#STRask - Should I Leave a Church That Refuses to Preach on Divisive Topics?

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

Questions about leaving a church with biblical theology because they refuse to preach on divisive topics, whether it’s okay to write an apologetics book under a pen name out of fear of repercussions, and how to reconcile Romans 13:1–5 with rulers who are unjust.   Should I leave a church that has solid biblical theology but refuses to preach on divisive topics (LGBTQ, abortion, anything political, homosexuality, immigration, etc.) because they want to introduce those topics once the person is “comfortable”? As someone who works in the public sector in Canada, where speech is heavily policed, am I wrong to write my apologetics book under a pen name to protect my identity and family out of fear of repercussions? How do you reconcile Romans 13:1–5, which tells us not to resist authority, with rulers who are unjust?

This is Greg Kokel and Amy Hall, and we are back for the hashtag St.R. Ask podcast. Amy, you gave me top building there. He caught me by surprise. All right, Greg. You ready for your question? All right. This one comes from D and K. I'm considering leaving a church that has solid biblical theology, but they refuse to preach on divisive topics, LGB-T-B-Q, abortion, anything political, immigration, etc., homosexuality, saying that they want to introduce those topics once the person is, quote, comfortable. Thoughts?

Well, what is the context in which they would introduce it to people who feel comfortable? I mean, how would you ever assess? that. All right, we've, the last two years, we've never touched these things. Now, hopefully, you're comfortable with us. So now today, we're going to start talking about these things. Well, there's people that have come in that week that are there for the first time. I don't understand how that works. If they are, in what sense are they genuinely going to deal with these issues once people become comfortable? That seems like a, you know, like they're just trying to put it off forever. I don't quite understand that. Now, as far as being at a church where they don't deal with any of those issues, I'm curious, how could they not deal with some of

those issues just teaching the Bible? You know, if you're teaching that human beings are made of the image of God, and then you get to Luke chapter 1, and there's John the Baptist leaping with joy in the second trimester in the presence of the Lord. That's the way Elizabeth characterized, the mother of my lord, who is a zygote or an embryo. You know, how is it that they don't see that this has ramifications for the question of abortion? Would this same church be comfortable? And this is, I always make this parallel because I think it's entirely fair. If there's the antebellum south and slavery was a reality, would you say, well, we're not going to talk about slavery until people are comfortable about it, you know, kind of thing.

Would they be silent about slavery? What about sexual slavery now? Is it not worthwhile to condemn those things? I don't know. I don't know how even if they're just preaching or teaching scripture, you know, you're going to run across. Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, you know, 1st Timothy, other Pat, or Titus, other passages that raise the issue of homosexuality. You've got Jesus' comment about marriage and in what Luke chapter was at 12. How can you teach the Bible and not teach these things if you're committed to

teaching the Bible? And if you're, well, we want to wait until people are comfortable, isn't it? What about sin? Don't you talk about sin? Go and sin no more. Jesus says, you know, or all kinds of other places. People are not comfortable with sin. Isn't that part of your message? I presume it is because DNK said that, well, this is part of, you know, it's a good Bible teaching. They just don't want to touch these other topics. So I am a little mistrustful about their rationale and reasoning. Now, would I go to a church like that? No, probably. I would. I would. wouldn't, because, again, I don't know how they can be straightforward about the things that God is concerned with grounded in Scripture if they are going to steer clear of those kinds of things. I don't understand that. Now, can you be a solid Christian in an environment like that? Well, according to D&K, they teach good theology. The preaching is sound, whatever. So if that's the case, you can, you're not, you're not feeding on garbage, which is true in some churches. You've got good feeding.

You're just not getting a full meal. That's the way I'd characterize it. So, you know, it's going to be a matter of individual choice of D&K if he can find a church that's better suited for his needs, good solid Bible teaching, which includes a number of things the Bible speaks to, either directly or indirectly, that are important. So I think it is going to be a matter of personal taste, but sounds like he's unhappy about that. And I don't understand entirely why – well, let me back up. I understand why.

