In memory of…

Jack E. Marsh Sr., a prophet in Israel

& Craig D. Osborne, a father in Israel

“Prophets for Trump” and the Church Today: A Pastoral & Prophetic Word
By Jack E. Marsh Jr.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. —John 8:32

Contents:

I. Introduction
II. Idolatry In the Bible
III. Idolatry and the Prophetic in the Old Testament
IV. Idolatry and the Prophetic in the New Testament
V. Christian Idolatry Today
VI. Prophetic Warning
VII. Proposed Action
VIII. Christian Unity
IX. My Testimony

I. Introduction

If you are a Baby Boomer, GenXer, or early Millennial serving the Lord today: that a group
entitled “Prophets for Trump” exists (with 13,000 members) points to the failure of our
collective leadership. This fact, of course, might be contested. Given the gravity of the issues
involved, please walk with me through a Biblical justification of this claim. God is a Father. The
purpose of this document is not to simply blame, but to start an honest conversation about
how we’re collectively missing the mark, what remedial action might be necessary, and what
good, collaborative church governance might be called for. As I will further explain below,
there is a widespread and well-intended reluctance to disrupt the hard-won solidarity, good
will, and cooperation we’ve achieved among Renewal (Pentecostal, Charismatic, & Third Wave)
churches. Many of us have been working hard and stewarding Renewal church life well, and
after all: 13,000 people is only a very small percentage of the global population, a mere grain
in the sea of this earth’s billions. Those who have been leading well and working faithfully is
who I’m pleading with here. If abstracted from its context of holistic relevance, “Prophets for
Trump” can be seen as a silly but relatively harmless expression of the margins, a minor
annoyance that pastors must deal with on a routine basis. But understood in broader context, it
is a symptom of much larger problems, and is also perpetuating problems: doing harm to the
communities we serve and marring our public witness. So please walk with me in
understanding well the problems at stake.
II. Idolatry in the Bible

As Biblical scholars and theologians know well, the single most egregious sin in all of scripture
is the sin of idolatry: elevating the created over the Creator. Other well-known vices we often
preach about are ultimately species of idolatry, things like pride, vanity, envy, and rebellion;
and the pagan cultic practices the scriptures so fiercely proscribe are pernicious because they
are a function of idolatry: an attempt to access spiritual power or status outside of the economy
of the God’s Kingdom. The account of the fall of Lucifer in Isaiah 14 is ultimately grounded in
idolatry, “I will make myself like the Most High” (v.14), and Ezekiel 28 more fully fleshes this
out, “Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom”
(vs. 17). What must be stressed here is the relational nature of idolatry and the corrupting
potential it involves for God’s people. Isaiah and Ezekiel are shedding new light on the
Serpent’s deception in Genesis 3.
Satan fell because, despite his illustrious status as 2nd in command on God’s angelic
council, he envied the special love God showed to humanity by creating us in the divine image
(Gen. 1:27). Idolatry is sinful not solely because it refuses to recognize God’s own authority as
Creator, but because it sows destructive disorder and always brings harm to the rest of creation
that God loves, and who he has entrusted humans to serve. The Fall narrative in Genesis 3
describes just this truth. Adam and Eve were given authority to observe, name, tend, enjoy,
and care for all of God’s good creation. To be bearers of God’s image is to be stewards of
creation. This is further symbolized by the command to not eat of the Tree of Knowledge of
Good and Evil. The knowledge in question here is not strictly theoretical or bookish, but akin to
relational intimacy. Since creation itself was all good and open to human inquiry, governance,
and care, there was nothing new to be learned from experiencing, in their own very person,
what evil is. The Serpent tricked Adam into believing that God is not trustworthy, as if he were
harboring some “secret knowledge” he’s too stingy to share with us. Adam and Eve were
already “like God” (Gen. 1:27), and Satan deceived them into the same envy that precipitated
his own fall from heaven.1 What must be stressed is that God, Satan, and humanity are not the
only relevant actors here: the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil that Adam and Eve were
forbidden to consume symbolize who God was protecting in the prohibition: creation itself, the

1
What’s interesting about Satan’s deception is that he played on “you shall be like gods” (Gen 3:5). Noting the
plural for “gods” in the Hebrew, and the “divine council” cosmology popular in Near Eastern culture of that time,
it’s as if the author is teaching a bigger lesson here. Satan fell because he resented and envied the image of God
in humanity, and vainly considered himself better than humanity and capable of displacing God God’s Self, the
Creator. Did humanity fall (in part) because they resented and envied the supernatural power of angels? The
lesson seems to be: “become who you are and were created to be, strong enough to recognize and acknowledge
the call of others (be they people or angels), and secure in your own identity and call in God.” The lesson seems
to be: the idolatry at stake in envy is the root of all rebellion and evil.
very creation Adam and Eve were set apart, empowered, and entrusted to steward (cf. Romans
8:19-23).
As should be clear, the Bible’s first divine commandment – expressed positively in Gen.
1 and negatively in Gen. 2 – directly treats the holistic nature of the divine mandate –
humanity’s call – to steward creation, as bearers of God’s image.

Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea
and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth (Gen
1:28).

Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and
keep it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you
may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for
in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” (Gen 2:15-17).

Gen 1 uses quite forceful descriptors here: “be fruitful and multiply, …subdue and rule over…”
The Hebrew word rendered “subdue” here is kabash, meaning, “to subject” or “keep under
subjection.” Among its various connotations in this context, it can also mean to “to tread
down” or “to bring lawlessness to not.” The Hebrew word rendered “rule over” is radah,
meaning, “to rule” or “have dominion,” and depending on context can also mean, “tread
down” or “stand on.”2 Co-creation, co-governance, and co-care involve the exercise of relative,
collaborative power that the Bible doesn’t try to conceal. Just as God exercises dominion –
God’s own creative, governing, and caring power over creation – the divine image in humanity
calls us to these very same tasks. Gen 1 delegates to humanity the authority to exercise power
justly – in measure to who is being cared for and the authority invested in us – as co-
participants with God in preserving, cultivating, and caring for creation.

2
In the movie Instinct (1999), loosely based on a Daniel Quinn novel, Anthony Hopkins plays an anthropologist
who abandons human relationships when he’s adopted by a troop of mountain gorillas. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays a
psychologist tasked to understand why. The film is an excellent critique of the human abuse of creation.
Unfortunately, the ultimate moral the film recommends is this: “We have only one thing to give up. Our
dominion.” Though I’m also a big fan of Disney’s Bambi (1942), Instinct shares in one of its problems, namely:
anthropomorphizing non-human nature, and hence failing “to rule” well by actually serving, preserving, observing,
and paying attention to the differences across species and ecologies, and the issues at stake in those differences.
The Bambi attitude, popular among goodhearted but usually lazy children of rich Westerners, evinces the very vice
it tries to criticize. The view fails to notice: (1) radical and unjust exploitation of nature is already a symptom of
abdicating our stewardship, i.e. the dominion implied by our ecological responsibilities to co-govern well; (2)
responsible hunting can play a productive role in the management of species well-being in various ecologies, and
(3) the swipe at the Hebrew Bible that Instinct enacts evinces the same ignorance of it that those Biblicists who
appeal to it over-against ecology and animal compassion also show. The Bambi attitude and idolatrous misuse of
the scriptures therefore demonstrate our culture’s failure of stewardship not only at the level of nature, but also at
the level of culture: bad teaching is destroying our world. Authentic Biblical tradition shows: to “give up
dominion” is to decide not to care; a vice shared across every sector of our culture and politics today. We must
put the kabash on not caring.
 But this isn’t the whole story. Gen 2 shifts the scope from the “big picture” view of
creation unfolded in Gen 1, to focus in on the specifics of our human story. The Garden of
Eden marks off the region of human life proper, as distinct from surrounding wildernesses. It’s a
microcosm of what falls within our sphere of immediate stewardship, an account of how sin,
death, and injustice entered and marred a good creation, and a warning against repeating the
mistakes of Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. The Hebrew word avad – aptly translated as
“cultivate,” here – means to “work,” “labor,” and ultimately “to serve;” and the word shamar
means, “to keep, guard, observe, pay attention to.” The power we’ve been entrusted with is
not brute or arbitrary, and this is why Gen 2 prohibits eating from the Tree immediately after
instructing that that the ends of rulership are to serve, cultivate, and tend. This is a more
specific commentary on the responsibilities entailed by the power invested in us in Gen 1.
The prohibition on consuming the fruit of the Tree is an explicit warning about the
consequences of sin: death. It’s the negative (“thou shalt not…”) implication of the positive
(“do this”) command to multiply, subdue, and rule, and hence implicit instruction on how to
rule (observe, name, tend, enjoy, and create) well. The prohibition on eating of the Tree is
vastly important, because it teaches four things: (1) God did not make us robots: we are
created free, and the prohibition on eating the fruit of the Tree gave us a choice to either love
and steward well or sin and experience death, (2) the power we as humanity have been
entrusted is limited. The positive command to rule entails a bounding prohibition on Total
Consumption. (3) This prohibition protects the otherness and distinctness of creation – Adam
observed, considered, and named the particular creatures he encountered: animals, plants,
minerals, streams, etc. as the particular creatures that they were; and not only or merely as
commodities to be bought and sold; and (4) the prohibition protects the otherness and
distinctness of God as God. Humanity participates in God’s freely creative, governing, and
caring power, but by uniquely cooperative election and delegation. Humanity is created in
God’s image and set apart as stewards, but is not itself God. In contrast to authoritarian
readings of the Fall narrative, who picture God as a sort of cosmic Joseph Stalin brutally
punishing Adam and Eve because they were plucky enough to disobey him: the reason that the
Fall was morally catastrophic is because of the violence they did to creation itself. Adam and
Eve ignored God’s warning about the consequences of sin, and abdicated their responsibility
to steward well, by treating creation as if it were wholly their own.3
So idolatry is never merely a matter of private unfaithfulness by us toward God, but
inherently involves the abdication of our responsibility and authority toward creation and other
people, whether passively (by omission, like Ahab) or actively (by commission, like Lucifer). As
we know, instead of destroying the creation he loves due to humanity’s corruption of it, God

3
Theologically and philosophically speaking, the proper analogy here is not the relationship between parent and
child, as if God had put toddlers in charge and then beat the piss out of them when they predictably messed up.
No. The proper analogy is to see ourselves in Adam and Eve’s sin: God put responsible adults in charge, and then
took back the reigns after the real disaster we precipitated – the real harms we’ve done to creation – in an
ongoing drama we call Redemptive History that we’re still participating in with Christ to help collaboratively bring
to consummation: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with human beings. He will dwell with them, and they will
be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Rev. 21:3).
instead took back the reigns and enacted a divine plan: redeeming creation through love. Thus
the Bible begins the drama of Redemptive History.

III. Idolatry, Prophethood, & Demonology in the Old Testament (The Tanakh).

One of the most remarkable truths the Bible unfolds is this: like a good Father and Teacher,
when God takes back the reigns it is always to hand them back to us: to judge, forgive, heal,
and restore our call as originary stewards; and with us: to heal, restore, and cultivate the
creation that is our charge. Instead of abandoning creation to the destruction of sin, God chose
people to work with and speak for him to bring about the redemption of our world. These
people were called prophets, and played a special role – that over time came to include
priests, judges, kings, apostles, and The Messiah – in God’s unfolding redemptive plot.
Prophethood in the Bible unfolds in stages, and in essential correlation to its treatment of
idolatry and evil.
As a matter of general historical and anthropological fact, demonology is a universal
dimension of ancient, pre-Christian human culture, attested by the ongoing role of shamans,
priests, and holy persons across religious traditions. A tension exists across contexts, regions,
and histories between “demythologizing” and “superstitious” poles of treating the relevant
phenomena, and canonical attempts to rationally integrate the insights of both sides within a
theologically grounded practical orientation that empowers this: bringing into relative
intelligibility the relationship of human understanding with divine mystery, for the sake human
flourishing. Demonology must be understood as a pastorally grounded form of proto-critical
theory, where ancient communities imaginatively named the psychological, sociological,
cosmological, and theologically mediated forces adversely affecting individual and communal
survival and well being. Jewish tradition uniquely contributes to this human legacy in a number
of notable ways.
Similar to the Egyptian and Near Eastern cultures the Jewish Bible engaged and
criticized, ancient Hebrew cosmology presupposed open interaction between heaven and
earth – ‘gods’ and people – governed by a “divine council.”4 The Bible’s fundamental
innovation is to bring that council under the governance of One God and Creator. In contrast
to the immortality obsession and supposed “divinity” of political rulers prominent in
surrounding cultures: the Bible declares worldly life to be good, and humanity to bear God’s
image (Gen 1). This promoted humanity and demoted the pantheon of Near Eastern gods to
the status of created ministerial spirits, what would later be called “angels.” Though the book
of Genesis shows evidence of exilic redaction, it conveys oral traditions and writings that are
much older. Early treatments of both prophethood and evil are correlated, and this correlation
remains throughout the evolution of these themes in subsequent Jewish literature.
In the early literature, the primary mode of God’s interaction with humanity was in the
form of theophany, or God’s direct manifestation in speech (Gen 2, 6:12-22, 12:1-9, 22 Exo

4
See Paul B. Sumner, Visions of the Divine Council in the Hebrew Bible (Thesis, Pepperdine University, 2013):
http://www.hebrew-streams.org/works/hebrew/divinecouncil-ch2.pdf.
24:12-18), dream (Gen 28:10-17), non-animal nature (Exo 3), and human form (Gen 18:1-3, 19,
32:22-31). By contrast, and in a clear criticism of Egyptian religion: early treatment of evil
primarily took zoomorphic form (serpents, giants, etc.) presented as grounded in human or
angelic choices to act wickedly.5 At this stage of writing, God chose prophets by directly
manifesting to them and countered evil by teaching, or in extreme circumstances: destroying,
in both cases bringing evil to nothing and canceling its bad effects. The story of the Nephilim
in Genesis 6 presents a window into early Hebrew views of evil. The Nephilim are presented as
the monstrous result of illicit sexual activity between “the sons of God,” i.e. angelic ministers
on God’s governing council, and “the daughters of men,” i.e. human beings. The story is a
critique of surrounding pagan practices, and a warning against a kind of supernatural form of
“bestiality.” Unlike more familiar forms of wickedness, which can be contained by teaching,
repentance, and restitution, this sort of illicit activity amplifies the idea of the polluting effects
of sin, and hence God destroys and renews the world by a cleansing flood. That Noah is
instructed to bring animals “each according to their kind” shows the construal of evil at stake:
not, of course, any sort of racist allegory, for Torah already declares all of humanity to be divine
image bearers. Rather, it’s a warning against mixing things that are respectively good but can
become destructive to human community in unanticipated and monstrous ways if improperly
mixed. It’s a lesson about caring about the world as it is (and its potentiality in light of what it
is), and against uncaring, indifferent, or wicked forms of ignorance and misuse.
We need not review in detail every successive stage in the prophet/evil correlation as it
unfolds across the Tanakh. The Exodus and Moses’ prophetic role in the foundation of Israel as
a polity at Sinai shows clear continuity with Genesis’s treatment of prophethood and evil. The
rest of the Torah leads by example, and takes great care to teach and issue norms intended to
preserve the community against spiritually and physically harmful practices, supplying a
framework to guide Israel into the future. In this phase, prophethood acquires new
characteristics, but “divine council” imagery (Exod 24:9-10), angelic assistants sent from God’s
throne (Exod 14:19, 23:20; Duet 32:17, 33:2, Num 22:22), and the idea of evil reviewed above
(Num 13), all remain. The first significant innovation in the Biblical treatment of prophethood
emerged slowly over the period of Judges (with Moses, Deborah is presented as both prophet
and judge! See Judges 4). During this period of Jewish history, the idea of prophethood
evolved from the sole province of uniquely gifted or blessed individuals to a group
responsibility within the social framework of Israelite religion. Prophetic guilds emerged,
eventually called “the sons of the prophets” (I Ki 2, 4, 5, 20), and with the advent of the
monarchy these guilds served as a fierce check on political power (1 Sam 15, 2 Sam 12, 1 Ki
18). Not surprisingly, development in the idea of prophethood involved a correlative

