The Church's Disastrous Retreat from the Public Square

Post 6 in a series

By David Hobbs

In both the Civil War and the Revolutionary War, the tide of public sentiment was turned by fiery preaching from the pulpits of America. Scottish reformer John Knox was so powerful in the pulpit in Scotland that Mary, Queen of Scots, is reputed to have said, “I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe.”

But the 20th century saw a remarkable change in the pulpits of America. Other than briefly in the black pulpits during the Civil Rights movement, the pulpit’s fire has gone out and the pastors have retreated from the public square and confined their ministry to within their four walls. The reasons for this are not entirely clear, but the results have been disastrous for the church and the nation.

Once the government and the Supreme Court got away with outlawing prayer from the public schools in the 1960s they took an even bolder step 10 years later and legalized abortion at any time during pregnancy. They reasoned that the churches would not rise up and fight them and they were right. The churches fretted and fumed, prayed and marched, but when it was all over, abortion was still legal and the church was back inside its four walls where it's been ever since.

Many church leaders justified their retreat by saying the church shouldn’t be involved in politics anyway, but should instead concentrate on winning souls. When enough souls got saved, they reasoned, they would vote the miscreants out of office. But if that was the church’s strategy, where are all the souls that were saved while the church was absent from the public square? Instead of growing, the church as a whole has been losing members steadily for many years in America.

Once the church proved it wouldn’t fight for even the babies in the womb, the culture began pushing it around like the playground bully. Though over 70% of Americans identify as born-again Christians, they have let the homosexual community, estimated to be around 2½%, defeat and humiliate them on issue after issue, winning not only legally, but also amazingly in the court of public opinion. Nothing brings to mind more clearly the humiliation the people of God experienced at the hand of their enemies in the Book of Judges, than the church in America over for the last 50 years. And instead of repenting for its failures, the church expects the Lord to swoop in, rapture it to heaven, and then trounce the world! Have we learned nothing from our Bibles, which are now available in over 50 English translations?

As things got worse, the pastors adopted a strategy, consciously or unconsciously, that they would concentrate their efforts within the four walls, and delegate the cultural battles to others. The anti-abortion effort became lay-led and has been ever since. How has that worked? Unable to get access through the pulpits to the people (and not possessing the pastors’ God-given charisma to lead the people), lay pro-life leaders were rendered largely ineffective. As one long-term national pro-life leader wrote not long ago, the lay-led pro-life movement has proved to be a colossal failure over the last 40 years. How colossal? It’s failure has cost somewhere between 55 million and 95 million lives.

Is there a singe pulpit the abortionists fear? Any group of intercessors anywhere in the country they cringe at the mention of? They laugh and scorn the church, which is so ineffective that even when that brave band of film makers caught Planned Parenthood in the act of illegally selling baby parts, authorities brought charges against the film makers instead of PP, which has yet to lose a single dime of funding.

As part of this trade off by the pastors to delegate the church’s cultural warfare to others, many Para church ministries have sprung up like Focus on the Family, the American Family Assoc., National Right to Life and many, many more. How has that worked out? They fight for the church continuously on a national level, but have only managed to slow down the cultural decay, not stop or reverse it. All of them put together have not been able to equal the power of the fiery pulpits. And no matter what the situation, whether it’s a victory or a defeat, their answer is always the same, “We need more money!”

Today was the last day of the Supreme Court term and they handed down their tragic decision overturning Texas’ common sense abortion clinic law and then skipped town. Almost immediately I received an email from a national pro-life group informing me of the terrible news and begging for an emergency donation--as much as I could give. I thought, Why? The Supreme Court’s out of town for three months; there’s nothing that can be done about it now. What’s your next strategy going to be, anyway? Do you have any idea? Why do you need money when you don't know what you'll do with it? But they use every opportunity to dun you for money. They have become just more bureaucracies in a city full of bureaucracies, and, like all bureaucracies, self-preservation takes first place on their list of priorities. How I long for one of them to say, “I know you’d like to give, but don’t send any money now. We are going to spend the summer in fasting and prayer, asking the Lord what our next step should be. Please pray with us.” But I never have and probably never will see such a statement. How can God use such an unrighteous system to accomplish His holy will?

Which brings us back to the pastors. It seems clear to me that no one else can do the pastors’ job. God made them His leaders and gave them charisma to lead. God causes His people to follow them because that’s the way He has ordained it. If the pastors don’t lead the church, it is not going anywhere, no matter how much people like me hector and fume. That is one task they cannot delegate to others, no matter how much they want to.

It’s like the leading bass singer in the opera feeling sick and delegating his part to the soprano that night. He can delegate all he wants, but his part is not going to be sung by any soprano. Likewise, no one in all of God’s creation can perform the pastors’ part but them. Either they rise up and do it like they’ve been called to, or it won’t get done and the churches will continue to flounder and lose ground.

John Knox is also known for his prayer to God, “Give me Scotland or I die!” Is there a pastor in America today who will cry out to God, “End abortion for me or I will die!”

God told me to call the church to a war footing, but unless the pastor’s pick up and trumpet that call, it will never happen.