The Importance of Christians and Churches Speaking Out About Cultural and Civil Problems

There are not many churches and pastors who talk about cultural and social issues from the pulpit, topics such as the wars America has been involved in, the southern border crises, the evils of the LGBTQ agenda, the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza, etc. The only ones I know of in the USA besides the Christians in this interview are Chuck Baldwin of Liberty Fellowship in Montana, Michael Hoggard of Bethel Church, Missouri, Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, and John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, who defied the governor of California by disregarding the COVID-19 lockdown mandates. I’m sure there must be many others, but obviously, they are way too few because the churches in America have not had the effect on society today they used to have up to the 19th century.

The transcript and video below is an interview led by two leaders of an organization called, Our Country Our Choice (OCOC), Colonel (retired) Douglas Macgregor and Pastor Casey (that’s the only name given.) They discuss current events with a pastor, Gary Hamrick of Cornerstone Chapel. I deem them all to be solid Bible Believing Jesus Christ following Christians.

Transcript

Gary Hamrick: It’s unfortunate but a lot of times Christians today feel like they’re not supposed to get involved in politics in any way shape or form. The fact of the matter is the First Amendment was given to us to keep government out of the Church, not the Church out of the government. And so unfortunately too many Christians have been sitting on the sidelines, and a lot of pastors have been encouraging them to sit it out. The result is, that we have a country in which many of us are not liking the direction (it’s going).

And we always understand that in the big picture of things, of course, the enemy is at work. And the Bible tells us the world is going to get more corrupt and more evil as we get closer to the return of Christ. But, at the same time, the Church should be that restraining force against evil in our world. If we sit it out then evil will just run rampant.

That’s why Christians are supposed to be involved. Because why? Jesus told us to be salt and light! And salt and light means you penetrate the darkness as light, and you flavor the world as salt.

And so unfortunately too many Christians have been sitting it out, and too many pastors think that you shouldn’t get political. My response is, look, all these issues that we’re looking at today when everything from the whole transgender sexual identity confusion, the thing about same-sex marriage and abortion and all these issues, I mean, these are issues that the Bible speaks about. So when the government has gotten involved in these issues of life and liberty and sexuality, they’ve crossed into our lane. And so the Church needs to be engaged to be a voice of reason and a restraining force against evil in our world today.

So that’s my basic take on why Christians should be involved because there’s a mandate to be salt and sight and to not sit it out, to be a restraining force against evil in our world.

Pastor Casey: Fantastic! Well-spoken. In fact, God’s moral law does restrain evil. One of the things that we like to say here at OCOC is that the truth will set you free but you must speak. And so the truth will set you free, but when we speak God’s moral law, it has a restraining factor. Thou shalt not lie, and thou shalt not kill, those things that God has established from the very beginning. When we speak those things, it helps not only to restrain evil but to guide Christians. It also is a conviction factor.

When we talk about the Gospel, it brings the lost under conviction and they see that they are sinners in need of a savior. Tell us briefly about the Gospel before we move on to the next subject if you don’t mind.

Gary Hamrick: Well, the Gospel is central to what what we’re about. I mean, it’s the good news of Jesus Christ, putting your faith and trust in what Christ did for us.

The beautiful thing about Christianity is that it’s different from all other world religions. All other world religions put the burden on you to try to get up to God. Christianity tells us, the Gospel tells us, that God came down to us. And He took on flesh and died for our sins. And so our faith and trust are in Him as our Lord and Savior.

And that’s important to add to, and I’m glad you asked the question because sometimes I’ll get accused of, “You’re putting government above God.” Not at all. We believe the central message of Truth is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But at the same time, Martin Luther once said, “If you preach the Gospel in all aspects with the exception of the issues which deal specifically with your time, you are not preaching the Gospel at all.” Jesus is central to everything we’re about, and from Him, all other things flow.

Pastor Casey: Well said! Thank you very much. In regards to Christian participation in the Gospel, I think nothing else needs to be said. And now I’m really interested in how we can encourage perhaps a mindset towards these endless wars. You said on your website that you’re a News Junkie and I’m sure you’ve seen the colonel and his contributions, so you guys dialogue a little bit in regards to the two front wars that are going on and why and all of these things that us as Christians need to be educated on how we view these types of things to be able to help steer our country in the right direction.

Gary Hamrick: Well Colonel, I’m going to defer to you to answer that question first.

Col. Douglas Macgregor: Well, to go back a little bit, you know the whole point of the (US) Constitution if you read through the statements of the people that wrote it up, was to leave us in the maximum freedom possible. And that’s really the idea. The Constitution is all about what the government cannot do. It doesn’t say what we must do, it says this is what the government cannot do to you. And we forget that. And increasingly we’re dealing with people in Washington who are desperate to fundamentally change us. They want to change us by bringing in millions and millions of people whom we know nothing about, who are not coming to become Americans. That’s all nonsense. They’re coming to jump into the giant consumption machine and profit. We know that. And of course, our rule of law has been largely destroyed as a result of this sort of thing.