5
This shouldn’t be read as a devaluing of animal life per se: animals too are created beings, and positive forms of
animal symbolism permeate the Tanakh. Animals partake of the joy of creation, though are limited in how they do
so. Depicting evil in zoomorphic form was a way of criticizing evil: it reflects the limitedness of animal life excluded
from God’s image, and hence a demotion of evil; but this demotion of evil does not imply that animals themselves
are evil or excluded from all community. The Lion of Judah still roars: the Lion and the Lamb still achieve
community.
deepening in the idea of evil. It’s in this evolving context that the Bible’s first exorcism is
narrated.
“The Spirit of Lord had left Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord was terrifying him” (I
Sam 16:14). The first thing to note is the evil spirit is described as “from the Lord.” This remains
in continuity with what we’ve reviewed so far. “Evil spirits,” and not just good ones, were
considered divine adjutants at this stage of Hebrew demonology (recall God and Satan’s
conversation in Job 1). And the reason for God’s withdrawal from Saul is similar too: misuse of
his authority as king, or the abdication of his responsibility to govern well by the bad choices
he made. What’s new here is an inner, psychological dimension, the result of the bad choices
and uncaring ignorance of an individual person and not just a group of people or angels. David
was called on to play the harp for Saul, and “Whenever the evil spirit from God bothered Saul,
David would play his harp. Saul would relax and feel better, and the evil spirit would go away”
(I Ki 16:23). The disordered result of bad choices grounded in uncaring ignorance that is the
root of evil is individualized here, and treatment for it is expanded beyond prior remedies.
What must be stressed is that the Tanakh attributes an excess to evil not explicable in purely
naturalistic and social terms, and this helps explain the mature treatment of evil that emerges
later. This era of prophethood surrounding the guild-schools that extends until the exilic period
were more focused on stewarding and preserving the nationhood of Israel – Samuel, Nathan,
Elijah, Elisha, etc. – though covenantal consciousness is of course always there and the new co-
focus on human individuality further developed. The final phase of demonology in the Tanakh
emerges with one of the Jewish Bible’s greatest gifts to humankind: the Prophets.
The writing of the Prophets carry on the traditions we’ve just reviewed. They contain
“divine council” throne imagery, angelic ministers, more fully definite distinctions between
individual people, groups, and the spiritual forces both must historically contend with, and a
radicalization of the prior prophet’s practice of challenging political authority, injustice to the
poor, immigrant, widow, and orphan, etc. They intensify and foreground the Torah’s concern
for the stranger, and can be credited with articulating the first universal eschatological vision for
a renewed world of universal peace and justice. They moreover acquire a new power: spiritual
intercession as a wider role for prayer in Jewish social life, and introduce original thinking
meant to solve longstanding theological problems.6
For a good bit of ancient Jewish history, angels and demons were presented as both
under God’s direct unilateral control. The view was not always consistent, as evidenced by the
angelic rebellion that spawned the Nephilim. Moreover, the picture of divine governance
presented in Job 1 and 1 Ki 16 must have struck the Prophets and the traditions they represent
as distorting the character of God (would God really destroy Job’s life just to win a bet with
Satan? does God really directly command the demonic oppression of individuals?). The
Prophets introduce important new thinking here. For example, the author of Isaiah 14 tells an
origin story of evil that would have been understood by its readers to be referring to the chief

6
The destruction of the 1st Temple must have caused a kind of existential crisis. With priests no longer able to
execute their mediating role in Israelite religion in the Temple, the Prophets absorb and carry on their function.
demon, named in Zechariah 3 as “Satan.” We know the story well. Satan was once Lucifer, 2nd
in command of God’s divine council. ”How you have fallen from heaven!” (14:12), Isaiah
announces. Lucifer’s sin? “I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on
the mount of assembly” (14:13). A number of important things are going on here. The author is
addressing both the skeptics and the superstitious of his time. Lucifer literally means “day star,”
and so also is a skeptical critique of astrology, a popular Near Eastern superstition. But readers
at the time would have likely understood that “Lucifer” is also a symbol or metonym for Satan,
and this novely challenges the traditioned view of Satan as sort of God’s divine prosecutor. This
empowers the reader to question the justice of the Accuser, and not merely defer because he
was once an officer in God’s court. The author of Isaiah is creatively marshalling an entire
tradition to distinguish between faithful angelic ministers and rebellious demonic adversaries,
who Ezekiel will later expel to the realm of the living-dead (Eze 31, 32:21-23).7 It’s important to
stress: the skepticism toward the power of astrology and of the intrinsic authority of angelic
ministers was grounded in an acknowledgment of the effective power of angels and demons,
for quite important reasons.
The books of Ezekiel (chp. 28, 32) and Daniel (chp. 10) develop Isaiah’s creative
intervention, probably further influenced by the Persian mythology of the time (and
developments in these themes continue in ancient post-Biblical Jewish literature, through to
the Christian and Rabbinic era). This evolution in Jewish prophethood and demonology
empowered the Prophet’s to distinguish between the actual course of history and God’s
providential power: the idea that everything that happens to happen is not necessarily “God’s
will.” Wicked human and demonic actors can fight God’s will – sin, death, and injustice are real
– though God is actively involved in preserving creation with faithful humanity and will
ultimately prevail (textually speaking, the Prophets gave birth to Messianism). It must be
stressed that the Prophets refused a full-fledged dualism or proto-Manichaeism here. Evil is not
depicted as a cosmic counter-principle, but rather the destructive result of the abdication of
responsibility by rebellious humans and demons choosing to exploit and mare – rather than
serve – a good creation. Moreover, the Prophets enact an immanent critique of some of their
own indigenous traditions, by distinguishing between the human and demonic rulers of other
nations, and the people of those nations themselves, who suffer bad governance. This
distinction empowered Isaiah to prophesy: “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth
(65:17),” a world where nations “will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into
pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war
anymore” (Isaiah 2:3-4). The future-oriented universality Isaiah inaugurates, grounded in God’s
Creative Power, propelled ongoing visions of future peace in the later prophets. For instance,
though Zechariah is a fierce critic of Israel’s enemies, he grounds this criticism in one of the
most marvelous expressions of universal hope in all of ancient literature:

7
Among all the Prophets, Ezekiel most fully develops the contrast between the “living-dead” (Eze 31, 32:21-23)
i.e. the zombie-like character and fallen-immortality of sinful humanity and demons, to God’s authentic
Resurrection Power that restores to the fallen who repent back to fully human and divinely flourishing life (Eze 37,
the Valley of Dry Bones prophecy). Much of the later art and imagery treating hell primarily originates in Ezekiel’s
distinctions.
 Shout and be glad, Daughter Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you, declares
the LORD. “Many nations will be joined with the LORD in that day and will become my
people. I will live among you and you will know that the LORD Almighty has sent me to
you. The LORD will inherit Judah as his portion in the holy land and will again choose
Jerusalem. Be still before the LORD, all mankind, because he has roused himself from his
holy dwelling.” Zechariah 2:10-13.

Though not all the joints of this reading of ancient Jewish prophethood and demonology are
fully drawn out in the Prophets themselves, ongoing traditions explicate them into the
Hellenistic period through to the Christian and Rabbinic era.

IV. Idolatry, Prophethood, & Demonology in the New Testament.

I need not review the more well known dimensions of the New Testament’s treatment of
idolatry, prophethood, and demonology. We know them. I’ll instead focus on less treated
moments of it and the structural transformations the Gospel enacts, as understood through the
holistic testimony of the New Testament itself. These are necessary to the matter at hand. As
we know, the New Testament takes up and creatively develops the theologies handed down in
the Old Testament.
As I noted above, the latter contains both “demythologizing” and “superstitious”
understandings of the demonic. “Demythologizing” traditions treats angels and demons as
created divine adjutants under God’s direct control. In its most extreme forms, this tradition
denies the reality of angels and demons altogether, and treats them as purely “metaphorical”
literary devices that dramatize virtues and vices, good human actors and bad, in a given
context. Here, angels and demons ultimately signify as purely naturalistic and social ”realities,”
goods and ills, and hence denies the radicality of evil and the import of individual human
agency. If extreme forms of demythologization err in thinking it knows too much,
“superstitious” traditions err for the same reason, but in the opposite direction. “Superstitious”
traditions treat angels and demons as semi-gods: since angels (still) and demons (once) serve(d)
God’s governing council, and directly stand (or for demons: once stood) in God’s very
Presence, and in light of the ministering power they wield: they are given a respect and
admiration by the “superstitious” ultimately owed to God alone. We call this “superstitious”
because it involves a childish failure of discernment (and ultimately evinces a lack of proper
education). Anyone who has served in deliverance ministry today knows this phenomenon too
well: the fear-based “demon behind every hedgerow” silliness, or treating angels like God by
invoking them – or even “praying” to them – without Biblical understanding. One seldom-
discussed point of interest on this matter is that the Apostle Paul himself expressed uncertainty
about at least some aspects of Christian demonology.
In 1 Cor, just after instructing the Corinthian church on the charismatic gifts and their
practice, Paul treats an issue that was causing considerable local strife: the question of eating
meat sacrificed to idols. The controversy was this: the church at Corinth had both Jewish and
gentile participants. Some of the gentile Christians were still participating in the holidays and
traditions of their pre-Christian culture: public festivals hosted at local pagan temples. At this
time, meat was a far too expensive commodity for average people to afford, and hence the
only time they could enjoy eating meat was during these public festivals. The Hebrew
Christians at Corinth deeply worried about these festivals, because the meat served were first
ritually sacrificed to the god of the temple, and were hence ‘polluted’ by idolatry. How did Paul
handle the matter? A close reading of 1 Cor 8 – 10 is instructive.
First, Paul premises his treatment in the question of knowledge: “Now about food
sacrificed to idols: We know that ‘We all possess knowledge’” (8:1). This clearly demonstrates
he is utilizing traditioned Jewish teaching on idolatry. To know, one must care. Per our reading
of Genesis 2: to care is to “observe, name, tend, enjoy, and serve;” and with the Torah to
“diligently seek” (Lev. 10:16, Deut. 4:29, Isa. 55:6, etc.). To care requires knowing what we are
talking about. That Paul starts here is important, because as we’ll see he is acknowledging that
both sides of this debate have a point. Though knowledge is important, Love is more
important; and hence we ought utilize both our knowledge and freedom in a way that is
conscious about and caring of others, lest we become a stumbling block and become an
occasion for other’s to violate their own conscience (I Cor 8:9-10). Though both would-be
“demythologizers” and the would-be “superstitious” both have forms of knowledge, in this
heated conflict they both lacked what’s most important: acknowledgment of the limits of our
knowledge and of the priority of Love (“Those who think they know something do not yet know
as they ought to know” v.2).
The demythologizers rightly know that the Greek “gods” are not gods, and hence meat
sacrificed to them can’t properly count as meat sacrificed to a god. As such, does the
ignorance of pagans require us to abstain from exercising our freedom in Christ (1 Cor 8: 4-8)?
Even if we grant that, though not a god, the meat is nevertheless sacrificed to an actual
demon, what does this mean? Paul clearly holds that “food does not bring us near to God; we
are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do” (v. 8). Christ liberates us from the power
of hell, and though we ought not act with prideful bravado: if the scriptures are true then
eating meat sacrificed to idols cannot harm us. Paul acknowledges the legitimacy of this point
of view, though his unfolding discussion shows he also worries about it.
He goes on to an extended discussion of the freedom he enjoys as an apostle, the deep
care, knowledge, and responsibilities it involves, and reviews relevant precedents in Jewish
history that exemplify the same point, before ending with a qualified acknowledgment of the
Hebrew Christian side of the debate: “Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is
anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons,
not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons” (1 Cor 10:19-20). What’s
crucial here is that, over the course of his long discussion, Paul has shifted the reason for
abstaining from eating meat sacrificed to idols: not because it will “pollute” the soul of the
believer, but because it can pollute the fellowship of the community and the conscience of the
immature. In just this way, Paul preserves one of the originary dimensions of the Tanakh’s
teaching on idolatry: Love is the end of knowledge, there are some things we do not fully
know, and failing to Love and show care can pollute the “table of the Lord” (Communion) by
introducing destructive strife into it. This, and not the empirical question of whether a demon is
actually involved when grilling a steak, is the reason Paul worries about eating the meat.
Throughout this treatment and the details it involves, Paul takes the best of the
“demythologizers” and the best of the “superstitious,” placing freedom under the
responsibility to Love for the sake of the whole community. By treating this matter as he did, he
settled an issue that was troubling the Corinthian church, but also left some questions open-
ended. By doing this he models for us what humility is even when we have knowledge.8 We
ought not inordinately fear or elevate angels and demons, and we ought not simply ignore
them. We should treat each case based on the best of what we actually know, conscious of the
limits of our knowledge, for the sake of Love and community.
Though Paul was humble about certain questions involved in treating demonic
phenomena, he certainly knew this well: the cruelty and violence rampant in the pagan society
he confronted were a function of “principalities and powers” (Eph 6:12, Dan 10). These powers,
of course, are not gods, but comparable to what he elsewhere calls “strongholds” (2 Cor 10:4-
6), patterns of thinking, practice, and argument that elevates itself above knowledge of God
(and hence are forms of idolatry), that ultimately takes on a monstrous life of its own. Bob
Mumford treats this matter in a cogent way in his excellent teaching, Dr. Frankenstein and
World Systems (Morning Star Publications, 2003). Just as strongholds capture and inhibit
individuals from realizing their God-given potential, by oppressing and usurping their own
creative, committed, moral agency, “principalities and powers” (Eph 6:12, Dan 10) do likewise
at the higher-order level of society, culture, and politics. Paul’s own teachings about Christ and
eschatology were revealed in a context of contending against “principalities and powers,” and
with other New Testament authors contribute creatively to the theology of redemption, and its
history inaugurated in the Old Testament.
New Testament theology, like quarters of Hellenistic Judaism and its post-70 Rabbinic
transformation, innovates by employing both literal and allegorical modes of interpretation of
the Tanakh, but for understanding the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, Son
of God (Matt 16,17; Dan 3:25), Son of Man (Mrk 14:62, Dan 7:13), the very Word of God (John
1; Rev 19:13), God God’s Self (Matt 1:23, Isa 53, Rom 9:5) of Davidic Tradition (Luke 1:32, Rom
1:3): the world’s One, True, Messiah [Hebrew: Mashiyach, Greek: Christos, both: “Anointed”]
(John 3:16-17, Acts 2:30, Romans 5:6-8, Gal 3:27-29). I stress the titles and authentic Standing
ascribed to Jesus because they show how deeply embedded in the Old Testament &

8
Paul was a son of Pharisaical Judaism, practitioner of the Jewish mysticism of that time, a student of Rabbi
Gamaliel, and himself a direct recipient of Divine Revelation. The humility he shows here is therefore quite
remarkable. Though Paul did know a bit about the pagan wisdom of his time, he was not an expert; and he was
too critical of and resistant to the injustices of the pagan society he encountered to feel comfortable about directly
endorsing participation in temple festivals. In this light, his treatment of this matter shows great love and care to
gentile Christians. He didn’t utilize his own expertise to directly pronounce on a matter he didn’t know that much
about, by straightforwardly prohibiting eating the meat simply because it was sacrificed to idols. He was more
concerned about preserving the community from the violence of pagan societies, and on that point he knew well:
inhuman societies are governed by demonic principalities that can be relatively understood and spiritually fought
(Eph 6).
Septuagint the New Testament actually is, and hence how important the traditional
understanding of idolatry and prophethood are for the creative contributions New Testament
authors enact.9 Jesus Christ is described as fulfilling the three main pillars of ancient Jewish
governance: as Prophet, Priest, & King. As Prophet: the Final Word, Speech, and Light of God
(John 1, 9:5; Rev 19:13, 22:3-4). As Priest: the Final Mediator between the Father and
Humanity, between families and families, citizens and citizens, nations and nations (Lev 27:12,
Heb 12:24, 1 Tim 2:5, Rev 21:22-27). As King: the Final Power by which all power shall be
Judged, the Final Authority by which all authority shall be Tested, and the Final Standard by
which all Rule shall Stand or Fall (Deut 10:17, 1 Tim 6:15, Rev 19:16).
Moreover, Paul emphasizes that the differentiated unity of governance Christ Incarnates
restores what had been lost to humanity in the Fall: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ
shall all be made alive” (Rom 5:22). Christ restores the marred image of God in us,
reconstituting our status as stewards – as co-creative, co-legislating, and co-caring – agents for
the careful governance of creation. N.T. Wright draws out this connection between death and
life, abdication and restoration, at stake in Christ’s overcoming of idolatry:

