hell, which are ungodly political and social systems. “Gates” is an Old Testament term that denotes where the elders of a city met to enact public policy, declare war, and conduct financial and legal business.

5. The Crucifixion

a. Jesus was not crucified because of religious reasons, but because of politics! Roman-Greco culture was a polytheistic society with thousands of gods and religions.
b. They would never execute someone for religious reasons because they were not a monotheistic empire. The New Testament teaches that Jesus was crucified because He proclaimed Himself a king, in essence the only true Caesar or potentate (1 Timothy 6:15) which became a threat to the political powers of the time.
c. Notice in John 18:37 Jesus told Pilate that His purpose for coming to the world was to be king and testify to the truth. John 19:12, 15-16 show that Pilate was about to let Jesus go free until the Jewish leaders said that Christ’s claim to be king threatened Caesar’s kingdom and rule.

In conclusion, we cannot understand the Gospel, the kingdom of God, the nature of the church, or the mission of Christ without understanding their political and social implications.

Below, Joseph Mattera exposes the modern-day deception regarding the Antichrist and presents us with a proper Biblical understanding.  I’ve reprinted this excellent article in it’s entirety.  Thanks, Joe!

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Much has been made since the end of the nineteenth century regarding the “last days” and identifying the antichrist. During World War II a number of preachers even had scriptures to prove that Adolf Hitler was the antichrist and that they were the last generation. Numerous best-selling books have been written regarding the mark of the beast, the false prophet, and the identity of the antichrist and when he would appear. Every time there is an oil crisis or another war in the Middle East, you can count on preachers like John Hagee to come out with best-selling books regarding this as a sign that we are in the “last days.”

The following points will clearly establish the biblical definition of the antichrist:

I. In 1 John 2:18 the Apostle John said that he was living in the last days when the antichrist would appear.

1. Obviously, “last days” couldn’t refer to the end of the world over 2,000 years ago. Some try to get around this by saying that we are now living in the “last of the last days,” which amounts more to eisogesis than biblical exegesis.

2. Examining other passages dealing with the last days clearly shows that Peter, Paul, John, and others thought they were all living in the last days (Acts 2:16-17; 1 John 2:18; 1 Peter 4:7; 2 Timothy 3:1; Jude 17-19; Revelation 1:1).

A. One can only conclude from this that “last days” was not referring to something thousands of years later but rather it was the “last days” for the Jewish Levitical system of animal sacrifices, and the “last days” for the Jewish nation that was to be destroyed in one generation from the crucifixion. This would then officially inaugurate the new “kingdom age.” (Read Matthew 24:34; Luke 9:27; Hebrews 12:27-28.) Remember: The apostles and the early church were all Jewish believers who were speaking of the judgment of God on the nation of Israel for rejecting Jesus as Messiah.

B. The last days of Israel came in A.D. 70 within one generation of the death of Christ, when the Roman army surrounded Jerusalem and desecrated the holy temple. The abomination of desolation is referred to in Luke 21:20.

II. The Apostle John identifies the antichrist as people who didn’t continue in the church, thus identifying it as the “last hour.” Read 1 John 2:18-19.

III. The Apostle John also identifies the spirit of antichrist loosed in the world as those who don’t confess that Jesus “has come in the flesh.” (Read 1 John 4:2-3.)

1. He was obviously referring to those attempting to bring platonic Gnosticism in the church. Gnosticism, which was a heretical cult that did much damage to the church in the first few centuries, believed that the flesh was evil and that only the spiritual world was good. They even taught that the god of the Old Testament was evil (the god of the flesh who created the natural world and needed animal sacrifices to be appeased), and that the god of the New Testament was good; that true Christianity was really about attempting to get free from the flesh and to live in the spirit.

IV. The antichrist is a false spirit that brings false doctrine into the church; it is not a single person.

1. Never once is the term “antichrist” used in the Book of Revelation or any of the other epistles besides 1 John and 2 John. Yet most writers never refer to the antichrist as a spirit of false doctrine that takes the power and relevancy of Jesus away from the flesh or natural realm.

V. A new kind of Gnosticism has crept into the church during the past 120 years.

1. The church has fled the cities to find a sort of paradise in the suburbs or countryside.

2. The church has just concentrated on spiritual things and abandoned cultural and societal reform, unlike their predecessors in America who started most of the Ivy League colleges and universities with the intent to develop Christians to lead the nation in every realm of life.