I don't understand how a church can think it has a good reason not to address issues that do align with a Christian worldview and are weighty moral and ethical and theological concerns. I don't. That sounds almost a bit like people pleasing to me because the rationale that D&K characterized, it just doesn't hold water. Your point, how can they avoid preaching on these things? I think it's a good one because so many of these topics have to do with very basic worldview questions about what it means to be human, to be created by God, to be in the image of God. there are certain of these topics in particular that relate directly to that. So while I think that there can be legitimate reasons to limit preaching on these things for reasons that I'll explain in a second, I don't think the reason that the person's not comfortable is one of those reasons. So my biggest concern here is not necessarily that they aren't preaching on it, which I'll explain in a second, but it's their reason that they give. because that, the fact that you're going to make people uncomfortable, well, Jesus did that.

He lost so many followers because he said things that made them uncomfortable. So I don't think that is a legitimate reason. So that's my concern with this. As far as people, as church is preaching on these things, one more thing about that, I think by focusing on what makes people comfortable, you're subtly twisting. the purpose of the church, which is to equip the followers of Christ, to know God, to serve him, to love him. And now it's about numbers. You're bigger concern. You're avoiding things to equip your congregation so as to bring more people in. But now you've sacrificed the whole

purpose, which is to equip them. So you've kind of twisted the whole purpose. So here's what Ephesians 411 and 13 says about the church. And he gave some of the as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God to mature man to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. So here is the main point. So according to this passage, maturity and the knowledge of the son of God and unity

in the faith, these are, this is the main purpose of the church. Presenting every man complete in Christ, I think he says it in another place. So because this is the purpose, I can see limiting the preaching on some of the outer branches of our worldview. There can be a need to focus on this, on this. So some of this, the controversial issues are branches that grow from the root, but it's the root that you first have to plant and establish and nurture because the branches, these controversial issues, depend on the root, not the other way around. So you don't want to switch it. You don't want to focus entirely on the moment because then you're not equipping people to make these assessments themselves. What they need is the foundation. Now, if the branches are dying, if people are kind of out in the weeds on these topics, not me to mix metaphors here, but if people are kind of getting away from the Christian world beyond these controversial topics, that means the roots being neglected.

So you do want to prune the branches, but you also want to nurture the root. So Carl Truman actually writes about this in Strange New World, which is the source. smaller version of his book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Right. And what he says is that what you have to do is focus or what the pastors can do is focus on the root. Because like we said, all of this, all of these topics depend on foundational Christian ideas. So if teaching on what it means to be human, the existence of God, creation, all of these things, will affect all of these other things. So if there's a cultural issue you want to address, if you follow it down to the root foundational worldview issue and focus on that, you will equip them to apply it. Now, that doesn't mean you never apply it. But I think there is a place for focusing on the foundation rather than these other branches. As if they were somehow isolated

from a robust understanding of the world according to God, so to say. And some of these topics, there could be a variety of positions a Christian could take. So say there are specifics about immigration that you can disagree on, well, that's not something then you want to preach from the pulpit and say, you should have this position. But you would want to start back earlier again in the worldview issue and go as far as, you know, as you want to preach from the pulpit. So something like abortion where it's the killing of an innocent human being, that's much more a foundational clear issue than, say, a immigration policy or something like that. So what you might want to do in that case is have some sort of a forum where people can interact on it.

So after you have engaged this foundational issue, you could have a class and say, we're going to talk about these other topics that are controversial right now. We're going to relate them to the Christian worldview and see how we cash that out and try and move towards. a biblical position, there may be more than one biblical position. So then you talk about the practical aspects of which works better. So there's there's the moral considerations and the biblical considerations, and then there's the practical considerations, what actually works within those moral possibilities. So again, we're moving farther away from what you might want to preach from the pulpit at this point. So all these things to say, I think

there's a way to address these issues from the pulpit as you're moving along, as you said, in the scripture, these things will come up because they're related to who we are as human beings. But if the reason why they're not doing it is just because they don't want to upset people, I think that is a problem. And I would maybe discuss with them the possibilities of how they might address these things. If they're not comfortable addressing them directly, there are certainly ways to address them from the foundational worldview position. Right, right. Well put it.