The problem is that humans were made for a particular vocation, which they have
rejected; that this rejection involves a turning away from the living God to worship idols;
that this results in giving to the idols – “forces” within the creation – a power over
humans and the world that was rightfully that of genuine humans; and that this leads to
a slavery, which is ultimately the rule of death itself, the corruption and destruction of
the good world made by the Creator.10

What must be stressed here is that the manifold power of God as Creator reflects not an
irritable and incompetent tyrant eager to enjoy the trappings of office and hoard control: as
God originarily created humanity as co-carers, so Christ restores our ability to collectively care.
The Triune God of the Bible shares caring for creation, i.e. his ability invested in us to observe,
name, tend, enjoy, and serve particular creatures and the ecologies they involve. As God
originarily created humanity as co-legislators & co-regents, so Christ restores our co-regency.
The Triune God of the Bible shares power and does not hoard it. As God originarily created
humanity as co-creators, so Christ restores our ability to co-create. The Triune God of the Bible
shares his creative power with humanity, collaborating with us to innovate and develop the
inherent possibilities and potentiality of creation itself. Though were injustice is at stake Christ
can govern “with a rod of iron” (Rev 19:15), he does so by the power of his Speech and in
defense of the rule of law, over-against the rule of arbitrary force (Rom 13); ultimately governed
by the Love that God God’s Self Is (1 John 4:16). From Genesis to Revelations, into the Patristic
and Rabbinic period: the most God-like quality is the free willingness to share provision, justice,

9
For the sake brevity, I must skip through a number of important details here.

10
N. T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion (HarperOne,
2016), loc. 1469; quoted in: https://melwild.wordpress.com/2017/04/22/quotes-the-real-problem-is-idolatry-n-t-
wright/.
and love. As every Rabbi, Priest, Pastor and Biblical scholar worth their salt know: this
willingness to share is implicated in the primary Name of God the Father in the Bible: “YHWY”
(Exo 3:14), a Hebrew word play best rendered: “I will be what I will be to meet the needs of my
people.” Given the transformative treatment of the Tanakh in both the New Testament and
Talmud, this meaning is universalized to God’s providential care and immanent activity for all
creation and all the nations of this Earth, which of course includes Israel and the Church chosen
to co-steward among every other culture on this planet: for justice, peace, provision, and love
for all humankind, that the Messianic Reign will bring to consummation.
The New Testament hence brings about a transformation in the Biblical tradition of
prophethood and demonology. The central feature of this transformation is a consequence of
God’s victory over hell and evil by Christ’s Death & Resurrection, and ultimately a new,
broadened understanding of the Holy Spirit! Christ’s work opens Pentecost! Paul writes,
“Therefore it says, ‘When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to
men’” (Eph 4:8). Paul’s quoting Psalm 68, a celebratory hymn extolling the divine victory of
those fighting for the orphaned, widowed, poor, and stranger over-against the unjust might of
brute force. This forms a core part of Paul’s larger soteriology and demonology, and with 1
Peter 4:9 forms the basis for our understanding of Holy Saturday. Christ descended into hell
and set free captive human souls there, while moreover leading in toe captive demonic powers
– and captivity itself – in his march of ascent. This is also homage to Israel’s Deliverance in
Exodus, placing the victory of Christ squarely in its tradition. Christ’s victory has broken the
power of hell itself, on which our ability and authority to wage ongoing spiritual warfare (prayer,
exorcism, protest, etc.) is ultimately based. What gifts were given to humanity in this victory
procession? In the immediate context of Ephesians 4, the gift of team leadership (the 5-fold
ministry) and community (the participation of the whole Body of Christ in the Holy Spirit in the
conduct of everyday church life), such that all people – and not just specially selected leaders –
can participate in and contribute to the consummation of God’s redemption of this world
through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.
I need not review here the specific gifts, practices, and fruits of the Spirit Paul elsewhere
enumerates (which are attested in Acts and across the New Testament). Prophecy is among
them, but functioning more like a local guild for the “exhortation, edification, and comfort” (1
Cor 14:3) of local churches, than in the special Prophetic-Apostolic-Foundational sense specific
to Abraham & Sarah, Moses & Miriam, and Jesus, Mary, & Paul. That sort of prophecy is
probably closed, since Jesus is the Final Prophet by which all others, before or since, are
understood and evaluated.11 The role of Prophethood in the Old Testament is now shared
across the five-fold ministry (Eph 4:11), and hence a team form of co-governance is what Christ
ultimately gifted to us. There is nothing specifically written that preempts the possibility of
more dramatic and higher-order styles of prophetic ministry (Rev 11 suggests this style is still
possible), but all prophetically gifted people, local or not, are to be tested and held

11
The office/gift distinction still stands within the 5-fold ministry and functions across the entire church; but the
Biblical understanding of the nature and function of the Prophetic office evolved over time. Thanks to my sister
and friend, Audrey Morgan Donnell, for inviting this clarification.
accountable by the collective church leadership we all are called to participate in, gifted to us
in the Holy Spirit, and testified to in the scriptures, ongoing church life, and in the Person of
Jesus Christ himself (Deut 18:20-22, Isa 8:20, Matt 7:15-20, 1 Cor 14:29-32, 1 Thess 5:20, 1
John 4:1-6, etc.).

V. Christian Idolatry Today

As should be clear, idolatry throughout the Bible retains both a mundane (quite simple and
everyday) and extraordinary (complicit with the active sin and the injustice of demonic
principalities) meanings. These are connected. The primary everyday meaning of idolatry is
elevating the created over the Creator, evidenced by uncaring indifference: abdicating the
honor and responsibility to competently steward, an incompetence premised in a failure to
care by failing to serve (avad), and the refusal to “observe, pay attention to, name, tend, and
enjoy” creation seriously, as individuals and as a team. This everyday failure is ultimately rooted
in the vicious fruits of idolatry itself: the envy, pride, vanity, ignorance, and self-obsession with
status that ultimately caused both the fall of Lucifer and the fall of humanity itself. This form of
everyday indifference and self-obsession opens the spiritual gates to death: to monstrously
demonic forms of unanticipated corruption destructive of human and ecological community
(the Nephilim, the hellishly living-dead of Ezekiel, Daniel and Paul’s principalities and powers,
etc.). What has all this to do with a 13,000 member Facebook group entitled “Prophets for
Trump”? Lets consider together.

IV.i. Renewal Theology on Idolatry

Idolatry is elevating creation over the Creator, that consists in actively or passively abdicating
God’s call to holistic stewardship, a failure to observe, pay attention to, name, tend, enjoy, and
ultimately: care for creation as Jesus does. This involves far more than treating statues or
created emblems as if they were a god, and today primarily manifests other ways, above all:
exalting power, money, and fame above God at the expense of creation itself. As myself a
Renewal Christian gifted in teaching and the prophetic, and grounded in Pentecostal,
Charismatic, and Third Wave experiences and literatures, it brings me no joy to say this: the
Renewal church has no serious theology of idolatry that I’m aware of. This is as true for
repressed and marginalized literary traditions as it is for more well-known and professionally
trained ones (but not true in the same way for them respectively). For my immediate purpose, I
will focus on a few examples. Wayne Grudem is a brother, and from a historical perspective
one of the most important theologians in the Renewal tradition.12 He served as an ambassador
of Renewal ecclesiology and theology to the broader Evangelical world at a time when it was
still long embattled and marginalized. From Azusa St. through much of the 20th century,
Renewal Christianity was treated as an unwanted step-child, the province of poor folk, Black

12
Important not because his theology and ethics are perfect, he rather hands us much to consider, question, and
rethink; but important for his ambassadorial service to the (once) larger Evangelical world.
folk, crazed women, and the probably deranged, as perceived by those extolling their own
denominational traditions and quite peculiar view of the scriptures over-against the active,
dynamic Life and Power of the Holy Spirit to redeem and transform lives. This was so into my
own lifetime, where forms of bullying and demagoguing – by ignorant populists like Hank
Hanegraaff and “Reformed” pseudo-intellectuals like John MacArthur13 – were still selling
books on the backs of Renewal folk. Thanks to more than a century of struggle by Renewal
Christians, ongoing work by Renewal pastors and practical theologians (notably, more recently,
Jack Deere and Michael Brown), Grudem became a kind of “insider go-between” between
Renewal churches and the larger Evangelical world. His Systematic Theology (Zondervan
Academic, 1994) has been enormously popular even outside Renewal contexts, and thus his
theological reputation does not rest solely on his Renewal bona fides.14
Given Grudem’s historical and sociological import, and the popularity of his Systematic
Theology, its instructive to give it a closer look. It turns out that “idolatry” is mentioned some
23 times in his book’s more than 1200 pages (this number excludes its mention in Biblical
quotes, the Creeds, and exactly one Study Question). That a systematic theology informed by
the Renewal tradition, that describes itself as an “Introduction to Biblical Doctrine,” fails to
thematically treat and systematically consider the paradigmatic instance of sin throughout the
entire Bible, says something. I stress: this point isn’t meant to single out brother Wayne! It’s our
collective failure, and whatever points of loving correction that are in order in particular cases,
brother Wayne’s largely faithful service to God’s Kingdom will never be forgotten.15 Among the
manifold questions this raises, chief among of them is this: ongoing problems and issues that
dog the Renewal church are grounded in our collective failure to maturely understand idolatry.
Above all, it’s the failure of all of us entrusted to teach and educate the church. Before moving
to a fuller discussion of Christian idolatry today, I must obey the Holy Spirit and issue a
prophetic warning.

VI. Prophetic Warning

13
Hank Hanegraaff, Counterfeit Revival: Looking For God in All the Wrong Places (Thomas Nelson, 1997, 2001).
John F. MacArthur, Charismatic Chaos (Zondervan Academic, 1993); Strange Fire: The Danger of Offending the
Holy Spirit with Counterfeit Worship (Thomas Nelson, 2013). MacArthur is nothing more than a literate Hanegraaff
with higher degrees: they’re both ignorant profiteers (or in Hanegraaff’s case, perhaps “was a profiteer,” since he
has since converted to Orthodoxy, and I hope repented of previous mistakes).

14
I could also mention J. Rodman Williams, who so far as I know produced history’s first self-consciously Renewal
systematic theology: Renewal Theology, 3 volumes in 1 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996). Though I own this work,
I’ve never spent much time with it due to my own pastor’s mixed opinion of its quality. Williams, so far as I know,
never treats the issue of idolatry as a central focus. There are a myriad of other theologians that produced late 20th
century work in or sympathetic to Renewal tradition, for example: Clark Pinnock, The Flame of Love: A Theology of
the Holy Spirit (Intervarsity Press, 1996).

15
I say “largely” because there are aspects of his oeuvre that warrant serious questioning, since they evince a
failure to properly care.
 VI.i Introduction

Back in the 90s, Bob Mumford delivered a teaching I will never forget: a commentary on the
severe consequences Moses incurred for striking the rock instead of speaking to it (Numbers
20, Deut 34). It’s a teaching we should all heed today, and I give you all permission to correct
me if too much me and not enough Holy Spirit is evidenced in what follows. My life-long
pastor, Jack Groblewski, recently delivered a prophetic sermon on the challenges we face:
“The church is going to need to live out sacrificial unity in order for the harvest to come. It’s a
unity that hurts, aligned to Love.”16 Clearly, what we must sacrifice here is not innocent
scapegoats or legitimate grievances, but our own egos and a primary concern for our own
special interests, in service to the plight of the church and of creation today. I want to stress the
hope, promise, and opportunity these involve, such that we can treat the problems at hand and
difficult sacrifices with courageous expectation. Indeed, as we know well: Jesus Christ, the
Living God who Speaks – across the ages unto this day – Remains, for as Fuchsia Pickett
famously taught: God is Creator of “worlds upon worlds,” and not only of our own planet Earth
we are charged to care for and steward.17 Faithfulness in repentance and correction opens new
redemptive possibilities – to transform conflict into cooperation, destruction into creation,
death into life in our world – in ways we cannot yet fully anticipate. Isn’t this one of the truths
our very own Renewal tradition restored to the church?
Indeed, noting its antecedents that reach back through every day and stream of church
history, as the very Founding Event of our modern Renewal movement – Azusa St. – testifies:

There was a great deal of opposition, but they continued to fast and pray for the
baptism with the Holy Spirit, till on April 9th the fire of God fell in a cottage on Bonnie
Brae. Pentecost was poured out upon workers and saints. ...Sister Lucy Farrow said the
Lord had sent her to join us in holding up this precious truth. She came with love and
power holding up the blood of Jesus Christ in all His fullness.18

Lucy Farrow, a Black sister and tireless pastor – herself a former slave and the niece of Frederick
Douglas – is the founding Mother of modern Renewal Christianity.19 She is an apostle of God’s

16
Jack Groblewski, “Protracted Pentecost,” NC4.org, https://www.nc4.org/sermons/page/2/.

17
Fuchsia Pickett, “The Unveiling of His Face,” CBU.org, 8/21/1999: https://www.cbu.org/sermons/sermon/1999-
08-21/the-unveiling-of-his-face.

18
Quoted in Eddie Hyatt, Fire On The Earth: Eyewitness Reports From the Azusa Street Revival (Creation House,
2006), 49-50.

19
To those who know the history, from a human and scholarly point of view: would William J. Seymour have
received the baptism and his apostolic commission, and would Charles Parham remained nothing but a local
revivalist, were it not for Farrow’s tireless efforts and ministry? She is the Socrates of modern Renewal Christianity,
and forever stands as a Christian apostle in the history of the Church, the Archives of Heaven, and the Courts of
the Most High.
Kingdom, who by authority of her office and ongoing faithfulness commissioned brother
Seymour as co-steward of the labor (and without whom Charles Parham’s mixed contribution
might have rested content in the hinterlands of Kansas and Texas20). Sister Farrow’s life and
work exemplify the Apostolic Power that the Holy Spirit entrusts when the church struggles,
repents, seeks, fasts, and prays in one accord. Indeed, as the founding Father of modern
Renewal Christianity, William J. Seymour, testifies:

I can say, through the power of the Spirit, that wherever God can get a people that will
come together in one accord and one mind in the Word of God, the baptism of the Holy
Ghost will fall upon them, like as at Cornelius' house.21

Pastor Growbleski’s call for a “unity that hurts, aligned to Love,” to courageously face today’s
challenges, carries forth this tradition today among the multitude of voices and various streams
of our movement. This requires clarifying what unity means and what it doesn’t mean.
Needless strife is destructive and we ought not tolerate it. But there are times when
conflict finds us. God disturbs our peace and speaks in our conscience to alert us when we’re
missing in the mark in daily life. In cases where we’re ignorant or our consciences are seared,
God sends other people or can use circumstances to wake us up. Where conflict involves
unresolved sin or trauma, God disturbs our peace because he loves us and wants to heal and
restore us to wholeness. So unity in our day cannot mean the absence of conflict, but it should
mean the absence of needless conflict. Moreover, unity cannot mean absolute unanimity on
every point of practice, interpretation, or doctrine (we already know well the destruction that
follows from authoritarian attempts to violently impose unanimity). God always works through
relational diversity, through different people and groups acting in concert; and sustains the
church by this diversity. Finally, unity doesn’t mean compromising the central truths and
commitments of our faith. There are certain long-settled questions that current problems don’t
warrant our collective reconsideration. For example, none of the quite extensive problems
troubling our world justify compromising or relitigating, say: the doctrine of the Trinity, the
duties of Christian charity, or whether the gifts of the Holy Spirit are for today. Unity excludes
needless conflict, absolute unanimity, and unjustified and unwise reform proposals. Stated
positively: unity does call for redemptive conflict (“iron sharpens iron” Prov 27:17), working
toward relative agreement in conflicts that matter, and considering justified forms of wisely
crafted reform proposals. As sister Cynthia Murray beautifully counsels: “Friend[s] of God, don’t

20
Parham is a tragic figure, a testimony to the pathologies handed down by the sins of American history and some
of the failures of its church. His contributions to Azusa St. will never be forgotten, but this entails a concomitant
responsibility to reckon with his failures. So far as I know, he never repented of the sin of racism, and this
disqualifies him from a place as a founding figure in our tradition, a destiny he himself tragically abdicated.

Quoted in Gastón Espinosa, William J. Seymour and the Origins of Global Pentecostalism: A Biography and
21

Documentary History (Duke University Press, 2014).

give up hope because of a damaged relationship... God specializes in repairing breaches! ‘And
they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of
many generations; and thou shalt be called, The Repairer of the Breach, The Restorer of Paths
to Dwell in’ (Isaiah 58:12).”22 To be in one accord, even when it hurts, is to imitate Jesus Christ
in holding fast to the Love that he is, in all our relationships be guided by Him, and with the
courage and wisdom Christ’s Love empowers: meet the challenges of our time.