3. The Evangelical church has now espoused an escapist theology and is now focused on going to heaven and the rapture than the focus of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, in which Jesus told us to concentrate on His will “on earth as it is in heaven.”

VI. The ironic thing is, those preachers and authors focusing on the “last days,” identifying one man as the antichrist, the rapture, and the mark of the beast, have actually fallen prey to the spirit of antichrist because they take the practical application of the cross of Christ away from the realm of the flesh. That is to say, their escapist teaching is semi-Gnostic because the kingdom cannot be totally applied in the flesh or natural realm. It is almost like saying Jesus Christ has not come in the flesh like 1 John 4:2-4. That is to say, their teaching implies that the cross wasn’t for the reconciliation of the natural created order but just for our eternal spiritual life in heaven. Colossians 1:20 says that Jesus came to reconcile both things in heaven and on earth. Thus, redemption is for the natural realm of the flesh in the created order, not just the spiritual realm in heavenly places.

VII. Best-selling books like the Left Behind series by Tim Lahaye are taking kingdom focus off the earth and into the next world, something totally foreign to the teachings of the apostles and Jesus, who actually prayed in John 17:15: “I pray not that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one.” Thus, praying against the rapture mentality!

Unless we rid the church of this new Gnosticism, Christians will continue to live a dualistic life in which they just care about their inward piety and holiness, and leave the stewardship of the planet to the heathen. Dualism is causing the church to separate from the institutions of politics, law, education, economics, science, history, and philosophy, and is the major reason why the cultures in Western Europe and North America are continuing to erode. May the church fulfill its mission and become the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

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You can find the original article here.

Every state, whether it’s a state of success, state of confidence, a state of fear, a state of self-consciousness, a state of feeling sexy or a state of feeling stupid. All state is the byproduct of three things:

1. What gets your attention or your focus.
2. What you say to yourself – the meaning you attach.
3. Your physiology – how you allow it to get grounded in your body.

It seems there are a chorus of prophetic voices rising in the Church today who are declaring words of doom and destruction over America in general and the American economy specifically.  While I do not claim to be a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, and certainly do not pretend to know what the future has in store, I do not believe that these voices of negativity are accurately reflecting the will of God for our nation.  We are in the midst of a deep recession and in need of a rescue, this is true.  But our worldview and the posture of our hearts, souls and minds has a great deal of influence on our future trajectory.

Both God and the devil have a plan for America. It is my opinion that there are those in the Church who are listening to the voice of the enemy in their declarations of judgment and destruction over this nation.  I do not believe this is in agreement with the plans and purposes of God.  I believe He has a great and glorious plan yet in store for America.  Yes, we have in many regards lost our way and we have numerous problems that need big, even supernatural solutions.  But there is nothing wrong with this nation that a generous application of God’s righteousness and justice in the right places will not fix.

In Isa. 9:6-7 we see that His government (Kingdom) is continually expanding, being built upon justice, righteousness and peace and that His zeal ensures it’s completion.  Thus, as the “ecclesia” of Christ, wherever we see injustice or unrighteousness, that is our call to zealous action – to bring His Kingdom to bear in that area.  This is where the Kingdom of light engages the Kingdom of darkness in hand-to-hand combat.  This is where the Kingdom suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.  Though we wrestle not against flesh and blood, all of creation is groaning and anxiously longing for the physical manifestation of the sons of God – those who possess the heart, character and nature of the Father Himself who will put an end to the corruption of sin and death.

America was born out of a unified, fiery passion to establish a land where individuals would be free to worship the living God in the manner of their own choosing, to pursue life, liberty and happiness and to enjoy the blessed fruit of their labors.  Throughout the founding years of this nation, our forefathers publicly acknowledged the guiding hand of Providence.  From their writings, we know they believed that God had a unique destiny and divine purpose for this new nation and they pledged their very life blood to see it come to fruition.  Out of this fertile ground, prosperity (from free-market capitalism) and the Kingdom of God began to grow and spread exponentially throughout the land and into other other nations of the world.  In spite of America’s sins (and they are many), God has used this nation like no other in the history of mankind to bring blessing and prosperity to the peoples of the earth.

Today, it doesn’t take a prophet to see that the American dollar is in big trouble.  But there is one simple fact that we all need to keep in mind.  Economic systems are largely dependent upon the people’s confidence in the health of the system.  If people believe the system is failing and hard times are coming, they will hunker down and stop spending.  Instead of seeking to expand, business owners will sit on their cash reserves and stop hiring.  A downward spiral begins and that which we fear will come upon us like a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Conversely, if people have hope and faith that things are improving, they will continue to spend their money, which creates jobs, which fuels economic recovery and growth.  Thus, we will multiply our own reality, depending upon which direction we choose to believe we are going.