No, that was great, Amy. Thank you. Okay, let's move on to a question from Jerome. I work in the public sector up in Canada where speech is heavily policed. I love apologetics and I'm currently writing a book. Am I wrong to write under a pin name to protect my identity and family out of fear of repercussions? Well, I don't know. I haven't actually thought about this.

my initial thought is, no, I don't think so. A nom de plume, a pen name is an honorable way of presenting a work. And, in fact, it's been done in the past. CS Lewis did it even. Oh, I didn't know that. It wasn't to avoid persecution, but he did it with, I think, the problem of pain. Huh. Or grief observed.

Oh. I think it was a grief observed. He wrote under a pen name at first. Huh. Just to be anonymous. Well, there are some famous examples of classic works that were written by women who took men's names because they didn't think their work was going to be taken seriously if it had a woman that people knew it was a woman as an author. I'm trying to remember right off the top of my head, but American works or maybe some British works. So I don't think that I don't see any genuine ethical problem here.

and I guess the desire is to avoid being persecuted, but there's nothing wrong with avoiding being persecuted. If you read in the book of Acts, there are a number of times where Paul fled persecution. You know, they lowered him over the wall there in, what, Antioch or whatever, in a basket because the hostility he's experiencing. He was ready to run into the melee, as it were, and his friend said, no, dude, that's crazy. Come on.

We're dragging you out. We're taking you somewhere else. So there's nothing wrong with avoiding persecution per se. I guess it does depend on whether, yeah, I'm not going to say, I'm not going to do what's right. I'm not going to say what's true just so I can avoid persecution. That's a different matter. But that doesn't seem to me the way it's played out here. I don't have any problem with it at all.

The only issue I would say, I don't know why he wrote with a different name. I never thought to ask. I'm sure it wasn't to avoid persecution. No, Samuel Clemens was his real name. I mean, you just thought it sounded better. I don't know. It just occurred to me. But I don't have any issue with people using a fake name except one issue that I think can be surmounted. And I think you have to have accountability. If you are going to be anonymous online, you need to bring your. your elders into it. You need to bring friends into it who know who you are and are reading and can keep you accountable so that you don't go off in some direction either intellectually or behaviorally or whatever it is. Someone has to keep you accountable. When we use our, I would, I always prefer people using their own names because I think when we have to stand behind our own names, it just, it just keeps us honest because everything we write is going to reflect on us.

But on the other hand, it could stop you from writing about things that you are afraid are going to cause some sort of problem for you. So I don't have a – I think this is fine, but I think you have to have some sort of accountability or you're just asking for trouble for your own character. Yeah, good point. And here's a question from Fritters. How do you reconcile Romans 13, 1 through 5 with rulers who are unjust? For example, if God allows communist China to rule, does that mean those? those in its government should persecute the Uyghurs when told to by those in authority. Yeah, this issue is important.

And in fact, in this country, we faced challenges regarding this, regarding the COVID and all of that. And I was just pausing because I was thinking, I think Norm Geisler actually thought the American Revolution was immoral for this reason, all right? and I did a lot of thinking about this around that time, and I read a book that was written a couple hundred years ago, actually. It's called the, I would think of it. Something about the lesser magistrates?

Yes, yeah, the lesser magistrates. I'd recommended it on the air. But here's a couple of just thoughts that will help to mitigate, okay? And I can't speak about Red China and that kind of stuff. I don't know. It's obvious, we have biblical and historical examples where people violated the law, the governing authorities for a greater moral purpose. The doctrine of lesser magistrates, I think is the name of that book, where they violated, they stood against the law, the governing authorities because there was a greater moral purpose that was at stake. Look at Dietrich Bonhofer, for example.