VI.ii. The Prophetic Warning

Given the potential for stoking, instead of healing, the problems we collectively face, the Lord
has instructed me to issue this warning by appeal to our shared Renewal tradition. This makes
me happy, because I am personally and spiritually indebted to the brother who initially
sounded the alarm: Rick Joyner.23 Prior to 9/11/2001, Rick issued a prophetic word titled “Civil
War in the Church.”24 I’m re-issuing that word today as a prophetic warning. Rick’s word in its
originally published form never came to fulfillment, and I re-issue it today in the sincere hope
that it never does. As we all know well: words of this sort are not infallible oracles but rather
prophetic insight intended to exhort and alert the church so that we can act to avoid the
foretold possibility. Though I don’t endorse every single phrase, the general message of Rick’s
word is so insightful and anointed that my spirit was quickened when I first read it (in the late
90s). It’s moreover so uncannily relevant to current circumstances that I really believe the Holy
Spirit moved Rick to write it for such a time as this. I encourage you all to read and prayerfully
consider Rick’s word, and to do so with absolute and sober seriousness. It speaks for itself, so I
need not treat it in detail here. I’ll simply underline the moments most directly relevant to the
matter at hand.
The core enemy God is displacing in the church today is “‘Satan’s strand of three cords’
(the control spirit, the political spirit, and the religious spirit), by which he is yoking multitudes
of believers.”25 These spirits are what Paul calls “principalities,” and form a complex,
interlocking structure that on Rick’s account is propelled by “money,” “unholy…self-will”
(“states rights” and ungodly “traditions”), “peace at any cost [advocacy],” and generational
refusal to recognize and aid “the destiny of the black church in America.” So that there is no

22
Cynthia Murray, “It’s Time to Fix Relationship Cracks!,” The Elijah List Facebook Page, 1/4/2017:
https://www.facebook.com/TheElijahList/.

23
Rick’s The Final Quest (Morning Star Publications, 1996) and his authorship of that specific period, radically
transformed my own walk with God. As with all spiritual mentors, I don’t always agree with Rick on everything, and
since late 2001 I have not followed his writing and ministry. But I honor him here because absent his ministry, I
wouldn’t be where I am today.

24
Rick Joyner, “Civil War in the Church,” Morning Star Prophetic Bulletin, #16 (May, 1996):
https://prod.morningstarministries.org/publications/civil-war-church.

25
Ibid. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes in the remainder of this section are of Rick’s word.
confusion, I’ll briefly comment on “the control spirit, the political spirit, and the religious spirit”
before closing.

VI.iii. A Control Spirit

In short, a Control Spirit is an inordinate compulsion to, well, control: to exercise power and
authority clumsily in one’s own life, family, church, etc. driven by idiosyncratic or myopic ends.
This can be a tricky matter since we are called to self-control, and called to exercise caring co-
governance with the Holy Spirit in ourselves, within our families, and in our communities. Self-
control is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23), and essential to good team leadership, social
participation, and leading a flourishing life in Christ. What is the distinguishing trait of a Control
Spirit? Since it involves power, it is connected to what Joyner and others call a “political spirit”
(discussed below), but it need not be directly “political” in character. A person can struggle
with a Control Spirit without directly exercising active force. Since it overlaps with the call to
rightly order our lives, it is connected to what is often called a “religious spirit” (discussed
below), but it need not be directly religious in character. A person can struggle with a Control
Spirit without directly utilizing putatively religious justifications. The distinguishing trait of a
Control Spirit is a compulsion to manipulate events, conversations, or people to satisfy a
personal desire. Personal desires are often goods, but they can be connected to areas of
unresolved hurt, sin, or trauma in our life, and hence to areas we struggle with trust. This can
motivate us to overvalue some desires and undervalue others, such that we can become driven
to manipulate without (or with little) real care for other people and good principles. A Control
Spirit can become institutionalized in a cultural ethos in much the same way it functions in
individuals. For example, a culture of applying good principles without care and loving-
kindness in the public debates of the day, remaining indifferent to the cares and struggles of
others, or demanding personal forms of recognition in contexts or conversations where it’s
inappropriate. In truth, a Control Spirit has sadly become a controlling principality in much of
North American media culture today, and we as the Body of Christ have participated in (and in
some cases have helped drive) the problem. This is connected to the “money” problem Rick
underlines above: lust for profit pollutes nearly every nook of American culture. A Control Spirit
is driven by a failure to understand our own motivational life, to order it well in light of the
scriptures, in concert with the Holy Spirit, and caringly with others. It evinces an indifference to
understand truthfully the cultures we participate in, i.e. to respect and caringly consider other
individuals and other community’s own agency and perspectives across personal, civil society,
and public relationships.
I will stress here an important point about control specific to Renewal church culture in
North America. In his good and concise treatment of the markers of a Control Spirit, J. Lee
Grady underlines one of its primary traits: “Women [are] viewed as inferior.”26 I mention this
because talk of a “Jezebel Spirit” over-saturates much of our local literature on the problem of

26
J. Lee Grady, “Breaking Free of the Control Spirit,” Charisma Magazine,
http://www.charismamag.com/blogs/fire-in-my-bones/7311-breaking-free-from-the-spirit-of-control
control. This over-emphasis is often a symptom of insecure male authority itself exercising a
Control Spirit. As such, I propose a practice most of us do anyway: since Jezebel does in fact
well-exemplify a Control Spirit, when we treat her character to teach about it we should also
treat Ahab’s complicity, the social conditions that play a role in molding inordinately controlling
personalities, and all the women of the Bible who exercised bold leadership – Deborah for
example, who the Tanakh describes in the same terms it treats Moses; Mary the Mother of
Jesus, the Prophet Anna (Luke 2:36–38), Philips daughters who where prophets (Acts 21:9),
Pricilla, who with her husband Paul describes as “fellow workers in Christ Jesus" (Rom 16:3),
and the only female apostle mentioned in the Bible – explicitly named as such by Paul himself:
Junia (Rom 16:7), etc. As Fuchsia Pickett long taught us, “Pre-fall, men and women were
equal.”27 If redemptive history really matters to us, we should moreover seriously and
prayerfully ponder Mother Sojourner Truth’s wisdom:

Ain’t I a woman? …Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as
much rights as men, ‘cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from?
Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with
Him.28

Though this won’t settle to everyone’s satisfaction relevant ongoing debates, we owe it to our
mothers, sisters, and daughters to do better, not just in how we talk but in everyday church life
by teaching, inviting, and nurturing women’s participation and leadership across every
dimension of life. That’s something both “complimentarians” and “egalitarians” should be able
to agree on and jointly practice, however differently they creatively practice it.

VI.iv. A “Political” Spirit

In short, a “Political” Spirit is a compulsion to seek or hoard unilateral power. I place the word
“political” in parentheses, because properly understood: politics is a form of public and
community service. We are citizens of the Kingdom of God and created to co-govern with God
and with each other – in liberty, equality, and solidarity, forever. Those with a special “gift of
government” (1 Cor 12:28, Rom 12:8) know this well. Politics is the participatory art of (1)
deliberating truthfully about the rules, callings, needs, and policies that affect the whole
community, (2) doing this with sincere care and with the aim of achieving relative consensus (in
light of the call or need being debated and the best policies being considered to treat it), and
(3) deciding together and then acting in concert to realize the policy, for the good of the whole
community and the people we are called to serve. A just society is one where everyone who
will be affected by a policy under consideration must be heard, and where the voices of less

27
Fuchsia Pickett, “The Unveiling of His Face,” CBU.org, 8/21/1999: https://www.cbu.org/sermons/sermon/1999-
08-21/the-unveiling-of-his-face.

28
Sojourner Truth, “Ain't I a Woman (December, 1851),” Internet History Sourcebook,
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/sojtruth-woman.asp.
empowered citizens (the poor, minorities, etc.) are cared about and elevated (Lev. 25:35, Prov
31:8-9, 1 John 3:17, James 5). I stress, a healthy political culture values and preserves loyal
dissent: every person and group that composes a particular polity will take turns losing
debates, and this is why we record legislative (and other relevant) proceedings: so our
grandchildren can prayerfully assess for themselves how well we all – majorities and minorities,
parties and dissidents – stewarded the world we were given and passed on to them.29 Loyal
dissent done well in a political culture can function like the prophets in the Bible: serving as a
check on political power and the potential for uncaring incompetence by those entrusted to
steward. If you are a human being and a Christian, you are called to the participatory art of
politics by virtue of being you: a person created in God’s image with a voice of her own. Folks
specially gifted in government we call Stateswomen and Statesman, and their excellence
primarily consists in wisely stewarding diverse and often conflict-ridden communities through
difficult debates and deliberation – by discussion, give-and-take, and noble compromise30 – to
a hard-won common consensus that issues policy that will bless all parties, and commit all
parties, to the provisions for common action the policy codifies. Authentic politics only breaks
down when people stop talking to each other and sincerely deliberating together, and this
primarily takes the form of (“hot” or “cold”) warfare. As Rick shows, it’s in warring and
peacemaking situations that Statesman and Stateswomen often burst forth: Deborah, Nelson
Mandela, Ashoka the Great, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth I, Cyrus
the Great, etc.
Because we live in a fallen world, “politics” has become a dirty word, often because of
the real corruption political processes can involve. When forms of exploitation and corruption
become common in a political culture, it’s an indictment of the entire polity that allows it. What
Rick and others call a “political” spirit is a compulsion to seek or hoard unilateral power for its
own sake. This spirit has a less confusing and more apt name: a Luciferian Spirit, involving what
the scriptures call anomia, best translated as “lawlessness” (Rom 6:18; 1 John 3:4). We’ve
already discussed Satan above and the connection between him and idolatry. What must be
stressed here is that a Luciferian Spirit is indifferent to law, or only cares bout it as a tool to
obtain or defend its own unaccountable, unilateral power. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin are
two of history’s best examples of a Luciferian Spirit in action. The former compromised and
emasculated Germany’s functional legal institutions to obtain and retain his power. He enacted
anomia: mass slaughter of the weak and the marginal, domestically and internationally, under
the mere pretense of “law.” Stalin inherited an intrinsically false legal theory from Lenin and
elevated “dirty politics” to a terrifying art form. A close study of Hitler and Stalin show that they

29
“Loyal dissent” means committed to the polities we participate in and the justice of their institutions and
practices; and to truthfully reckoning their histories and present situations so as to steward their best and
overcome their worst.

30
Ignoble compromise is needlessly sacrificing principles of justice, fairness, ethics, and good governance for
personal, selfish gain. Noble compromise is a willingness to negotiate over subsidiary issues in order to achieve
the best possible policy under the circumstances in light of just principles and community care.
didn’t really care about the people they claimed to serve. They exemplify a truly demonic
madness: a radical and unstable mix of authoritarian impulse and counter-authoritarian
compulsion – the strange union of collectivism and anarchism – that when united in a single
leader or political culture is ruinous to the society in question. More everyday forms of corrupt
political culture and practice can involve the Luciferian Spirit, because it elevates brute force
and violence to the primary principle of political life, indifferent to ethics, spirituality, authentic
politics, and the rule of law. As I underlined above, and as Rick makes clear: the rule of law
guided by care for the whole community secures, protects, and defends the freedom of our
individual citizenship, and this is why the first step of every tyrant is to co-opt and emasculate
the polity’s judicial institutions. Hitler and Stalin did this to remove all barriers to their arbitrary
will, and by this power-hoarding went on to victimize, murder, and oppress the weak and
marginal in their societies, above all: Jewish people. Instead of protecting the marginal and
defending the rights of dissent, and in stark contrast to the God of the Bible: a Luciferian Spirit
obsessively seeks and hoards power and is willing to cheat, lie, kill, and destroy to achieve and
protect its own unilateral power.

VI.v. A Religious Spirit

In short, a Religious Spirit claims the right to override by force other individual’s conscience on
matters of conviction, style, practice, and taste that are not of an immediately obvious
collective spiritual, moral, or doctrinal import. It claims religious and often Biblical justification
for either punishing or excluding folks who don’t conform to every convention of a particular
religious culture. The best literary portrayal of a Religious Spirit in all of world literature was
penned by Christianity’s greatest novelist: Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” (from
his incomparable novel, The Brother’s Karamazov). Read it. A Religious Spirit is sanctimonious,
smug, and inordinately judgmental, and justifies itself by abusively utilizing what are often
otherwise good teachings, norms, and traditions. A Control Spirit by itself is indifferent to
religious justification: at bottom, it wants what it wants come what may, and can be uncaring or
clumsy in relationships for this reason. A Religious Spirit by contrast has decided that it’s own
convictions must and will be shared by all, and is willing to punish or shun anyone who fails to
comply. It involves a failure, as John Wesley’s quadrilateral helps us see: to rightly value
tradition, by valorizing and weaponizing it to harm or quell creativity and diversity, or by doing
violence to the past by attacking or ignoring tradition altogether. In a certain way, a Religious
Spirit is one of the most well-known and easy to spot attitudes, but it’s nearly always easier to
spot it in other people or other cultures than in our own, and this is one reason it can become a
sneaky monster. We as Christians especially can sometimes fall prey to a Religious Spirit,
because we are rightly proud of Christ’s courageous challenge to the religious authorities of his
day. We hence sometimes fail to sufficiently reflect on Matthew 5:17, or even recognize the
patterned practices that constitute our shared Renewal tradition. A Religious Spirit is the most
dangerous of the three principalities Rick mentions, because when joined to a Control Spirit
supplies a putatively religious veneer to purely selfish, improperly ordered desires, and to
baptized forms of “ends justify the means” practice that fails to stand up to just and gracious
scrutiny. When it’s joined with a Luciferian Spirit, the Religious Spirit can become murderous,
the very opposite of what authentic faith is all about: a force for degenerative disorder,
uncaring destruction, and unredemptive conflict. When a Control Spirit, Luciferian Spirit, and
Religious Spirit unite in a single culture, murderous disaster can ensue: pogroms, Crusades,
Inquisitions, unjust war, genocides, racist power, terrorism, conquest, mass scapegoating, and
like fruits of hell.
Rick elsewhere treats the Religious Spirit in detail, enumerating its various dimensions.
He points out that a Religious Spirit is “deceptive… [because] it is founded upon zeal for God”
(11).31 Zeal for God is a very good thing, but when it is uncaring it becomes idolatrous and
disastrous. Indeed, “Even zeal is not good without knowledge” (Prov 19:2), and this is why the
scriptures elsewhere instruct that our zeal for God be expressed by “repentance” (Rev 3:19),
for “good works,” (Tit 2:14), to “excel in building up the church” (1 Cor 14:12). As Rick stresses:
“a religious spirit can usually point to problems with great accuracy, but seldom has solutions,
except to tear down what has already been built” (18). To tear down involves knowledge, but
to build requires more. The Bible is consistently clear about both the limits (1 Cor 8:1) and
value of knowledge: “in all diligence, add to your faith excellence, and to excellence,
knowledge” (2 Peter 1:5). The Greek for “diligence” can mean “haste” and “earnest care,” and
this care is essentially involved in seeking the excellence (virtue) and the knowledge that
empowers us to love well. This is why the poet says “An intelligent heart acquires knowledge,
and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge (Prov 18:15). Wisdom is knowledge in love: with God
and creation, and the mark of faithful stewards.
I stress the import of knowledge and love, here, because a Religious Spirit ignores the
latter and utilizes the former as a weapon; and this distinguishes the merely learned from the
truly intelligent. We cannot acquire intelligence without living out love – carefully and with
increasing excellence – across every dimension of our lives. Rick is surely right that any “jackass
can kick a barn down, but it requires a skillful carpenter to build one” (Ibid), and this is why the
prophet says “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, because you have rejected
knowledge” (Hosea 4:6), and why we are commanded to “study to show yourself approved” (2
Tim 2:15; James 1:5, Col 1:9, Rom 11:33, Prov 2:6). We are to engage this study with zeal by
“repentance” (Rev 3:19), i.e. acknowledging the limits of our virtue and knowledge, and
reversing course by doing better and learning more; for “good works,” (Tit 2:14), i.e. so that
our growth in excellence – from “glory to glory” (2 Cor 3:18) unto likeness with Christ – shows
forth in the fruits and deeds of our everyday lives: actually being good siblings, neighbors, and
stewards; and to apply knowledge well for the “building up the church” (1 Cor 14:12). To do
this well, we must cultivate “study” (2 Tim 2:15) in our daily lives, and as a church cultivate a
culture that shows forth Solomon’s heart when he prayed: “Give your servant therefore an
understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who
is able to govern this, your great people?” (1 Kings 3:9). To do this requires understanding and
avoiding a Religious Spirit, so I’ll close by briefly reviewing Rick’s treatment of its more specific
traits.