Anyone who has faith in the God of miracles that we read about in the Bible would never accept a negative prognosis of serious disease from a doctor as the final word.  They would rise up and fight sickness and disease until their last breath, believing that God was for them and not against them.  Yet amazingly enough, some of these same people will receive a negative economic prognosis from the “experts” and become fatalistic about America’s future.  The sickest part of this is that some actually believe that they are fulfilling the will of God by giving up on their own future and that of their children and grandchildren, believing in this that they will hasten the return of the Lord.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

What happens to the rest of the world if America ceases to exist? Who is positioned to take a stand for righteousness, justice and peace?  Communist China?  Socialist Europe?  Islam and Sharia?

Jesus said He was not returning until the Gospel of the Kingdom (His rule and reign) had been preached to every nation.  We do not hasten His return by simply wishing for it, or giving up and surrendering ground to the enemy.  He gave us a commission to make disciples by teaching people how to live in righteousness, that we might enjoy justice and peace.  This is a nation worth fighting for, and God is looking for those who are willing to lay down their lives to see His Kingdom come and His will being done in every nation on earth, especially the one we call our home.

So the choice is ours. We can be complacent and sit around and complain about the way things are.  Or worse, we can come into agreement with the devil and echo his words of doom, gloom and destruction.  Or, we can rise up and be the cleansing agent of Christ that He has called us to be and bring His rule and reign to bear in the nerve centers of this nation and get her back on the right track once again.

Hoorah,
Rich Carey

Well, Joseph Mattera has done it again! Here is another excellent article, reprinted in it’s entirety. You can read this on his website here.  Be sure to read his other articles Why I Preach The Kingdom and Contrasting a Kingdom Mindset with a Church Mindset.  You’ll be glad you did!

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There is presently a revolution taking place among those on the leading edge of change in the Evangelical Church. The result is a transition from a church mindset to a kingdom mindset in which the walls of church buildings are no longer able to contain the raw creative energy of Christ-followers who are committed to preaching and applying the Gospel of the Kingdom to all the world, including its systems and structures.

As political solutions and big government attempts to heal our land fail miserably, more people will look to faith-based partnerships and churches to find solutions. Hence the irrelevancy of old church patterns and traditions will become more noticeable in the decades to come.

Consequently, it behooves us to continue to study the contrasts between leading-edge kingdom practices and old, irrelevant religious church patterns that have failed to effectively evangelize and transform communities with the gospel.

The following is a contrast between leaders with a kingdom mindset and those with a church mindset.

I. Kingdom leaders interpret Matthew 28:19-20 as referring to discipling all nations. Church leaders believe it only refers to all individual ethnic peoples.

The Body of Christ is now re-thinking the Great Commission scriptures of Mark 16:15 and Matthew 28:19-20. Instead of viewing them as commands to merely evangelize individual souls, now many are viewing the command in Mark 16 to ‘go into all the world and preach’ as a command to apply the gospel to both individual sinners and world systems. Matthew 28:19-20 is now regarded as the New Testament equivalent to the Cultural Mandate found in Genesis 1:28.

II. Kingdom leaders attempt to nurture and release world-class leaders who serve their communities. Church leaders nurture only those who serve in Sunday ministry.

Kingdom leaders understand that only 2% to 3% of those in their congregations are called to full-time church ministry. These leaders believe they are called to equip the saints for the work of the ministry which, in the kingdom, includes marketplace vocational ministry, not only ecclesial ministry. With this view, there is room for everyone in the congregation to be set apart and trained as a minister of the gospel.

III. Kingdom leaders understand and work with God’s common grace. Church leaders only understand and work with those who have experienced saving grace.

Kingdom leaders understand that God’s grace has been poured out to all of humanity so the world can function normally. Romans 13:1-7 calls civic leaders God’s ministers (diakanos or deacons). If God calls unredeemed leaders His ministers then kingdom leaders know they can also partner with political and community leaders, even if they are not in full agreement when it comes to faith and core values.

Church leaders only work with those that are in full agreement with their core religious values, thus insulating themselves from the world around them.