He worked with the Abwer, all these intelligent agency of the German soldiers that, I mean, the German government, who had a lot of traders from the Nazi perspective there, they were trying to get rid of Hitler because he was such a disaster at so many ways. And maybe some people think that his complicity in a plot to take Hitler out was immoral given this battle. in Romans. I don't think it is. There is a law above the law. In fact, this was the argument of Nuremberg, the war trials there, against those who said we were just following orders. We were doing what our culture and our superiors told us to do. In other words, this, it wasn't a direct appeal to the Romans passage, but it amounts into the same idea. We were obeying orders. Okay, so how can you hold us morally responsible? And the jurists in those trials basically said there is a law above the law.

That's a higher law that you should be obeying. So what's tricky is trying to decide in any given instance what that involves and how to apply it, all right? And this was a lot of controversy during the COVID days, you know, whether you open your church, whether you worship, whether you do the things that normally you do as a Christian, or you don't do them because the government said don't do that for their health reasons, supposedly. And there was a mixed bag. John McCarthy said, we're not doing that. We're not following. And they made a spectacle out of him. They made an example out of him. They really went after him hard. Now, when they crossed down, you also got Jack Hibbs over at Calvary Chapel out there in the Inland Empire. And his church went from 7,000 to 15,000 in one year. because all the churches are closed down, it's ever his. He wrote a letter to the governor and says, sorry, I can't do this.

And then we respect you, we respect the law, but this is, you've overreached, which is the same thing that Bonhofer said with regards to the Aryan paragraph in 1934 or so. And so this is, you're overreaching your bounds. Now, another thought that I had about this too, and this applies more directly to American situation is The government isn't just one thing. What is the government? Is the government, whoever is in the executive office at any time? Is it the Congress?

Is it the courts? In our government, we have different layers, all right? And I remember when Ron DeSantis told the president, Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida and president then Joe Biden, regarding some of the restrictions of COVID, what Sysantis said is I'm stepping in on behalf of my people and I'm saying no to the president because I'm protecting my people. Now, that was an example, whether people think he was right or not, but this is an example of executing the lesser authority, the doctrine of the lesser magistrates. Sometimes the lesser magistrates, lower on the pecking order,

can step in for a righteous reason to protect those around them. Okay. And this is very well-developed. Incidentally, this book was not written, you know, in 2020. This had to be dealt with 150 years ago. I think it's – I can't even remember who wrote it. But very careful reasoning and looking at all these details to see when it's legitimate. And you can't just quote the Romans passage as if this is a blanket application to everything. One of the laws that governs the land in our case is the Constitution. One of the laws that governs the land is the Constitution. one of the laws that governs the land is the declaration. These are all legal documents that govern our land.

So what if a, you know, some administration demands of us, Christians, something that the Constitution allows for? So we're obliged to obey the administration? No, we can obey the Constitution. That's also a law. So you have different layers of things going on here, and it isn't just whatever the government says right now to me, I got to do that, because the government and authorities are multifaceted, all right? And so I'm just giving the general principle now. There are times when we can reason through a circumstance to say, this ain't right. We are not morally obliged to obey this, and we are, in fact, maybe morally obliged to do.

disobey it. And this is what, this was Bonhofer's view about the Aryan paragraph. They told him, the Aryan paragraph says no Jews can be in any position of authority. Well, he had Jewish Christians, converts in his church that were elders. And he said, no government gets to tell the church how to operate. That's Jesus' domain. And that's where he put his foot down. And so that's an example there of saying that this is God's provision, this is God's domain. Jesus did. declares he or not you. So it's just another example of how this can work out. Well, we know it can't mean you can never go against the government because we see it in the Bible. We see it with Daniel. He was not allowed to pray to anyone but the king, but he continues to pray to God.

Well, he opened the windows and prayed really loudly, you know, he made a point. Just like he always did. So we know that it can't mean that. The way I take the passage in Romans 13, and maybe I should just read a little bit of it if people aren't familiar. But it says every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same, for it is a minister of God to you for good.