31
Rick Joyner, Overcoming the Religious Spirit (Morning Star Publications, 1996), 11.
 Rick identifies 25 distinct aspects of a Religious Spirit, though for the sake of brevity I will
summarize. A Religious Spirit (1) tears down instead of builds up, (2) is unwilling to accept
caring rebuke, and therefore (3) refuses to participate in church co-governance and creational
stewardship (“I will not listen to people, but only to God.”); (4) is fault-finding in others without
care for their strengths, (5) driven by an excessive sense of personal guilt, (6) overly competitive
and underly collaborative, (7) tries to clumsily “fix” people instead of lovingly walk with them,
(8) is bossy, overbearing, and intolerant of everyday mistakes, (9) believe it’s closer to God than
others, (10) obnoxiously proud of it’s supposed “maturity and discipline,” (11) either valorizes
or demeans tradition (the stout “Defender of the ‘Reformed’ Faith,” or by contrast, “See me:
I’m so cutting-edge”), (12) engages in mechanical piety (unbendingly scheduled prayer and
devotion), (13) makes a show of its piety for others, (14) are either repulsed by emotionalism, or
(15) confuse emotionalism with the work of the Holy Spirit, (16) excessively compares itself to
others, and is happy when it appears “better” or more successful than others, (17) can glory
more in the past than in the present, (18) either violently opposes the new or violently valorizes
the new, (19) rejects whatever it doesn’t understand, (20) overacts to carnality in the church (or
lacks grace and compassion in the process of moral and spiritual growth), (21) overreacts to
immaturity, (22) believes its own spiritual gifting is equivalent to God’s wholesale personal
endorsement (i.e. success ethics), (23) is perfectionist in ways that reject or harm community,
(24) is paranoid, and (25) in contrast to the Cross, unwilling to sacrificially care.

VI.vi. Liberatory Struggle

Given that Rick utilizes the American Civil War as a prophetic analogy, he is to be commended
for mentioning “racism,” the never fully recognized struggles, achievements, and leadership of
the Black Church in church history, and its ongoing leadership and destiny today. Modern
Renewal Christianity partly owes its historical life to our Founding Mother and Father: Lucy
Farrow and William J. Seymour. Charles Parham’s labor was involved too, and as a younger
man he defied the social conventions of his day by directly working with Blacks, Mexicans, and
women in collective ministry. What is seldom discussed is that Parham envied the revolutionary
way God used Farrow and Seymour, and vehemently turned on them. His racism was truly
demonic, and it ended up wholly consuming him: before the end of his life he wrote
mythological “histories” explicitly defending white power. Parham’s life is a tragic warning
about the consequences of resisting repentance, and the demonic consequences of defiant
idolatry. Parham abdicated his Kingdom destiny as one of the founding fathers of the modern
Renewal church, because of his unrepentant and idolatrous racism and the demonic delusions
that consumed him.32

32
See Allan Anderson, “The Dubious Legacy of Charles Fox Parham: Racism and Cultural Insensitivities among
Pentecostals,” Paper presented at the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Marquette
University, Milwaukee, MI, 13 March 2004:
https://www.academia.edu/11607640/The_Dubious_Legacy_of_Charles_Fox_Parham_Racism_and_Cultural_Insens
itivities_among_Pentecostals.
 I want to stress here that the radical “spiritual slavery” that racism is cannot be wholly
abstracted from the actual institutional legacies of racism still active across the world today,
and especially in America. Sparked at Azusa St., the Renewal tradition can boast being a
trailblazer of multiracial life (and multigender leadership) and cooperation among the poor and
working class of the day, and was often publicly criticized for it. As a local newspaper reported
at the time,

Disgraceful intermingling of the races, …they cry and make howling noises all day and
into the night. They run, jump, shake all over, shout to the top of their voice, spin around
in circles, fall out on the sawdust blanketed floor jerking, kicking and rolling all over it.
Some of them pass out and do not move for hours as though they were dead. These
people appear to be mad, mentally deranged, or under a spell. They claim to be filled
with the spirit. They have a one eyed, illiterate, Negro as their preacher who stays on his
knees much of the time with his head hidden between the wooden milk crates. He
doesn’t talk very much but at times he can be heard shouting, “Repent,” and he’s
supposed to be running the thing... They repeatedly sing the same song, “The
Comforter Has Come.”33

Over time, indigenous Renewal churches became more racially segregated (and patriarchal) as
they confronted and responded variously to the ongoing systemic racism and economic
injustices of American culture. But as we also know, every subsequent wave of the Renewal was
multiracial in character, and we have internalized this positive legacy: Renewal churches are
probably the most multiracial and multiculturally conscious – in practice, and not just word –
among the entire Body of Christ today. This legacy and reality must be defended and widened
as we engage the challenges of our day.
Not only has our tradition led the way in popular multiracial life and consciousness, we
have been trailblazers in efforts for historical and racial reconciliation. Partly inspired by Nelson
Mandela and Bishop Tutu’s radical work in dismantling the demonic legacies of South Africa’s
Apartheid system, John Dawson’s Healing America's Wounds (Baker Pub Group, 1994) and
similar work of the period both reflected and propelled good faith efforts to recognize
historical sin, and heal it to bring communities together. These efforts were led by everyday
folks, and hence were not perfect in every way (they certainly were not led by fault-finding
academics subject to their own slate of idolatrous delusions). These are our legacies, and we
ought share and refine them with all communities of good will, as agents of courage,
repentance, forgiveness, healing, reconciliation, and reparation in multiracial, multicultural life
today. I must stress that the task consists not only of acknowledgment and ritual, but also
reparation and social transformation, so as to work together with other communities to put the

33
William L. De Arteaga, “A Charismatic Looks at the Birth of Pentecostalism,” The Pneuma Review, 10/17/2014:
http://pneumareview.com/a-charismatic-looks-at-the-birth-of-pentecostalism/4/#_ftn21.
kabash to “systemic” racism (and all those who exploit it) as co-stewards of a shared
redemptive future.
As Rick rightly warns: this requires rejecting the abdication involved in “peace at any
price” cowardice. Requires owning, repenting of, and rectifying our mistakes, such that we are
properly prepared and able to be peacemakers as we wage effective spiritual warfare. As we
know, “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places”
(Eph 6:12). People are not our basic enemy, but rather unjust and demonic systems, laws,
habits, ideologies, and forces. When people defend and perpetuate these principalities and
powers, they certainly can become our enemy. This doesn’t give us the right to hate, curse, or
do violence to their person, for Christ radically calls us to “love our enemies” and make
provision for the them (Matt 5:44-45); the Apostle Paul instructs us to carefully distinguish
between the types of responsibility we bear (1 Cor 5:9-13), and to “if possible, so far as it
depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Rom 12: 18). Even under the unique circumstances
we face today that call us to take sides and act with decisive purpose, we must hold fast and
live out the scriptures:

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the puling
down of strong holds. Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself
against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the
obedience of Christ (2 Cor 10:4-5).

Following Dr. King’s courageous leadership and example, Christians are only ever authorized to
resort to physical violence in defense of the innocent, or when civil institutions and the
functional rule of law break down (which includes their co-optation by demonic, authoritarian
power), and even here every non-violent means of rectification and resistance should be
exhausted first.34 On the problem of racism, sister Cynthia Brown well exemplifies what
prophetic leadership is.
On August 11 & 12, 2017, neo-Nazis, the Klu Klux Klan, right-wing militias, neo-
Confederates, and other neo-fascist groups staged a “Unite the Right!” rally in Charlottesville
Virginia. They shouted racist slogans (“One people, one nation, end immigration,” “Jews will
not replace us,” “White lives matter,” and “Blood and soil”).35 Anti-racist protestors were killed

34
In my judgment, the most noble and exemplary instance of wholly sound just war logic and argumentation is
Nelson Mandela’s immortal Speech from the Dock: Nelson Mandela, “I am Prepared to Die” (20 April 1964,
Palace of Justice, Pretoria Supreme Court Pretoria South Africa),
http://db.nelsonmandela.org/speeches/pub_view.asp?pg=item&ItemID=NMS010&txtstr=prepared%20to%20die.
Though there are instances of just war argument throughout ancient cultures, modern Just War Theory was first
posed by Christianity’s own St. Augustine and systematically developed by St. Thomas Aquinas.

35
Alexia Fernández Campbell, “Some racist, homophobic chants in Charlottesville may not be protected under 1st
Amendment,” Vox, Aug 15, 2017: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/15/16144058/charlottesville-
free-speech.
and maimed. Fox News, in concert with at least some elected representatives, embraced the
message: “[there are] very fine people on both sides” and that there was “violence on all
sides” (and Fox tried to blame “the mainstream media” for the uproar). This sowed disorder by
posing a moral equivalence between both sides of the protest, confusing two distinct issues:
the general question of the justifiability of political violence, and the intrinsic moral and political
message of both sides of the protest. First, and most importantly: anti-racist, anti-fascist protest
does not inherently – by virtue of what it is – embrace the justifiably of violence in political life.
Indeed, as unbiased study will more than corroborate: outside of the irresponsible armchair
machismo of some leftwing academics, the few zines that pay attention to them, and their
youthful minions among the more comicbookish of so-called “anti-fa,” the vast majority of the
individuals, groups, and organizations involved explicitly reject violence as a justified mode of
political expression. One will certainly search in vain for endorsements of violence by “the
mainstream media” (with the possible exception of Fox News). By stark contrast to the anti-
racist protest movement, an unbiased study of the actual groups who organized the “Unite the
Right!” rally will show they explicitly endorse (and practice) violence in their governing
ideologies. Violence permeates their entire ethos and reason for being. This point is of course
obvious to all those who have actually been paying attention (observing, naming, tending,
enjoying, and caring for our communities), and will only seem surprising to those who have not
really been paying attention.
Sister Cynthia Brown lives and works in Charlottesville, and as public debate unfolded
around the protests, she spoke up:

I sit at my desk writing to you from my home in the beautiful city of Charlottesville,
Virginia, which was recently rocked by the cancer of racism in our normally quiet and
peaceful streets. I am filled with urgency to tell you that now is the time to arrest the
demonic spirit of racism here in Virginia, in your own city, and in the entire United States
once and for all.36

She faithfully functions here in her office and gifting with accuracy and passion. She goes on to
call forth:

We must use our authority in Christ to take spiritual territory. …Friends, it is time to
exercise the authority that we have been given to literally declare and decree love, joy,
peace, and all of the fruits of the spirit over our cities. …In the next few months, those in
apostolic offices will have open doors to speak to, pray with, and advise chiefs of police,
city councilmen, mayors, and other politicians in the highest levels of government.

Did those gifted apostolically heed her call? I believe some did (I’d like to especially applaud
the city of Miami’s participating churches, activists, civil society groups, community groups and

36
Cynthia Murray, “A Word Regarding Virginia Riots and Cities Across the Nation: Prophesy Over Your City and
Protect It!,” Elijah List, Aug 15, 2017: https://www.elijahlist.com/words/display_word.html?ID=18575.
their leaders, participating individuals, and the city’s political and law enforcement leaders;
they have shown good leadership over the past few years on defending Black lives and holding
abusers accountable). But given the ongoing deaths of unarmed Black people by irresponsible
police officers (and policy) throughout this nation, we are complicit in the needless deaths of
Black lives: 6-year-old Kameron Prescott, 12 year-old Tamir Rice, 14-yea-old Cameron Tillman,
Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Atatiana Jefferson, Aura Rosser, Stephon Clark, Botham Jean,
Philando Castille, Alton Sterling, Michelle Cusseaux, Freddie Gray, Janisha Fonville, Eric
Garner, Akai Gurley, Gabriella Nevarez, Tamir Rice, Tanisha Anderson and how many more?37
Clearly, if Renewal publications, listserves, television, public advocacy, and outreach are
anything to go by: not enough of our most visible leaders seem to care.38 Faithful prophetic
folks like sister Cynthia require faithful apostolic, pastoral, teaching, and evangelistic folk – all
working collaboratively with others in their cities, communities, medias, etc. – for prophetic
ministry to be effectual. Many Renewal church networks I’m aware of are functioning with
relative faithfulness to their calling, but for a few matters this letter is meant to address. With
sister Cynthia:

We must not allow hatred, bigotry and fear to reign in our cities, but it will unless the
people of God release prophetic and apostolic orders in the spirit. By doing so, we will
silence the voices of those whose only desire is to cause mayhem and spread hatred by
violence. “For it is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of
foolish people” (1 Peter 2:15). …Now is the time to arrest the demonic spirit of racism
here in Virginia, in your own city, and in the entire United States once and for all.

Amen.

VI.vii. True Worship

One of the positive antidotes to idolatry is True Worship. As Paul pleads, “Therefore, I urge
you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy
and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship” (Rom 12:1). That Paul centers true
worship in our bodies is of crucial importance, for it’s in our bodies that we contend against the
“lust of the flesh” (Gal 5), not because God thinks ‘sex is dirty’ or that bodily desires are ‘bad,’
but because ungoverned, unethically oriented, unspiritual desire can do harm to others, our
communities, and ourselves. Indeed, one truth the Renewal church restored to the church is
that we ought make room for passionate forms of expressive worship in our daily (and weekly)

37
Alia Chughtai, “Know Their Names: Black People Killed by the Police in the US,” Al Jazeera,
https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2020/know-their-names/index.html.

38
Those who do, I thank you. I note that a multitude of Renewal Church networks have been faithful and active on
this and related issues. More people should know this. More people will.
lives, and unabashedly celebrate our love for Christ! But from the perspective of combating
idolatry, the entire fight begins with our own bodies. Christ empowers us to rightly and
compassionately order our lives, and living that out everyday first involves governing and
orienting our desires in ways that are caring of others and glorifying to God. Paul counsels care
and grace in this effort (he is not a repressive Freudian), but if we can’t govern and orient our
passions responsibly in everyday life, how well can we carry out our larger vocations? A
vocation is a calling, and how we serve God, the church, and our neighbors in the particular
ways we do: in our families, churches, jobs, communities, and polities. If we never acquire
competence in the firm and gracious governance of our own bodies, that disorder will pollute
every other area of calling and gifting in our lives. Our bodily desires present the first training
ground in faith: the process of learning how to love God and others better, and this process
makes possible the ongoing achievement and pursuit of excellence and authentic knowledge
in our mature vocations – in grace and truth (1 Pet 1:5).
Our true act of worship is not only singing along with Tasha Cobbs Leonard and Hillsong
Worship, not only in cutting the rug at Sunday service, but is the fruit of our lives offered
radically to Christ in the creativity, service, and care we live out and offer up – as good
neighbors and good stewards – to the God of all creation. As this is true for own singular
bodies and callings, it’s especially true for the Body of Christ. The centrality of the doctrine of
the Incarnation is crucial here, so crucial the John rightly makes it an essential criterion for
spiritual discernment: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus
Christ has come in the flesh is from God” (1 John 4:2). Over-against world-hating Gnostics,
Christianity doesn’t overly “spiritualize” life: what counts is what is embodied and lived in
everyday life, and the extraordinary – truly miraculous! – Mystery that is the Gift of Life itself is
not a matter of our minds alone, but of the entirety of our being. God God’s Self became
human in Jesus Christ – the “Word became flesh” (John 1) – and actually dwelt among us. We
experience this Holy truth, mystery, and gift in a unique way in the fellowship of the Body of
Christ, and this is why John writes, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and
everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know
God, for God is love” (1 John 4:7-8). The only and chief reason for internal strife within the
church is where love – and more specifically: the failure to love and care – is at stake. Only were
uncaring disorder has taken hold is our unity tested. Only where that disorder is threatening
the life of the body and the Body of Christ’s public witness – where explicit Idolatry is in play:
does the potential for Civil War emerge. Rick Joyner is certainly right that interlocking
structures of a Control Spirit, Luciferian Spirit, and Religious Spirit, propelled by money and
racism, threatens the Body of Christ today. Civil War is not necessary, because repentance is
possible. As Francis Chan rightly stresses,

You know what, we can change... We've got to give God the glory he deserves and
we’ve got to be willing to suffer whatever we need to suffer to walk away from our sin, to
 confess Jesus as Lord and Savior, because we believe what the disciples did – that Jesus
rose from the dead.39

There can be no true worship without continual repentance.

