FORT SMITH, Ark. – In the fall of 2020, Kevin Thompson delivered a sermon on God’s tenderness. At one point, he made a quick contrast between a loving, approachable God and distant, inaccessible celebrities. Speaking without notes, with his Bible in hand, he resorted to a few simple examples: Oprah, Jay-Z, Tom Hanks.
Mr. Thompson could not say how his sermon was received. The church he led has only recently returned to personal meetings. Visitors were scarce and it was difficult to judge whether his jokes were reflected, or if his congregation – with family groups located three places apart and others watching online – remained engaged.
So he was caught unprepared when two members of the church expressed concern about the passing mention of Mr. Hanks. A young woman sent him a message of concern; another member suggested that the reference to Mr Hanks proved that Mr Thompson was not interested in the issue of sexual trafficking. Mr Thompson soon realized that their concerns stemmed from QAnon’s widespread conspiracy theory, which claimed that the movie star was part of a circle of Hollywood pedophiles.
For decades, Mr. Thompson, 44, was confident he knew the people of Fort Smith, a small town tucked away under the bend of the Arkansas River on the Oklahoma border. He was born in the oldest hospital in the city, attended public schools there and grew up in a Baptist church, which encouraged him to start preaching as a teenager. He figured he would live in Fort Smith for the rest of his life.
But now he wasn’t so sure. “Jesus is talking about how he is the truth, how central the truth is,” Mr Thompson said in an interview. “The moment you lose track of the truth, you lose everything.”
A political moment in which the Supreme Court is on the verge of annulling Rowe against Wade seems like a triumphant era for conservative evangelicals. But beneath this rise there are deeper and deeper cracks.
Across the country, theologically conservative white evangelical churches, once conveniently united, have found themselves at odds on many of the same issues separating the Republican Party and other institutions. The devastation, fear and physical division of the pandemic exacerbated any rift.
Many churches are fragile, with attendance far below pre-pandemic levels; denominations are declining, as is the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians. Forty-two percent of Protestant pastors said they were seriously considering leaving full-time ministry in the past year, according to a new study by evangelical sociologist Barna, a number that has risen 13 points since early 2021.
Michael O. Emerson, a sociologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, described the impending “seismic change” as white evangelical churches split into two broad camps: those who embrace Trump-style messages and policies, including references to conspiracy theories, and those looking to navigate differently.
In many churches, this includes new clashes between established leaders and ordinary believers.
Violations sometimes become headlines, such as when Russell Moore, a prominent Southern Baptist, left his denomination in 2021 after publicly criticizing the evangelical supporters of former President Donald J. Trump called on Christians to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. But more often the ruptures are quieter: a pastor who moves to another church to avoid a big confrontation, or who changes careers without fanfare.
When Mr. Thompson returned to Fort Smith after seminary in the early 2000s, the Community Bible Church was an exciting place to work. Inspired by thriving suburban megachurches such as Sidelbeck in Southern California and Willow Creek in Illinois, the Community Bible offers modern music, multimedia worship, and “seeker-sensitive” contacts to people who don’t go to church regularly.
“My concern was spiritual vitality,” said Ed Saussure, the church’s founding pastor. “I wanted it to be fun and engaging and different on purpose.” Mr Societe rarely spoke directly from the pulpit on electoral policy or public policy. It was easy to avoid. The church was mostly white and mostly conservative; the congressmen agreed on what they considered to be big problems, and there didn’t seem to be much reason to push for the small ones. “I applied a little common sense,” Mr Societe said. “If I can’t do something better, maybe I should leave it alone.”
The intersection of evangelism and US politics
His philosophy was not unusual. Despite their status as an influential electoral bloc, most white American evangelicals have historically avoided mixing politics and worship. In many gospel terms, “political” means prejudiced or tainted – the opposite of “biblical.”
“The only thing I loved and was so refreshing about this ministry was that there was no politics at all,” recalls Sarah Adams-Moytoza, a longtime member of the church that owns a boutique mall in Fort Smith. “Always, always, always, always, once.”