The issue is fundamentally this: The wars that we’ve been involved with, certainly since the Korean War, are almost universally things that we started. I’d say that perhaps the Perian Gulf Wars are one exception. We essentially responded to something that had happened in the region. Our goals were limited, and we went and then we left. All of the other wars have involved precipitating hostility for reasons removed from the interests of the American people because a small number of people in Washington made decisions that it was in our interest to do something without ever consulting us.

No one declares war. There are few if any debates anywhere about what we should or shouldn’t do. Everyone seems to be very anxious to bomb and sanction repeatedly. If we take Christianity seriously, I don’t think Jesus would tell us to sanction and bomb everyone into submission.

But I don’t hear enough from Christians about that. Why are they not standing up and questioning the wisdom and the conduct of these wars? How many people have we killed unnecessarily? How much have we destroyed unnecessarily? And at the same time, is this a distraction so that we pay no attention to what’s being done to us by our own government here at home? So why don’t you think about that and tell us what your views are?

Gary Hamrick: The debate I suppose is over America’s vital interests in the world and whether or not we should get involved in certain wars to protect those vital interests. And at times I’m a little fuzzy on what’s our vital interests. I don’t know, sometimes when I see us engaged in different wars, the one thing that troubles me is you mentioned the border.

The border is a huge crisis right now. And you’re right, it’s not people coming over necessarily to find a new beginning. I think a big concern for me at least is the potential for terrorism and and terrorist cells to be coming into the United States through a very porous southern border in particular. I just heard yesterday that even the northern border has more terrorists on the watch list. And so, we have to protect our borders.

By the way, God’s not opposed to borders. He kind of divided up the nation of Israel to the 12 tribes of Israel. And they had borders in which to live and the nations had borders. And so that’s pretty biblical.

I’ve been concerned with how much money are we sending to the war in Ukraine that could be put into protecting our own borders. So there does seem to be a conflict of how we’re spending our resources for some of these battles compared to what we need even to protect our own home front.

Col. Douglas Macgregor: Yeah, I agree. If I could just mention that the border crisis should be deemed as a war, and it is because it’s one-sided and we’re not coming to the forefront there. And so if we were taking it seriously, and we were to dispatch our military or our army over there, and put a stop to the cartels, to put a stop to all of the traffickings, to put a stop to all of the ridiculous rapes and child abductions, and this is a crisis and it’s definitely been ignored to a big extent. I would really love to see Christians say, “We’ve had enough. We’ve got to stand up for what’s right.”

Gary Hamrick: I just had a friend who went down to the southern border to personally eyewitness some things, and he said he saw three buses unload of military age-fighting Chinese men! Now, why are three busloads of military-age Chinese young men coming across our border? Not for good reasons, I guarantee you.

Col. Douglas Macgregor: That’s right. And by the way, a number of those are, I’m told, people that were actually sought in China for various criminal activities. Some of them were involved in the shadow banking industry with financial crime. This is a huge issue right now in China. They’re really going to town, so to say, against senior party members and bureaucrats who have cheated and stolen vast sums of money. And these are probably some of those people. That’s the biggest problem.

A friend of mine who is from El Salvador sent me an email last night and he wrote, “Don’t people understand that a lot of the men who are from Latin America who want to join the US military, I know where they’re from, they’re MS-13 (an international criminal gang)! They’re joining the Army or the Marines so they can get some experience, then get out and continue their criminal activities here with citizenship. This is a catastrophe for us. He pointed out that it has taken him six years to become an American citizen. So he was very upset about this whole thing.

I find people who have come here legally are among the most strident opponents of illegal immigration. And too many Americans are too busy watching the latest football game and following Taylor Swift’s affairs to pay attention to what’s really important. We have got to get their attention, and I don’t know what it’s going to take.

Well, would you stop for a second and tell us in your estimation what you think we could do? We’re an organization that is not satisfied with simply complaining, we want to take action. We want to cooperate with people, particularly with churches across the country. And by the way, we are not exclusively a religious organization. You don’t have to be a Christian per se to be a member of OCOC. We just regard those (Christian) values largely as essentially founding values of the country. I know it’s not popular to say that but that’s true. But the point is, how do we get more churches, more organizations, and people who are similarly minded as we are to join us? We welcome any suggestions you have in any context that you want to suggest to us after the program.

Gary Hamrick: I would be glad to share some of that with you. One of the things that I’m most concerned about is the lack of involvement of the local church in important civil and cultural issues, let alone governance. It’s because there’s silence in the pulpits! When pastors are not helping their people to become engaged in the issues of the day, they’re not going to see the need and importance of doing so.

(End of transcript)

The above are the most important points in the video, about half of it. Please listen to the entirety below.