It’s been a few months since Kim Davis dominated the news. In case the litany of daily outrages since that date has clouded your memory, I’ll briefly summarize. Davis, a county-clerk in Kentucky was jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses. She has since been released and returned to work. During this fiasco she was mocked by many but held up as a persecuted Christian by many others.
So why am I writing on this months after the whole thing has blown over?
Mostly, because I care little about writing click-bait articles. I also think I’m making an important point here for us to consider given the imminent stories, much like this one, which will saturate our news cycle in 2016. I figure that a few months after the outrage of the day we can maybe think sensibly through this.
Here is my point: theology matters even in the midst of persecution. Therefore, we need to be able to differentiate between those persecuted/martyred for religious freedom and those persecuted/martyred for the Christian faith.
As a Oneness Pentecostal, Kim Davis has placed herself outside of orthodox Christianity. This is not merely saying that her brand of the Christian faith is a bit different than mine. This is saying that she denies the Trinity. That’s not some mere quibble on a tertiary issue, that’s denying a central tenet of the Christian faith. Not to mention that Oneness Pentecostalism teaches that one must be baptized by an ordained member of their church and it must be done “in Jesus’ name” or it doesn’t count. And if it doesn’t count you aren’t saved.
This does not diminish anything that Kim Davis did in standing up for religious liberty. We should stand with her in the issue of religious freedom. Just as we ought to even stand with people of other faiths who are persecuted and whose religious liberty is threatened. But we absolutely must differentiate this from standing up for her as a fellow Christian.
Now some might kick back and say during these perilous times we need to take any friends we can get. In the midst of persecution it isn’t wise to quibble over tough issues like the Trinity and baptism. While I agree with the spirit of such an argument, I can’t help but wonder if that same argument wasn’t winning the day in first century Pergamum.
Even though they were holding onto the faith, Jesus rebuked them for allowing the teaching of Balaam in the form of the Nicolaitans to run rampant through their church. Theology matters even in the midst of persecution. If they wouldn’t deal with this false teaching Jesus threatened to “war against them with the sword of [his] mouth”.
Jesus isn’t concerned with kicking someone who is down. It is true that on tertiary issues and minor doctrinal differences we really do need to band together in the midst of intense persecution. Truth be told, most of these extra-biblical distinctions tend to be muted when the fires of martyrdom rage. The reason Jesus takes the false teaching in Pergamum so seriously is because the war against false teaching within the church is more deadly than any cultural war.
If the church in America keeps her religious liberty but now subtly embraces Oneness Pentecostalism, this isn’t a victory for the church. It’s defeat. The enemy is more than happy to rescue us from the flames if it means we’re all singing kumbaya while swallowing the poison of modalism.
So when 2016 comes and we’ve got many more news stories like this one, let us be careful to know which battle we are fighting. If it’s a battle for religious freedom then lets call it that. But it isn’t a battle for the Christian faith if the one at the forefront of the battle denies historic Christianity, no matter how accurate he or she might be on the Bible’s teaching on human sexuality.
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That’s a picture of Pergamum found here
