I am not objecting to political engagement and seeking the common good (biblically defined) of our earthly nations in whatever way our earthly citizenship allows. My issue is with evangelicals falling into the same trap that the medieval Roman church leadership fell into, namely prioritizing the gaining of secular political power at any cost. It’s the “at any cost” that is the problem, It caused the Roman church leadership to compromise biblical principles and become thoroughly corrupt. The results will be the same with American evangelicalism if we follow the same “at any cost” attitude toward political power. The result will be thoroughgoing corruption.

If American evangelicalism dies, suicide will be the cause of death listed on the official Coroner’s report. American evangelicalism will likely not die due to external persecution. Historically, persecution tends to strengthen the church. If it dies, it will die because it has tied a rope around its own neck, placed a loaded gun against its own head, and laced its own food with arsenic.

There are a number of ways American evangelicalism is attempting to kill itself: by lusting after secular political power at any cost, by allowing gross heresy to be taught and promoted in its churches, seminaries, and publishing houses, by following the method of modernist liberals in replacing Scripture with culture as its standard of faith and life, and by embracing a rabid form of radical anti-intellectualism. For now, I’d like to focus on the first of these – the lust for political power at all costs and how it echoes the fatal mistake of the medieval papacy. I hope to address and explain some of the others in future blog posts.

Anyone who has studied the history of the Western church cannot help but be struck by the radical difference between the church we read about in Paul’s epistle to the Romans and the Roman Catholic Church of the late Middle Ages. The first century church in Rome consisted of a collection of humble house churches scattered around various parts of the city of Rome. That first century church described in Paul’s epistle bears no resemblance to the prideful power, pomp, and perversity of the Renaissance era papacy. Rome didn’t even have a monarchical bishop until the last decades of the second century, but by the late Middle Ages the bishop of Rome becomes one of the most powerful men in the Western world and claims to be the one without whom there is no true church. How did we get from point A to point B?

Rome will usually appeal to some kind of development theory to explain the dramatic differences between the first century church and the papacy. An oak tree doesn’t look like an acorn, it will be said, but the tree developed from that little seed. True enough. Oak trees do develop from acorns, and oak trees don’t look like acorns, but when an appeal is made to development to explain this difference, the DNA connection must be established. Under the right conditions an acorn will grow into an oak tree. But acorns don’t grow into elephants, and what we find in the late Middle Ages is an elephant. Be that as it may, how did we get to the point of having an elephant that claims to have developed from an acorn? How did we get to the late medieval papacy?

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