God is calling us to radically repent.

VII. Proposed Action

VII.i. Preamble:

History will judge societies and governments – and their institutions – not by how big
they are or how well they serve the rich and the powerful, but by how effectively they
respond to the needs of the poor and the helpless.40
—Cesar Chavez

Let those who have ears: hear these words.

Those who have been faithfully observing, paying attention, naming, tending, and caring
already know: the election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States in 2016 was
and remains God’s Judgment. Save an embattled and sizable remnant, this judgment is on the
near totality of American political culture: on conservatives, liberals, and progressives – in
media, the academy, and the church – who on November 8, 2016 radically abdicated their
stewardship of creation and love of their neighbors. This judgment is not restricted to the
United States. Trump is but one local manifestation of dynamics that pervade the entire globe:
Xi, Putin, Modi, Johnson, Netanyahu, Erdoğan, Zwelithini, La Pen, Rouhani, Okamura, Duterte,
Meuthen, Macri, Wilders, Bedie, Salvini, Maduro, Kaczynski, Piñera, El-Sisi, Hlaing, Åkesson,
politicians in South Africa (for example, Maimane, Lekota, & Mkongi), and more. In truth, God
is not only judging the dysfunctions of local political cultures, but also the idolatry, in Rick
Joyner’s prophetic assessment: of Mammon, “unholy self-will,” race, and power; exemplified
by the demonic libertarianism polluting right- and left-wing political cultures, and the economic
policies involved in exploiting the weak that are dominating, destabilizing, and destroying our
world.

Emily Jones, “Francis Chan Calls Out ‘Embarrassing’ American Christians Who've Lost Their Passion for the
39

Gospel,” CBN News, 07/01/2018: https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2018/june/francis-chan-calls-out-

embarrassing-american-christians-whove-lost-their-passion-for-the-gospel.

40
Quoted in Richard Kreitner, “We Are Judged by How We Treat the Helpless and the Poor,” The Nation, March
31, 2016: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/we-are-judged-by-how-we-treat-the-helpless-and-the-poor/.
 The global scope of this crisis will require truthful solidarity, good will, and cooperation
across every nation, culture, and religious tradition of this planet. Clearly, this already involves
what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks rightly describes as a test of faith:

The test of faith is whether I can make space for difference. Can I recognize God's image
in someone who is not in my image, whose language, faith, ideal, are different from
mine? If I cannot, then I have made God in my image instead of allowing him to remake
me in his.41

People of faith, grace, goodwill, and truth are today creatively retrieving the best in their
histories to summon the courage to lock arms and face the challenges of our time – together.
Not, of course, to compromise truth, end noble debates, or to betray the revelations we are
respectively committed to, but rather to live faithfully and valiantly, with the strength to
respectively be who we are and are called to be in the cooperative, collaborative, collective,
and non-violent fight, as good neighbors and co-stewards, for what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
lived and died for: to win a better world for all God’s children – and above all today: Black
people. As Pentecostal theologian Amos Yong rightly argues, a Renewal “theology of religions
not only commits but also enables us to empirically engage the world’s religions in a truly
substantive manner with theological questions and concerns.”42 In this light, Dr. King’s legacies
and leadership do not merely belong to faithful Christians, Jews, and Seekers, but to every
culture on this plant, including the multitude of our sisters and brothers in authentic Islam. The
Ummah today fights with us the infidelity, perversion, and death that trouble our respective
communities. In the words of Renewal Theologian, Miroslav Volf: “Muslims and Christians and
Jews pray to the same God. And yet they understand who God is in significantly different
ways.”43
As the God of Abraham Lives: it was Muslims, not Christians or Jews, who initiated A
Common Word, a plea for neighborly dialogue and cooperation across monotheist tradition.
This plea was signed by Muslim sheiks, theologians, and pastors across the Islamic world, who
like us and often more than us are fighting poverty, death, and infidelity in their own
communities. As Jordan’s Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal, son of the prophet
Mohammed (PBUH), and those who stand with him write:

The basis for…peace and understanding already exists. It is part of the very foundational
principles of both faiths: love of the One God, and love of the neighbour. These
principles are found over and over again in the sacred texts of Islam and Christianity.

41
Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations (Continuum, 2003).

42
Amos Yong, Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religion (Eugene: Wipf and Stock,
2014), 35.

43
Bob Abernethy, "Miroslav Volf," Religion & Ethics Weekly, 4/2/2004:
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2004/04/02/april-2-2004-miroslav-volf/1042/.
 The Unity of God, the necessity of love for Him, and the necessity of love of the
neighbour is thus the common ground between Islam and Christianity.44

I, Jack E. Marsh Jr., son of Renewal Christianity, teacher, scholar, and prophetic voice within
Protestant Christianity, with the authority invested in me by the Scriptures, tradition, and the
Power of the Holy Spirit: in the Name of the Living God of Abraham, Jesus, and Ismail – and in
honor of Waheed Abdulrahman (Syrian Sunni), Ahmed Eldemerdash (Egyptian Sunni), Hala Al-
Najjar (Kuwaiti Sunni), and Mohammed Olaiq (Lebanese Shia), truly “friend[s] closer than a
sibling[s]” (Prov 18:24) – do this day declare: Islam eternally belongs to the family of Abrahamic
monotheism and to the thriving future of our collective world. Wal-Salaamu ‘Alaykum.
The future of our world of course does not only belong to Christians, Jews, and Muslims,
but also to every other faith on this planet with the courage to stand with us. Our Biblical
obligations as stewards entail heeding God’s command, with the Torah: “You shall not wrong a
stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not afflict any
widow or orphan (Exodus 22:21-22). As such, with Pope Francis, “We [must] celebrate the
opportunity to recognize co-participants in the Lord’s work, which can change the course of
history to benefit the dignity of every person, especially those who are excluded.”45 What does
this require today? The election of Donald J. Trump – and the eruption of neo-nativism across
this planet – means the Lord’s work necessarily requires squarely facing the ongoing violence
unfolding across the global economy, and the idolatry of benighted apologists for billionaires
and dictators who defend their own rule on the backs of the least of these. As Orthodox
theologian and social critic, David Bentley Hart, rightly notes: “the claim that capitalist culture
and Christianity are compatible…seems to me not only self-evidently false, but quaintly (and
perhaps perilously) deluded.”46 This of course doesn’t mean endorsing the trends of the day,
by lurching back yet again into the fascism and Stalinism of yore, but rather to robustly defend
the liberty, equality, and solidarity constitutional democracy helps empower, and by seizing the
best in our traditions to creatively and collaboratively co-steward humane, fair, and ecologically
sustainable economies, locally, regionally, and transnationally.47 Above all, this requires
doggedly defending the freedoms of religion, conscience, and speech. As Volf rightly notes,

44
Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal, et al. A Common Word Between Us and You,
https://www.acommonword.com/the-acw-document/.

45
Devin Watkins, “Pope urges global finance leaders to reduce economic inequality,” Vatican News, 2/5/2020:
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2020-02/pope-francis-pass-inclusion-workshop-finance.html.

David Bentley Hart, “Mammon Ascendant: Why global capitalism is inimical to Christianity,” First Things, June
46

2016: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/06/mammon-ascendant. I don’t endorse every turn in Hart’s

analysis, especially his shallow treatment of the “secular” and suggestion that mere localism alone can solve the
problems at stake.

47
This will require a new era of pluralistic cooperation in transnational democracy. Global citizenship demands
bringing capital under transnational democratic stewardship in defense of local communities.
 St. Paul, for instance, believed that all people are equal before God, and he embraced
religious freedom, because he insisted that it is with the heart that we believe. I cannot
be coerced into belief. Moreover, like Jesus who talked about rendering unto Caesar,
Paul distinguished the political and the religious. Once you affirm these three things –
equality of all people, religious freedom, and distinction of faith and politics – then you
are well on your way to being a…pluralist.48

If we don’t get serious about the pluralism of our world today, and out of that plurality
undertake concerted action locally, regionally, and transnationally, unthinkable catastrophes
may well occur. Geopolitics today is dangerously similar to the conditions that obtained prior
to World War I, but with the added challenges of climate change, ecosystem collapse, mass
migration, and global rearmament on unprecedented scales. This is a recipe for multifaceted
cataclysms, and hence the growing probability of truly avoidable disasters. Cataclysm is not
necessary. We are obligated to act obediently to the best in our traditions against this hellish
tide. Act we must, together.49

VII.ii. Our Stewardship

I need not go into detail on why Trump is divine judgment. Faithful observers, scholars,
pastors, activists, journalists, and commentators already know. Only God can decide his
personal salvation, and we ought earnestly pray for it. But he has shown himself to be the same
man he has always been, as announced and exemplified prior to, during, and after his 2015
GOP candidacy, and every day since. On the basis of strictly Biblical criteria (1 Kings 3:9, Prov
3:19-21, Gal 5:22-23, 2 Tim 2:15, etc.) his administration must be considered nothing less than
an abject and absolute disaster: a holistic failure of competence, decency, and care, not only in
his own words and actions, but in the words and actions of the advisors he has gathered to
himself; unto the defiantly compromised and corrupt GOP leadership that has consistently
protected and aided him. Historically speaking, Trump presents a terrible fulfillment of the
GOP’s worst legacies: over-against the legacies of Lincoln and Eisenhower, from Goldwater’s
fanaticism to Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” unto today, the tolerance of racism, “unholy self-

48
Editors, “Politics and Purpose: An Interview with Miroslav Volf,” Reflections, 2016:
https://reflections.yale.edu/article/all-together-now-pluralism-and-faith/politics-and-purpose-interview-miroslav-
volf. I endorse Volf’s call for “political diversity,” but as myself an unrepentant partisan for modern constitutional
democracy, who also appreciates the possibility of constitutively democratic forms of constitutional monarchy,
exemplified in better and worse ways across human culture (even unto today, for example: the UK, Thailand, etc.).
Meeting the challenges of our time cannot be premised in either giving up debates about political forms or by
making total agreement on form a condition for collaborative comradeship.

49
Since I’m a United States citizen and a beneficiary of the best in American, Mexican, and Canadian cultures, I will
restrict further comment to North America alone.
will,” enslavement to Mammon, and the party’s abandonment of the widow, orphan,
immigrant, poor, marginal, and increasingly: global allies. Trump’s failures are obvious, radical,
and relatively holistic, and hence there is little here to genuinely debate (beyond minutia of
import to specialists). Liberals and Leftists are also responsible for this mess, but not in the
same ways. This is a call to the church to courageously own our mistakes and repent of them,
and not the place to debate the mistakes of others.50
The only other testimony I will summon here is that of President Jimmy E. Carter,
President George W. Bush, and President Barak Hussein Obama – all deeply decent men, all
professing and practicing Christians – who have earned the competence they bear by serving
this country, through their respective achievements and mistakes, by the tough choices they
had the courage to make, sometime over-against the objections of their own parties. They’ve
joined other faithful voices to stand united against the world-historic catastrophe that the
Trump administration is. We should moreover honor the small minority of Republicans who, in
the past or more recently, summoned the courage to resist Trump and the principalities his
administration embodies. I will mention one of them here: Senator John McCain, a man I didn’t
always agree with, but a person who served and died as a Man of Honor. As Renewal Christians
we must and will recognize and continue to hear the sizable remnant among us who Stood
against the tide, folks like Matt Barber, Michael Brown, Kristi Burton Brown, Susan Stamper
Brown, Mark Creech, Wallace Henley, E.W. Jackson, Max Lucado, Russell Moore, and Reid
Ribble.51 Who else?
The time for plain talk has come.

Now the truth shall be faced.

VII.iii. Our Sin

To the Renewal Church in the United States: Hear these words.

As a community, due to fear, immaturity, ignorance, spiritual deception, tolerance of Mammon-

love, and pride: we Renewal Christians have sinned the sin of idolatry. We have been unfaithful
to God, our neighbors, and creation. This day, God is calling us to repent.

Because what you say is false and your visions a lie, I will stand against you… (Ezekiel 13:8)

Of Fear

50
Let the faithful in Israel: hear.

51
Elizabeth Bruenig, “The Christian Post pleas with Evangelicals, for the love of God, to not vote for Trump,” The
New Republic, March 1, 2016: https://newrepublic.com/minutes/130775/christian-post-pleas-evangelicals-love-
god-not-vote-trump.
We have feared hell more than loved God and our neighbor. We have embraced the
demonstrable lies of charlatans.

I will raise my fist against all the prophets who see false visions… (Ezekiel 13:9)

Of Immaturity

We have treated the obligations of vocational life according to the good norms of church
ministry. We have failed to “rightly divide the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15), and acted with
immature incompetence, enthrall to lies and mere wishful thinking.

I will sweep away your whitewashed wall with a storm of indignation… (Ezekiel 13:13)

Of Ignorance

We have holistically failed to “study to show ourselves approved” (2 Tim 2:15), Biblically,
theologically, and across every pedagogic discipline. We have not observed, named, tended,
enjoyed, or cared for creation.

I will break down your wall right to its foundations… (Ezekiel 13:14)

Of Spiritual Deception

Enthrall to fear, immaturity, and ignorance, we fell prey to the lies of the Enemy. We have been
unfaithful to God. We have dishonored Christ. We have misrepresented the Holy Spirit. We
have bruised the church. We have abandoned neighbors. We have harmed creation. We have
done damage to the witness of The Gospel of Jesus Christ.

You have abandoned the weak, the sick, the injured, the stray, and the lost (Ezekiel 34:4).

Of Tolerance of Mammon-Love

We have for too long tolerated the love of Mammon. We have practiced exploitation. We have
tolerated deception.

Instead, you have ruled them with harshness and cruelty (Ezekiel 34:4).

Of Pride
We have cared more about ourselves than about the truth: “our” ministry, “our” revelation,
“our” church, “our” success, etc. at the expense of our neighbors and the creation we are
called to steward.

This is what the Sovereign Lord says: “I am against these shepherds.” (Ezekiel 34:10).

Of Violence to the Widow, Orphan, Stranger, and the Poor

We have blindly endorsed practices, policies, and politics that forgets the widow and orphan,
exploits the poor and marginal, and oppresses the stranger and neighbor.

This is what the Sovereign Lord says: “I will hold these shepherds accountable for my flock. I
will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I
will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them.” (Ezekiel 34:10).

Of Idolatry

In all these things, we have committed Idolatry: bringers of chaos, confusion, and death to the
people and creation we are called to serve, enthrall to a vile image of White America.

“The time has come,” Jesus said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe
the good news!” (Mark 1:15)

Hear these words.

Thus says the Lord, God of Israel and the Church, “This day, and in the sight of all: I’ve brought
to fulfillment my judgment against the unfaithful among my people. I nullify the Luciferian pact
struck by them with the Republic Party in the United States of America. Those who repent, will
be healed, renewed, and restored as they rectify, restitute, heal, and steward once more. The
faithful will shine with my glory. Henceforth, whoever attaches my Name to a political party
shall be warned, lovingly corrected, and should they persist: expelled from the assembly. I
Stand Forever with the poor, widowed, orphaned, and stranger. Their suffering shall be turned
to joy, their toil shall be turned to creation, their tears shall be turned to holy laughter, their
precarity shall be turned to secure freedom. I am with each one of them, and have gathered
them to my heart; their reward to rule, reign, and create with me in my Dwelling Place on this
Earth – you, the glory of my Creation, unto the worlds upon worlds that I charge. Read your
Bibles intelligently, America! Be the stewards I’ve called each one of you to be.”

VII.iv. Repentance52

52
Reproduced in its totality from: Office for Spiritual Life, “Liturgy of Repentance, Lament, and Courage to Act: A
collection of prayers, liturgy, songs, and scriptures,” Intercultural Resource Center, Portland Seminary, and the
 Look at all these roses, peddles on the ground…53
—Terrell Wilson

Pray:
Lord, come into our brokenness and our lives with your love that heals all. Consume our
pride and replace it with humility and vulnerability. Allow us to make space for your
correction and redemption. Allow us to bow down with humble hearts, hearts of
repentance. Bind us together in true unity and restoration. May we hear your voice
within the [these words]. Give us collective eyes to see our role in repairing what has
been broken. Allow these words to be a conduit for personal transformation that would
lead to collective reproduction. —Latasha Morrison

Read:
Psalm 13 (NIV)
How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give
light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in
your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.