Then it goes on to say, but if you do evil, then you'll have the sword. But I think that's enough for what I'm going to say right now. Sure. I think what this is about is the idea that God has created an authority structure. Right. So we have the family. We have, so the authority structure there would be the parents. You have the country when the authority structure there is the government.

There are other authorities that we have in different institutions. the church, and we're supposed to respect those. And notice that it says, well, God has put those in place to be a minister of God for our good. And the way and the reason why we are to follow them is because they're for our good. And if we do good, then we won't have anything to fear from them. Right. So I think this is talking about authority in general. So you have people who are rebellious and they don't like having an authority over them. That's what this is talking about. So if the purpose of this is to reward the good and punish the evil and the government is telling you to do something that's not good, well, we still have to obey

the sentence here saying, you know, do what is right. That's the whole point. The point of this passage is to convince you to do what's right. And the way that the authorities fit into that is that they're there to enable us to do that. If they're stopping us from doing that, now, we have a whole different issue happening here. So I don't think this is about that situation. The point here is God wants us to do what is right so that we will not have fear from authority. If the authority over us in the country is telling us to do something different, then the authority over us is God. Don't do what's wrong because then you'll have to fear God. So he is our ultimate authority, and he's, if the government is telling us to do something that's against what he's told us to do, we can't do it. So I think that's kind of how...

Well, this is after chapter four. You have to decide whether we should obey God rather than men. But we cannot stop speaking of which we've seen or heard. That's Peter. So, yeah, I'm with you on this, that this is talking about the general structure of government. I talk about this and what is God doing about the problem of evil. He's given us, as you pointed out, the family and the church and also government to mitigate the impact of evil. And this passage talks about that.

that's the way it's supposed to function. Now, it doesn't always function perfectly that way, and then we have to deal with those things when they come up. And notice that when we don't follow the government because they're telling us to do something wrong, we're not doing it out of rebellion. We're doing it out of obedience to God. So it's not that we're moving from obedience to rebellion,

which is what this passage is against. It's because we are remaining in obedience. So the idea is that we are to be submissive to proper authorities in obedience, and whoever is the proper authority, whether it's the government or God, that is who we are in obedience to. We don't suddenly become rebellious. We shouldn't look at it that way. Like, I just don't want authority over me. That's the problem that we're talking about here. So when we have to go against the government, and there could be times when that happens,

I think we should do with fear and trembling because it's not a good thing to have to go against the authority. But do it with the reminder that you are doing it to be obedient, not to be rebellious, and you have to be willing to accept the consequences, too. Well, remember when the signers of the declaration signed, they said basically, I can't remember exactly, but here we commit our lives, our honor and everything to this, and then they signed the declaration. And they knew there was a price to be paid, and Bonhofer paid the price for his act of conscience regarding the Third Reich and Hitler. So, yeah, one last thing I would say here is that even when there are instances where we do not do what the government says, the government still has

appropriate authority over us and other things. I remember when they had the rescues, Operation Rescue here back in the 90s, I guess, and people would throw themselves or block abortions. clinics, pro-lifers would, then they get arrested, okay? Now, I think they had a case to justify their actions blocking the abortion clinic to try to prevent abortions, the killing of those children. When they got arrested, though, they did not have a case to resist arrest. And in fact, if they're going to pay that price, if they're going to make that statement and block them, then they have to take the consequences.

And when they're being arrested, they're resisting arrest. arrest, that's different. Now you're not doing something, in my view, that is morally justified under the circumstances. So even with evil governments, it doesn't cancel out all of their appropriate authority over the people. You can't just do whatever you want. It's not just anarchy then. Yeah, because authority is a good thing. It's created by God for our good. So we support that idea whenever we, however we can, and we can still do it within our objection to an improper authority. All right. We went over a little bit. Thanks for the great questions. We love hearing from you. Send us your question on X with the hashtag STR Ask or go to our website at STR.org. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.

You know,