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One of the great challenges facing the Modern American Church is a significant failure of discernment leading to an embrace of conspiratorial and pseudo-scientific positions, as well as problematic alliances with morally questionable political leaders. There are many prominent voices in the United States from theologically liberal viewpoints, or even some who could be described as "doctrinally and/or politically centrists" who express concern for both the country and the church today. However, as of early 2025, there is simply no adequate even loosely unified movement within the traditional theologically conservative church seeking to address what seems to be a true epidemic of pseudo-scientific and politically-unbalanced thinking. If you feel that the priorities of conservative political leaders and commentators, and the financial goals of anti-science hucksters, have washed into our congregations and adversely affected our personal mental vigor and also have badly undermined our credibility to those outside the church, there simply are not many clear and systematic initiatives in the Modern American Church that have gained much traction in working to address it. Most importantly, while there are certainly a significant number of voices speaking on the subject, overwhelmingly those are "published comments" but there is a profound dearth of consistent "real world fellowship and discipleship" situations. We are in dire need of repetitive opportunities where handfuls of individual Christians are sitting face-to-face on a regular weekly or monthly basis discussing the parameters of truth and fact, and how our understanding of them impacts our credibility to the lost. Put another way, all mature traditional Christians regard as unassailable Truth and Fact the reality that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and any and all can and must be saved by faith in Him. This is our message to the world, it is the core of who we are and everyone in our churches will agree with it. Also, hopefully, there is not a single person in your personal church who genuinely believes that the earth is flat. (The author feels it tragically necessary to acknowledge this is not an entirely safe assumption, but we digress here.) The problem is that if you draw a line and place "Absolute Unassailable Truth and Fact" on one end and "Nonsense Conspiracy Theory" at the other, and you as a Christian can confidently place "Jesus Saves" on one side and "The Earth is Flat" on the other, we live in a time where a staggering number, and more importantly, a staggering class (i.e., category, fundamental type) of concepts are placed in our minds at wildly different positions along this Line of Fact for wildly different reasons. Most frighteningly of all, the reason many Christians seem to place a certain idea further towards one end or the other may well boil down to tribalism. "Global Warming must be a hoax because all the guys in my men's fellowship at church think it is a hoax." It becomes irrelevant what any experts on the subject matter might say. There is no room for nuance. Or there is an improper confidence that because we trust our pastors or other leaders about the Bible, that makes them experts on the safety of vaccines or the security of voting machines. The overwhelming majority of pastors, quite wisely, steer far far clear of teaching (either from the pulpit or with a cup of coffee in the foyer) on any of these tangents and properly recognize their expertise is in the scriptures. Tragically, especially in tumultuous times such as these, the significant minority of pastors and leaders without this self-control who feel compelled to weigh in on a broad range of extra-Biblical issues become the most amplified voices in the media. Still, even in the best possible case one might hope for where our pastors and leaders at church are stoically silent from the pulpit on non-Biblical subjects from mask mandates to stolen elections to shadow governments to vaccine safety there remains an absolutely massive problem facing our church today. If your pastor has quite properly never said a single word in a sermon about "flat earth theory" in a sermon, if (as a pure hypothetical) a substantial portion of your church that has been involved for a long period of time actually does believe the world is flat, the reality is your church has an enormous issue that the leadership absolutely must address. This author is not, by any means, suggesting that there is such a church where a huge portion of it do believe the earth is flat, this is probably (at least hopefully) a pure hyperbolic example. (Please, Merciful Father, don't let it be true that there is anywhere in the United States today any church where there is more than one or two of these tragically misguided brothers or sisters in our midst, but again we digress here...) The issue is obviously not Flat Earth Theory. That is the "Bingo Free Space" issue which for these sort of discussions normally serves as a useful starting point where we can begin a conversation with "surely we can all agree." The problem is that there are a stunningly large number of other issues ranging from "Should I Vaccinate My Child Against Polio?" to "Was the 2020 Election Stolen?" to "Is a Shadow Government Controlling Tornados and Hurricanes?" Any leader, of any sort, in any church in America today, would do well to allow themselves to lose a bit of sleep pondering the unprecedented time we live in. We, as a society, are no longer debating TRUTH anymore as we are well past the point of having become a Post Truth Culture where "You have your truth and I have mine." This is nothing new, tragically we've seen that issue degrade our society for decades. What is new, what is absolutely unprecedented, is the extent to which we are now debating FACTS and everyone is allowed to have their own preferred set with which they build their version of TRUTH. It used to be that we all agreed that 2+2=4, or man has landed on the moon, or even democracy is the best form of government if you want to maximize personal freedoms. Now all these assumptions are upended in the minds of much of our society. So, NO, we are not suggesting that pastors should start preaching from the pulpit on Sunday on these specific issues. But, YES, we are asserting there is an unprecedented crisis in the Modern American Church where significant numbers of our congregants are being pulled by social media, and cable news, and talk radio, off into dubious positions on a variety of issues. Very many of us, this author included, are wrestling daily on exactly where along this "Line of Fact" certain ideas are to be properly placed. And, given the state of our country today, it is simply not possible to avoid the conclusion that there is a profound problem of judgement where many Christians are placing items in the wrong positions along that line. It is reasonable to be deeply concerned that Christians, in particular as a voting bloc in the United States, as a result have used our influence to elevate unworthy leaders who ironically seem to be lacking in Christian character. And so, The Church in America has a huge task before it. We here involved in AllYourMind.com wish to assist in creating opportunities for Christians to regularly fellowship with each other and wrestle over these issues.
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