Pray Together:

Leader: Cry aloud before the Lord, O walls of beautiful Jerusalem! Let your tears flow
like a river day and night. Give yourselves no rest; give your eyes no relief. Lam. 2:18

People: We lament the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.
We grieve with their families and friends. We are grieved, enraged, and fatigued by a
society that refuses to see some of us as image-bearers of God.

Leader: Lift up your hands to him in prayer, pleading for your children, for in every street
they are faint with hunger. Lam.2:19b

People: We lament the wicked realities being revealed by the pandemic. We lament the
rise in anti-Asian and Asian American racism. We grieve how Latino and Latina
immigrants and migrants have been scapegoated, harassed, detained, and separated

Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, George Fox University, June 2020:
https://www.georgefox.edu/offices/spirituallife/liturgy-of-repentance-lament-and-courage-to-act.pdf.

53
Terrell Wilson, Peddles on the Ground, The Wilson Songbook Publishing (2017):
https://commonhymnal.com/songs/rose-petals.
 from family members.

Leader: Your prophets have said so many foolish things, false to the core. They did not
save you from exile by pointing out your sins. Instead, they painted false pictures, filling
you with false hope. Lam 2:14

People: We lament corrupt leaders who care more for personal gain and for their own
reputations than for those they have been elected to serve. We lament churches that
turn away from injustice and suffering. We lament those who claim to follow Jesus while
plugging their ears to the cries of the oppressed.

--A Time to Lament (An Excerpt) by David Swanson, New Community Covenant
Church

Read:
Joel 2:12-13 (NIV)
“Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and
weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord
your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity

Repent: Offer personal prayers of repentance as the Holy Spirit directs you.

Listen: Urban Doxology, God Not Guns (ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtl2ugNcFfk)

Read:
Isaiah 58:1-12 (NIV)
“Shout it aloud, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet. Declare to my people
their rebellion and to the descendants of Jacob their sins. For day after day they seek
me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is
right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and
seem eager for God to come near them. ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and you have
not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’” Yet on the
day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends
in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as
you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. Is this the kind of fast I have
chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head
like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day
acceptable to the Lord?

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie
the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share
 your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see
the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then
your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your
righteousness] will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then
you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
“If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the
oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the
noonday. The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched
land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring
whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the
age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with
Dwellings.

Read:
Amos 5 (NIV)
Hear this word, Israel, this lament I take up concerning you: “Fallen is Virgin Israel, never
to rise again, deserted in her own land, with no one to lift her up.” This is what the
Sovereign Lord says to Israel: “Your city that marches out a thousand strong will have
only a hundred left; your town that marches out a hundred strong will have only ten
left.” This is what the Lord says to Israel: “Seek me and live; do not seek Bethel, do not
go to Gilgal, do not journey to Beersheba. For Gilgal will surely go into exile, and Bethel
will be reduced to nothing.” Seek the Lord and live, or he will sweep through the tribes
of Joseph like a fire; it will devour them, and Bethel will have no one to quench it. There
are those who turn justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground.
He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns midnight into dawn and darkens day
into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the
land—the Lord is his name. With a blinding flash he destroys the stronghold and brings
the fortified city to ruin. There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court
and detest the one who tells the truth. You levy a straw tax on the poor and impose a
tax on their grain. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in
them; though you have planted lush vineyards, you will not drink their wine. For I know
how many are your offenses and how great your sins. There are those who oppress the
innocent and take bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts. Therefore the
prudent keep quiet in such times, for the times are evil. Seek good, not evil, that you
may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil,
love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have
mercy on the remnant of Joseph. Therefore this is what the Lord, the Lord God
Almighty, says: “There will be wailing in all the streets and cries of anguish in every
public square. The farmers will be summoned to weep and the mourners to wail. There
will be wailing in all the vineyards, for I will pass through your midst,” says the Lord.
Woe to you who long for the day of the Lord! Why do you long for the day of the
 Lord? That day will be darkness, not light. It will be as though a man fled from a lion only
to meet a bear, as though he entered his house and rested his hand on the wall only to
have a snake bite him. Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—pitch-dark,
without a ray of brightness? “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are
a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not
accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for
them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!
“Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the wilderness, people of
Israel? You have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the star of
your god—which you made for yourselves. Therefore I will send you into exile beyond
Damascus,” says the Lord, whose name is God Almighty.

Pray:
Father in heaven, our hearts are heavy and our tongues fumble to describe the pain we
feel. But we call upon You because You are the one true God and you are our God. We
trust that You hear us whether by morning or night. Father, we confess that You are the
God of justice. You hate wickedness and evil. You bring low the proud and You shut the
mouths of liars. Because of Your justice, we hope in You. Father, we also humble
ourselves before You because we are debtors to Your grace. There is nothing great in
us. Everything that we are is because of Your goodness and mercy. Lead us further into
truth and justice. Apart from You, our ways are not straight. As for unjust people, their
words cannot be trusted. Though they speak alluring words, their tongue is a sharp fang.
Their actions are led by injustice and they ultimately rebel against You. So, Father, put
an end to their evil and injustice. Make right what was taken away. Restore those who
have been robbed. May Your justice prevail. Keep not silent, O Lord. For we take refuge
in You. You are our hope. Justice is hard to come by among humans. But with You, the
innocent will be covered. With You, those who trust in You will be protected. You are
our hope. Amen.
--A Prayer by the Asian American Christian Collaborative

Read:
Luke 4:16-21 (NIV)
He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went
into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the
prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to
the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for
the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then he
rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in
the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this
scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Read:
Acts 2:1-47 NIV
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound
like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where
they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came
to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak
in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-
fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd
came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being
spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8
Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and
Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia
and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews
and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of
God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does
this mean?” Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much
wine.” Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd:
“Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen
carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the
morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: “‘In the last days, God says, I
will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young
men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men
and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show
wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows
of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming
of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the
Lord will be saved.’ “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man
accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you
through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s
deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to
death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from
the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. 25
David said about him: “ ‘I saw the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right
hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body
also will rest in hope, because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, you
will not let your holy one see decay. You have made known to me the paths of life; you
will fill me with joy in your presence.’ “Fellow Israelites, I can tell you confidently that the
patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a
prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his
descendants on his throne. Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of
the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see
 decay. God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. Exalted to the
right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has
poured out what you now see and hear. For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he
said, “ ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a
footstool for your feet.” “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this
Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” When the people heard this, they
were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we
do?” Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus
Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39
The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the
Lord our God will call.” With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with
them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” Those who accepted his message
were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. They
devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of
bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs
performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in
common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46
Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in
their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying
the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were
being saved.

Pray:
Observe 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence, as was observed at George Floyd’s
memorial service, in remembrance of his brutal death at the hands of injustice. In your
silence and grief, listen for how God may be urging you to take steps of courageous
action that it may be on earth as it is in heaven.

Prayer:
Lord, grant us wisdom and compassion as we pursue your heart for reconciliation with
our brothers and sisters within the church body. Give us open minds and open hearts.
Show us where we need to be more Christlike. Lord, help us to discern those things that
divide us and help us bring them to the light. Use us as vessels of your Holy Spirit so we
may be your hands and feet to spread your heart for the reconciliation of your children.
Illuminate for us, Lord, the path to reconciliation, and help us to look at our own hearts
and thoughts. Equip us to be bridge builders for your kingdom. In Jesus’ name, amen.
--Manijeh Huereca
Closing Prayer:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be
done; on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our
trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into
temptation; but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory,
 for ever and ever. Amen.

This is an end, and a beginning.

VII.v. Proposed General Actions

1. A Council of Renewal Elders is to be formed, by a process to be collectively determined. It

will be racially and generationally diverse, and be populated by both women and men, who
each will bear equal authority in the Council’s proceedings and decision-making procedures.
The Council will assemble working groups to include mothers, fathers, singles, Bible scholars,
theologians, social scientists, philosophers, literary scholars, etc., practioners across the 5-fold
ministry, drawn from every Renewal Church network and denomination across Pentecostal,
Charismatic, and Third Wave traditions in the US, with international observers and participants.
The purpose of this Council is to steward Renewal Church co-governance in the US, and will
function as a consulting body that doesn’t replace or actively police existing fellowships, but
rather serves ecumenically for practical and theological guidance and the redress of grievances.
No person who has publicly spoken for Donald Trump may serve in the inaugural Council
(though with sincere public repentance, willing embrace of a process of correction, and further
service to the church and creation, they may be become eligible to serve in the future). The
purpose of the working groups is to serve the proceedings of the Council, to holistically
consider a number of urgent matters in need of being addressed.

2. There is a permanent moratorium on attaching prophetic authority or exclusive Christian

identity to the explicit endorsement of political parties or candidates.

3. The first matter the Council will consider is the idolatry of the so-called “prosperity gospel,”
that separates bone from marrow, connects everyday practice to the co-governance at stake in
our call as servants and stewards. The teaching will be corrected.

4. Subject to your input, edits, and amendments: a total accounting of Renewal Church
leadership across the US will be conducted. All will read this word in its totality, and voluntarily
make known who accepts it and repents, who refuses it and rejects repentance, and who
accepts or rejects with qualifications (within a rubric the Council and its working groups will
issue). All will be noted for both the historical and Kingdom record.

VII.vi. Particular Accountability

5. Wayne Grudem will publicly repent, and voluntarily retire with honor from formal seminary
teaching. If he refuses to do this, his refusal will be noted for the record, and he’ll be subject to
further censure and a permanent reprimand in the Archive of the Church on Earth (God alone
decides for the Archive of Heaven). Care is to be taken for him and his family’s practical and
spiritual needs in the process of his retirement. He is free to engage in further work throughout
his retirement, though if he continues to endorse incompetence, endanger public ethical life,
or sow needless disorder: this freedom may be revoked.

6. Those with the biggest ministries bear the greatest responsibility. National leaders who’ve
functioned prophetically and spoken for Trump will voluntarily repent, and submit to a process
of correction (whose details and duration will be determined by the Council of Elders). Rick
Joyner, Cindy Jacobs, & Steve Shultz, subject to the Council of Elders, will take the lead in this
task. In light of their long service to the Body of Christ, they will be given the honor of
exercising historical leadership, and set a redemptive precedent for future generations to
follow. Subject to the Council, they’ll help co-organize a historic process of voluntary individual
and collective repentance, correction, restitution, and restoration by the group of men and
women most responsible for our collective failure of discernment, care, and stewardship.
Subject to further guidance, amendment, and participation by the Council: this group of
courageous leaders will participate in a meaningful season of silence, theological training, and
community service culminating in a solemn assembly of restoration, to be followed by a praise
party. Their example will be honored, remembered, and taught. Their leadership will be
voluntarily imitated across networks and local churches, who in consultation with the Council
and other relevant bodies: will issue liturgy, teaching, and guidelines for the restoration of
prophetic ministry. The integrity of the gift of prophecy in the church today is at stake. Those
national leaders most responsible for the present disorder who fail to repent and defiantly
press on: will be subject to further censure, that after a caring and fair pastoral process may
end in total expulsion of their person and their ministry from the Fellowship of the Renewal
Church.

7. If Steve Schultz embraces the courage God is asking of him, and subject to the Council of
Elders: leads during this season of correction, he will retain co-editorship of Elijah List. During
his repentance, an editorial team will be assigned to steward the site. Elijah List is to be de-
monetized. This means: no advertising or selling browser metadata. Henceforth, operating
costs are to be jointly paid by Renewal networks and denominations. The site is to be
redesigned by artistic professionals, and will henceforth be operated under editorial guidelines
issued by the Council of Elders. Care is to be exercised for Steve and his family, and de-
monetization executed fairly, in the process of transforming the site.

8. Charisma Magazine (CM) will publicly repent. The editor primarily responsible for the
“Trump prophecy” in early Fall of 2015 (that seems to have been taken down), and associated
content since that time, will be reassigned, with care taken for their personal and practical
situations. If youth or early career editors were involved, they may keep their post by
embracing a process of correction stipulated by the Council of Elders and its working groups.
Whatever editorial criteria in use during the publication of so-called “Trump prophecies,” are
to be discarded. Whoever formulated those criteria may join Rick, Cindy, Steve, and other
regional leaders in the process of collective repentance. New criteria will be issued by the
Council of Elders, and in consultation with them: Charisma Magazine will issue a public apology
that states explicitly the mistakes it has made, what it is doing to rectify them, and who it is
accountable to in that process. This should be done in consultation with the Council.

9. The Council of Elders and its working groups, in consultation and conversation with other
Christian traditions, technical professionals, and the Evangelical Association for Financial
Accountability, will issue new guidelines for Renewal Christian media – internet, television,
radio, etc. – related to (1) the practical theology of financial stewardship in media, (2) the
protection of media consumers and individual donors, (3) soliciting donations, (4) the faithful
stewardship of donations, (5) public accountability for failures of financial stewardship, (6) how
to effectively and justly deal with obdurate bad actors, and (7) the specific structures of co-
governance required to collaboratively defend individual donors, media consumers, and the
integrity of our collective public witness.

10. The Council of Elders and its working groups, in consultation and conversation with other
Christian traditions, will issue new guidelines for the practice of the spiritual gifts (1 Cor 12) –
above all, the gift of prophecy – in relation to the manifold and rightly divided practices that
are jointly involved in our holistic call to creational stewardship.

11. The Council of Elders and its working groups will issue new instruction for preserving the
Renewal Church’s multiracial legacies and trailblazing efforts at repentance and reconciliation
for historical sins; and will further nurture, mature, and expand these efforts. Local churches,
networks, and denominations are already doing this, and it should become a regular part of
daily, weekly, and monthly church life across every city with a church in Renewal tradition. It
should moreover be integrated into the observance of Christianity’s ancient sacred calendar.
Let our already extant multiracial life and multicultural competence be celebrated in joint praise
parties, joint services, joint conferences, joint mission, joint ministry, community events,
barbeques, artistic festivals, and in collective participation in the Lord’s Supper. Invite
participation by charismatic Catholic, Orthodox, Anabaptist, and Mainline folk, and all our kin in
other streams of the Church Universal.

12. A new Renewal parachurch group will be collectively called: The 7000: Renewal Christians
for Creational Stewardship (RCCS). Inspired by 1 Kings 19:18 and Jesus’s 7 Sabbath Healings
(Matt 12:9, Mark 1:23, Mark 1:29, Luke 13:11, Luke 14:2, John 5:8 – 9, & John 9:14), it will be a
high school and college ministry tasked to educate, foster, and enact holistic – natural, social,
political, artistic, and religious – excellence in creational stewardship. Participation in the
founding of RCCS is restricted to people who have never publicly advocated for or defended
(1) the justified use of violence or implicit threat of violence in normative political life in
functional democratic institutions, (2) racist, sexist, uncompassionate, exclusive nationalist,
cultural anti-pluralist, “clash of civilizations,” or anti-Semitic ideologies, including any form of
“white power,” any exclusivist and mythologically grounded form of “black power” (e.g. Louis
Farrakhan, etc.), or similar forms of the idolatry of race wherever they happen to be found.54
RCCS will creatively and boldly face the pressing issues of our day. I have more to say about
this, better left to another venue. RCCS will follow the new guidelines for financial stewardship,
media, prophecy, and theological accountability issued by the Council of Elders, for the
spiritual and global peace that it diligently seeks, and in the spiritual warfare for global
justice it is called to wage – For the Justice, Peace, and Prosperity of all God’s children across
this planet.55

VII.vii. Singular Commitment

Noting local variations, broader implications, and the ongoing questions these involve, every
single Christian in Renewal tradition shall Stand For and Defend these eternal truths:

1. God
We affirm one God, living and true, the Creator of all things. God exists forever in the
Unity of three co-equal persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is infinite, perfect in
holiness, goodness, wisdom, power, beauty, justice, splendor, and Love.

2. Jesus Christ
We affirm God’s self-revelation to humankind in creation, throughout redemptive
history, and by the unsurpassable and ongoing Work, Word, and Presence of Jesus
Christ. Jesus is the incarnate Word of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, who by his
Life, Death, and Resurrection is made known by the Holy Spirit through the Scriptures.
God’s self-revealing in Christ Jesus opens upon inexhaustible mystery: lavish grace,
awesome justice, and incomprehensible Love.