IV. Kingdom leaders have a biblical worldview that encompasses all of life. Church leaders have a semi-Gnostic Greek view of Scripture that regards only spiritual things as important.

Kingdom leaders know that the earth is the Lord’s and not the devil’s (Psalm 24)! They know that the Word became flesh. Thus, the material world is also sacred and something to be cultivated (Genesis 2:15).

Church leaders are only concerned with spiritual things like prayer, healing, the gifts and fruit of the Spirit, etc. These spiritual things are only really effective if they are applied to our walk with God and its concomitant love of neighbor as salt and light.

V. Kingdom leaders are working towards a new Christendom. Church leaders are only trying to produce individual Christians.

Kingdom leaders desire to interweave the principles of God’s Word into every fabric of culture so every nation and city favors Christianity and bases civic laws on biblical precepts.

Church leaders are not overly concerned with politics and economics but with adding new converts who, without a biblical worldview, will only perpetuate humanistic ungodly systems with their partial “spiritual” gospel.

VI. Kingdom leaders teach the church to embrace their secular communities before they experience conversion. Church leaders embrace people into their faith communities only after they experience salvation.

Kingdom leaders regard their cities and communities as gifts to the church and to the people who live in them. They embrace their communities in humility and send their members into their communities as servant leaders who will be the greatest problem solvers of the most challenging human needs.

Church leaders only embrace individuals in their communities after they have professed faith in Christ. Thus, they insulate and isolate themselves and their churches from the felt needs of their communities, yet are joyful as long as their churches are growing and their bills are paid.

VII. Kingdom leaders turn the world upside down (Acts 17:1-7). Church leaders restructure their local churches.

In Acts 17 it was said, when the apostles came into a community, that ‘those who turned the world upside down have come here also.’

Nowadays the typical church mindset is only concerned with what happens within the four walls of the church building. There are many churches that, if they closed down, the local community boards, police stations, and political leaders would barely notice they were gone!

VIII. Kingdom leaders articulate Christ as Lord over every culture. Church leaders preach Christ as only the head of the church.

Kingdom leaders recognize Jesus’ place as King of every secular king. This has vast cultural and political implications, and pressures the church to engage the secular arena.

Those with a church mindset only preach Christ as the head of the church and neglect Jesus’ function as King over the unredeemed world!

IX. Kingdom leaders shepherd whole communities. Church leaders shepherd only their church congregations.

Kingdom leaders understand they are called to communities, not only to local churches. Hence, they see themselves as chaplains and spiritual leaders of regions.

Church leaders feel no responsibility to their communities because they feel committed only to those who attend their Sunday services.

X. Kingdom leaders attempt to exorcise demons out of ungodly social systems. Church leaders only cast devils out of individual people.

Kingdom leaders understand that Jesus came to redeem systemic sin, not just individual sin (read Colossians 1:20).

Church leaders only feel called to deal with individual evil. Thus, they interpret passages such as Luke 4:18 as dealing with the individual poor and oppressed, neglecting the systemic reference from which it came. (Read Isaiah 61:1-4 to see that Luke 4:18 concerns redeeming and restoring desolate cities, not just individuals in need.)

XI. Kingdom leaders pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Church leaders pray for revival in their churches.

The Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11) teaches us to pray that God’s will would be done and His kingdom would come on earth. Thus, kingdom leaders have as their prayer focus the kingdom being manifest on the earth.

Leaders with a church mindset are content with only the signs of the kingdom (healing and deliverance of individuals as found in Matthew 12:28 and Hebrews 2:1-3) instead of striving for a manifestation of the kingdom in their cities that impacts the quality of life politically and economically (Isaiah 61:3-4).

XII. Kingdom leaders believe for the gospel to economically lift whole communities. Church leaders believe for greater tithes and offerings to support their building projects and programs.

XIII. Kingdom leaders gravitate toward the complexities and challenges of cities. Church leaders gravitate toward lives of isolation and inward focus.

Before the Civil War, when the American church preached the kingdom message, the church was able to draft the founding documents of this great nation, and start schools and Ivy League universities, all for the purpose of placing godly leaders in society as the future presidents, governors, mayors, scientists, artists, writers, etc. The church took the lead in cultural reform.

But after the horrible experiences of the Civil War the church lost hope in the kingdom being manifest on the earth and started to focus on the imminent return of Christ and the rapture. This resulted in American culture being lost to secularists in one generation!