Mr Thompson has always been interested in politics, but he was not an activist. He sees himself as part of the modern evangelical mainstream, a movement that includes people like prominent New York pastor Tim Keller and Bible teacher Beth Moore, who are theologically conservative and skeptical of getting involved with any political party.
He still sees himself as a conservative. Mr Thompson has voted Republican in almost every major election. He admires Mitt Romney and the Bush family and is conservative about gender and sexual orientation, although he does not emphasize them often.
When he took over as pastor after six years as an associate, he immediately became popular among the congregation. One founder, Jim Colp, recalled a sermon Mr. Thompson preached on the “fruit of the spirit,” based on a New Testament passage that lists attributes such as meekness and self-control that show the Holy Spirit working in a Christian’s life. The sermon prompted Mr. Colp to consider his daily habit of listening to Rush Limbo. “I never stopped and thought, ‘Does it meet the fruit of the spirit?'” Mr. Colp said. “I’m going to listen to this man angry.” He stopped adjusting.
But over the years, the subtle gaps between Mr. Thompson and his congregation have been torn apart, like a seam pulled on both sides.
If he spoke out against the pulpit abortion, Mr Thompson noted, the congregation had no problem with that. Members were strongly opposed to abortion and saw the issue as a matter of biblical truth. But if he spoke of race in a way that made people uncomfortable, it was “politics.” And Mr. Thompson suspected that this was proof to some members of the church that Mr. Thompson was not as conservative as they thought.
Dissatisfaction with Mr Thompson’s approach began with the 2016 presidential campaign. The pastor wrote a blog post that did not criticize Mr Trump by name, but whose point of view was clear. “Many who thought Bill Clinton was the Antichrist are now campaigning for a man who will make Bill Clinton blush,” he wrote.
When Mr. Thompson wrote in a blog post in 2020 that “Black lives matter,” the frictions in his church suddenly looked more like a crisis. He spoke and wrote about racial issues with a certain frequency for years. He had hired Jackie Flake, a black pastor, to lead a new branch of the church in the racially diverse north side of Fort Smith. In 2015, he joined a successful effort to change the Johnny Reb mascot in his old high school. But the phrase “Black lives matter” irritated some of the brothers.
Mr Colp said he found the widespread talk of racism instigated by Mr Thompson too negative. America does have a history of racism, he said. But “if the slave trade had never happened, would they still be in Africa?” Would they have prominent positions? He wondered about the black people. “And now our pastor is talking about it, and we are systematically racist because we are white?”
Mr. Thompson’s true sermons were hardly sarcastic. At one point, he said, “If you’ve grown up like me, there’s fanaticism in you,” and encouraged listeners to look for points of view other than their own.
His friend Stephen Dooley, a white former police officer with two black children, sometimes urged him to speak even more directly about racial justice. But he knew that Mr. Thompson was in a difficult situation. “You would hate to see a church fall apart completely in a few sermons,” he said.
For many pastors whose conservatism coincides with their congregations, however, there is little price to speak. Some conservative pastors are now finding that their flocks do not want careful, conciliatory talks, but a bold rejection of what they see as growing threats from the secular world.
“There is a great divide,” said Wade Lenz, pastor of the Beryl Baptist Church in Vilnius, Arc, a few hours east of Fort Smith. Many people get tired of going to church and hearing this message: “Hey, this is a great day, every day is a great day, the sun is always shining.” There is a big discrepancy between what is happening behind the pulpit in these churches and this what’s happening in the real world. “
Mr. Lenz has seen his church grow as he focuses on topics such as vaccine mandates, which he preaches against in a sermon entitled “We Believe Tyranny Should Be Opposed.” In 2020, feeling “so much turmoil in the world”, he launched a podcast exploring political topics with a fellow “patriot” pastor.
“This attitude that Christianity and politics, and the preacher and politics, must be separated, is a lie,” he said. “You can’t separate the two.”
In the Community Bible, almost everyone liked Mr. Thompson, but some could not understand why he chose the causes he did. “There are areas he had to withdraw from,” said Johnny Fisher, one of …
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