54
From the perspective of interreligious relations, Renewal folk should engage, interact, and seek solidarity with
Muslim communities who embraces faithful variants of orthodox Sunni Islam, and also variants of orthodox Shia
Islam that are unbeholden to the ruling regime in Tehran; especially among those who practice Sufi spirituality,
and Black Muslim communities who follow the example and leadership of Warith Deen Mohammed (and not Louis
Farrakhan). Imam Mohammed exemplifies authentic religious leadership by learning from the mistakes of his
father, and by following the example of Malcolm X, who himself had the courage to return the to historic Islamic
faith in his late advocacy for human rights and in his continued courage in calling out white power. I mention this
here, because Imam Mohammed and the communities he serves should be celebrated as examples of the
courage for repentance and creative change. The God of the Bible is calling forth a similar courage of us today.

55
RCCS’s foundation scriptures are these: Jhn 1, Deut 6:4-5, Jhn 17, Gen 2:2-3, Matt 13, Rev 1:4, Rev 20: 6, Deut
7:9, Psalm 105:8, Psa 90:4, 2 Pet 3:8, Psa 84:10.
3. The Holy Spirit
We affirm the Holy Spirit – the Ruach of God, Third Person of the Trinity – was given in
power at Pentecost, baptizing the disciples of Jesus into the Body of Christ, the Church.
The Spirit gifts the Church with the indwelling presence of God for collective worship,
growing character, theological edification, and spiritual equipping for the ongoing work
of ministry and mission. We affirm the exercise of the gifts of the Spirit in all their biblical
iterations, governed by and oriented through Jesus’ gospel of Love.

4. Creation, Fall, Redemption

We affirm God created the world out of nothing by the power of his Word. God’s
creation is good, and humankind is made in God’s own image for the sake of caring,
creative, and free relationships. Tempted by Satan, humankind rebelled against God
and sinned against his creation, the very creation they were charged to tend. Death and
corruption entered the world with this sin: humanity became estranged from God and
their exploitation of nature earned them God’s righteous indignation. Instead of
destroying the creation he loves, God instead initiated a grand and gracious
intervention: the plot of redemption through Love.

5. The Church
We affirm one holy, universal, and apostolic Church. All who repent of their sins and
publically commits to Jesus as Messiah are born anew by the Holy Spirit. When they are
baptized in water they enter the full fellowship of Body of Christ, realized by regular
participation in the Lord’s Supper. The Church is called to worship God in spirit, truth,
and service. The Church answers this call by excellence in ongoing liturgy, ministry, and
mission. By the winds of God’s Spirit and the breath of his Word, the Church gathers,
looses, and contends: She shelters the neighbor, the stranger in his distress; she nurses
her own precious flock. She shows forth and extols God’s splendor with growing
elegance and style; she makes disciples of the nations. She liberates from sin and death
by her proclamation of God’s kingdom; she counters Hell by striving for social justice in
her bones. She is a whisper in the storm, a whisper and a storm: generous in grace,
fierce in justice, and excellent in Love.

6. The Imago Dei

We affirm that humankind is created in the image of God. As such, each and every
human being bears inviolable dignity: is owed provision, justice, and love. We proclaim
the creative, caring, and free rule of the kingdom of God over this and every world, and
 humankind’s participatory share in this rule through Christ Jesus in the power of the Holy
Spirit. As co-creators, co-legislators, and co-carers of this earth, we rise to the severe
challenges that face our world today as redemptive agents of care, justice, peace,
imagination, and truth. We acknowledge that the Christian faith has been, and in some
cases still is, usurped by charlatans, thieves, predators, inquisitors, demagogues,
oppressors, and tyrants. We commit to expose and stand against injustice in our own
house, and to continue in solidarity with all persons of good will as comrades in struggle:
that justice may live on this small planet.

7. Love’s Final Victory

God’s plot of redemptive Love will come to full bloom in the return of Jesus Christ in
power and splendor. The dead will be bodily raised to stand with the living, and God
will judge all people according to their deeds. Those judged vicious, who reject
relationship with God, shall be given their desire: separation from God forever. Those
judged righteous, who embrace God’s grace and the task of excellence, shall be given
their desire: to love, live, and legislate with God forever. Then creation’s longing shall be
fulfilled: war, want, exploitation, sin, and death shall be brought to nothing. “Behold, I
am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5). Let the whole earth proclaim a glorious “Yes!” to
God’s infinite, creative, just, and impassioned work of Love.

God’s kingdom come in Christ Jesus; God’s kingdom comes in the Holy Spirit; God’s
kingdom will come on earth in a final defeat over the powers of Hell: every deed, doer,
and domain of nihilating vanity, usurping freedom, uncaring neglect, and willing deceit
shall be definitively brought to nothing in the eternal rule, reign, and return of Love.

Hear

The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty. —Martin Luther King Jr.

I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.
Here I Stand: I can do no other, so help me God. Amen. —Martin Luther

The princes of Issachar were with Deborah… May all who love you, Lord God, be like the sun
when it rises in its strength. —Judges 5:15, 31

And surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age. —Mathew 28:20
VIII. Christian Unity

There is conflict – God be blessed.56

—Oscar Romero

Families sometimes fight. Let us fight then, if we must, though please: as a family. Lets show
the world what courageous repentance, redemptive conflict, radical cooperation, and dynamic
unity are. All of us, together.

The final word is love.

To love we must know each other,
we know each other in the breaking of bread…57
—Dorothy Day

You make all things new

In places we don’t choose
You make all things new

Hallelu, hallelujah,
Father, let Your kingdom come58
—Urban Doxology

…that they may be one, even as we are one.

—Jesus Christ (John 17:11)
IX. My Testimony

I was radically saved at 7-years-old (as it happens, in the corner of our family room, all by
myself: trying my best to read an old, illustrated Lutheran children’s catechism I had recently
discovered in an dusty trunk in my grandparents basement). My family attended a charismatic
Mennonite church until I was 12, and thereafter a Charismatic Evangelical church the next town
over (with a mild Reformed orientation). I myself was baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke in
tongues at 15 (or maybe it was 16, but continually since). I attended Evangelical Christian

56
Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love (The Plough Publishing House, 1998), 28, 30, 26; quoted in Kelly Johnson,
“‘There is conflict– God be blessed’: Romero and the unity of the Church,” Catholic Moral Theology, Nov 14,
2019: https://catholicmoraltheology.com/there-is-conflict-god-be-blessed-romero-and-the-unity-of-the-church/.

57
Quoted in Maria Popova, “The Final Word Is Love: Dorothy Day on Human Connection, Music, and the Power of
Community,” BrainPickings, Accessed: 7/13/2020: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/06/14/dorothy-day-the-
long-loneliness-love/.
58
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHIGm7qYVz4
schools from 4th to 9th grades (I was kicked out of the local Christian high school, and was
happily able to return to public school). Throughout my childhood I regularly attended Sunday
school, Vacation Bible School, youth group, Christian summer camp, and the entire slate of like
activities typical of the time. I also periodically attended my Italian paternal great-
grandmother’s Roman Catholic church and my maternal grandmother’s Lutheran church (both
of them once or twice a year for holidays, weddings, funerals, etc.). In our home and social
circles (mostly centered in the church), the scriptures, gifts, theology, current events, sports,
movies, and eventually also conservative politics, were always in lively discussion, and I took an
interest in all of these, above all: theology and politics.
By 14, and largely on my own initiative, I joined the first generation of a novel breed of
Christian culture warriors. My parents or churches did not push this on me, but did nurture my
interest. My parents especially were probably happy I was showing some spunk: I was a
uniformly terrible student throughout primary and high school, with the exception of history
and civics in which I always excelled (In class, I outdebated my junior year history teacher on
the 2nd Amendment, who had wrote his dissertation on that topic; and I scored a 98 on his end
of year final, without studying and while nursing a hangover). I once won an essay contest on
how to improve our city’s economy, and was made “Mayor For the Day” of my hometown. I
participated in an unpartisan youth leadership program in Washington D.C., and met various
legislators of the time. I’ve had my picture taken with Jesse Helms, Trent Lot, Bob Dole, and
others. I attended CPAC conferences, and once publicly asked Pat Robertson a question,
challenging his position on public funding for private schools (My “Hi from a fellow 700 Club
member” drew chuckles from the room). I took a course in political organizing run by the (so-
called) Christian Coalition. My interest and participation in conservative politics lasted until I
was 18, when music displaced politics as my primary interest; and I began a long journey in my
political thinking that landed me where I am.
My adolescence was typically sketchy, involving radical swings between fervent piety
and disciplined Biblical study, and mischievous dalliances in the fields of teenage fun (at 16 I
was kicked out of Christian summer camp for sneaking out with girls one night; at 17 friends
and I were almost arrested for underage drinking after a Youth For Christ meeting in a Burger
King parking lot; etc.). During periods of fervency, I prayed often and earnestly, diligently
studied my Bible, consumed my father’s Bob Mumford tapes, would raise my hands in worship
on Sunday mornings without shame, paid attention to my Pastor’s preaching, submitted myself
to my youth leader’s loving mentorship (especially my lifelong mentor, Craig Osborne), and
really tried to improve in virtue. I earnestly participated in youth group, short-term missions
(feeding the homeless, inner-city youth programs, etc.), and the whole slate of education and
service typical of our style of church. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, Bob
Mumford’s teaching tapes were omnipresent, and my Pastor, Jack Groblewski, became an
increasingly more important force in my life. Bob and Jack are the two best Bible teachers of
the lot of us. The more I grew spiritually the more troubled and confused I became about
conservative politics. I recall walking in the woods behind our house by myself one afternoon (I
was 15 or 16 at the time), thinking and fantasizing about how I could solve the world’s
problems by implementing good conservative policies. At one moment I caught myself flirting
with the idea of conservative dictatorship! It surprised me, since even then I prided myself on
being anti-authoritarian (anti-fascist and anti-Stalinist). The whole episode ended in aporia.
“Maybe this isn’t where the answers are,” I felt, and moved on. That day began a largely
unconscious pivot away from politics, which became self-conscious three years later. I had an
explicit “religious right politics is bullshit” moment, smoking a cig outside of my friend Matt’s
house (his dad was our church’s Assistant Pastor). This was 1993.
My adolescent swings grew less wide, but continued. There was this beautiful season in
my life between 93 and 95, where the various circles of the youth culture in our church enjoyed
a season of collective solidarity, esprite, and coming-of-age. Our church was among the
forefront of what came to be called the “Toronto Renewal” (and also Brownsville Revival, which
was a distinct flow of a common “Third Wave” stream), that involved US, British, and Canadian
churches, and eventually churches across the world. As the Renewal was in its infant rumblings,
we all were, with varying degrees of boldness: loyally rebelling. Now our church was mostly
former Jesus People, and other counter-cultural types, who valued community conscious
independence and Holy Spirit experimentation. They were also a group of good mothers and
fathers who sent their kids to public schools, and hence not hunker-in-the-bunker fundys. We,
their kids, took up that mantel and utilized it for all it was worth. In short, we all started partying
together. This was a collective affair, and it began independently across families and circles.
Since we all were at it anyway, we began partying together. I was identified as the possible
source of this mischief, and was lovingly approached multiple times by one of our church
Mothers, by an Elder, and by an Assistant Pastor. I was honest: they were formally correct
(underage drinking is against the law), but three context considerations were in order: (1)
families handle the issue differently, and hence convention and discernment play a role (my
father allowed me a periodic Chianti at dinner my entire life, did he sin?); (2) we were
experiencing a broader cultural coming-of-age ritual that most of them had also enjoyed (and
hence: though they are right to insist on accountability and safety, is it just to ruthlessly prohibit
and not allow us to sort it out as we come into maturity?); and (3) in scripture, drunkenness is a
sin, not drinking. Are current laws therefore just, despite their good paternal intent? I of course
always ended the discussion with an acknowledgement that the law should be obeyed, but that
we (youth) should be allowed a bit of leeway. This didn’t always satisfy my elders, but I did
demonstrate respect for them, and they saw me participating in church, worship ministry, small
groups, etc., and actually trying to live out my faith in the local church. God bless them: they
were kind.
Anyway, the Renewal began to erupt in force just as partying together started to get
old. There was this beautiful mediary moment where the joy of partying together and the joy of
the Kingdom hit a kind a kind of joint choral high note, followed immediately by the Holy Spirit
intervening with a: “that season is over, a new one is at hand: Walk with Me.” And I did. Were
it not for the Toronto Renewal and its iteration at our church (thanks also to close ties we
shared with UK charismatic churches), I may have continued on in previous patterns. Christ
seized my life and I began walking with the Lord in a stable ferocity, without the swings. I
initiated trips to Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship among our friends, I continued on serving
on the worship team, and became a small group worship leader for the variety of other
ministries I was also participating in (Cleansing Stream, Prison Ministry, Prophetic Teams,
periodic Youth Group volunteer, College Ministry, Smooth Stones, etc.). My friend Leah and I
would ferry others on Saturday nights to renewal meetings at a Black church in North Philly. I’d
attend revival services at Hispanic churches in South Bethlehem. Wherever the Spirit of God
was moving, that’s were I wanted to be. Once I read Rick Joyner’s The Final Quest, I organized
trips to Morning Star conferences. A bunch of us went to a MS Prophetic Conference, and a
guy prophesied over three of my friends. At first, I felt sorry to be excluded; but God said:
“Stop it. Your time will come. Be happy for them, and intercede to support the ministry.” So I
did. Toward the end, the guy began seeing them as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I
immediately thought, “Hey! Here stands Daniel!” The guy looked at me for moment, and then
winked with a grin. I visited Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship more than five times, and
visited Morning Star at least three times. Wherever people were seeking Renewal and
Equipping in the Holy Spirit, if I could go, I did.
Rick’s work of this period motivated an intense season of study of similar literature. I
read nearly everyone (including our British comrades, like Steward Bell and R.T. Kendall – I saw
Kendall speak – and he prayed for me – at a church in Shanghai a few years back). These
readings were of course mediated by my prior study, and Bob Mumford and Pastor Jack were
there through all of this. Concurrently, I was deeply engaged in trying to understand so-called
“cessationist” criticism of the Renewal, and was engaged in self-directed historical and
theological study, and independent thinking, to refute it. The more study I did, the more
invigorated I became! I developed critical diagnoses of cessantionism that I knew were correct,
and that my non-charismatic Evangelical friends I fielded these counter-arguments on couldn’t
cogently answer. As the Toronto era subsided, and while preserving my interest in practical
Renewal ecclesiology: I was led into the study of more serious theology, and the more I read
the more my questions deepened. By the late 90s, I had hammered out a relatively
autonomous theological stand. Turbulent life circumstances (my parents divorce, frustration in
my love life) helped motivate me beyond purely theological questions. I began reading
educated forms of popular science, the history of ideas, theology, and philosophy. By this time
I knew my dreams of rock stardom were not in the cards, and decided to pursue philosophy as
a career (ultimately because it would allow me to engage cross-disciplinary interests in a single
profession).
I applied to exactly one undergraduate school: UNC Charlotte, so I could attend Rick
Joyner’s church. I did attend Morning Star, and served there (as a fill-in on the prophetic team).
But my philosophical studies and the new friendships that were forming began winning more of
my attention. I took some classmates to church with me one Sunday, and on that day a MS
Pastor (not Rick) went on a more than ten-minute rant against homosexuals. I stopped going
after that. My season in Charlotte was blessed: I made lifelong friends there, and graduated
Magna Cum Laud, with honors in Philosophy, as a recipient of 2 awards for “Excellence in
Leadership” and “Exceptional Achievement in Philosophy.” I went on to earn an MA in
Philosophy from Boston College (3.75 GPA), and PhD in Philosophy from SUNY Binghamton
(4.0 GPA). I specialize in post-Kantian philosophy, especially phenomenology and the Frankfurt
School. I’m a scholar and loyal critic of Christian Continental Philosophy, modern Jewish
Philosophy, Marxism, and (so-called) Postmodernism. Thanks to my Christian commitment,
formation, and the competence I acquired prior to entering university: I’m today doing
innovate interdisciplinary work that engages the central questions of our time. Today I’m
completing a 2nd PhD in Theology at the University of St. Andrews, doing research that matters
and that will be remembered. I’ve suffered for my Christian faith, at the hands of both putative
Christians and actual non-Christians. God is not finished with me. Here I am.

If this document is in any way out of order, you may express your discontent to my local pastor:
Mike Dunstan, mike.dunstan@nc4.org