This turning away from the kingdom message led to church leaders isolating themselves from the looming threats of biblical higher criticism, Marxism, Darwinism, the infiltration of non-WASP immigrants, Sigmund Freud and psychology, and the Industrial Revolution. These brought many pressures upon the nuclear family as men had to go into the cities to find work. Instead of engaging the culture and these challenges head-on, the American church started looking for escape and changed its theology! The present move of God is finally bringing the church back onto the biblical footing of the kingdom message.

XIV. Kingdom leaders equip people for life. Church leaders equip people for church life.

Kingdom leaders inspire and equip the saints to serve in their cities as salt and light, to be like Daniel and Joseph who prospered and held significant leadership roles in the midst of pagan systems and kings.

Church leaders train people to be good altar workers, ushers, Sunday school teachers, Sunday preachers, etc.

XV. Kingdom leaders honor Jesus’ dual role as Redeemer and Creator. Church leaders separate redemption from creation.

Kingdom leaders realize that the Jesus who died on the cross (John 3:16) for the sins of the world (John 1:29) is the same Jesus who created the world (John 1:3-4).

When we apply the Word of God to culture we are embracing Jesus’ ownership of the whole world. But when we preach the cross of Christ only for individual sinners and do not also apply it to the created order we separate the Redeemer from the Creator!

XVI. Kingdom leaders are forward thinkers. Church leaders long for the past.

Kingdom leaders are excited about the future advance of Christendom in every facet of life and for every nation. They are excited over the increasing influence of Christ in culture. They train believers to replenish the earth by placing godly leaders in the realms of science, art, media, education, economics and politics. The sky is the limit for them!

Those with a church mindset long for the past, when life was much simpler and everyone in a community embraced the role of Christianity in culture. They do not like the vast complexities that social fragmentation has presented because it distracts from, and interferes with, their nice and neat Sunday church attendance parish structures.

XVII. Kingdom leaders apply their faith to the earth. Church leaders are focused on escaping the earth and making it to heaven.

The Bible is essentially not a book about heaven. It is not concerned with another geographic location whether spiritual or physical. It is mainly concerned with the person of Christ and His rule and dominion in the cosmos (read Ephesians 1:9-11)! Because of this, the Bible is the most practical book about life on the earth that has ever been written! Kingdom leaders understand and embrace this reality.

Church leaders emphasize heaven since they have no real sense of purpose to give to the majority of their congregants who are not called into full-time church ministry.

XVIII. Kingdom leaders envision the building of universities with theology serving as the “queen of the sciences.” Church leaders envision the establishment of church-centered Bible institutes that avoid liberal arts and the humanities.

XIX. Kingdom leaders are entrepreneurs. Church leaders are stuck in maintenance mode, merely holding their ground until Jesus comes back or they make it to heaven!

XX. Kingdom leaders pray for revival to bring people into the church and reformation to place believers as leaders in world systems. Church leaders merely pray and believe for higher attendance on Sundays.

XXI. Kingdom leaders work for cultural transformation. Church leaders focus on waiting for the rapture.

Jesus told the church to occupy until He comes. Kingdom leaders are busy strategizing how they are going to start schools of government to train political candidates, start businesses to create wealth to expand the kingdom, and develop educational programs to break cycles of poverty for at-risk children.

Those with a church mindset do not get involved in quality of life issues because their theology doesn’t allow for it! They think it is like arranging the chairs on the Titanic because the world will soon end when the antichrist takes over!

XXII. Kingdom leaders train their children to walk in biblical dominion in society. Church leaders’ highest hope is that their children don’t fall away from the faith!

Kingdom leaders have dominion as the primary goal for their children. They don’t teach their children to get secure jobs in big companies; they teach them to become the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies! They don’t teach them how to fish but how to own a lake! They echo the words of Moses in Deuteronomy 28:10-13 that teaches believers are called to be the head and not the tail, to be above and not beneath, to lend to many nations and not to borrow!

Church leaders take a defensive posture with their children by merely praying that they would not fall away from the faith. Even many who teach apologetics and biblical worldview are stuck in the church mindset because they are only teaching their children how to defend the faith instead of also how to advance the kingdom!

XXIII. Kingdom leaders empower the poor to own the pond. Church leaders give the poor some fish.

Kingdom leaders understand how to break poverty mindsets over people by equipping them to create their own wealth. Church leaders have an entitlement approach in which they merely feed the poor instead of equipping them to start their own businesses or work in high-level positions that will enable them to be prosperous for the sake of the kingdom!