The Daily Signal - INTERVIEW | ‘Woke Jesus’: How a ‘Doctrine of Demons’ Is Infiltrating Christianity

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

A “doctrine of demons” is invading Christian churches across America, twisting the Bible to advance leftist ideologies that divide people, warns a pastor and author of the book “Woke Jesus: The False Messiah Destroying Christianity.”   “I think it is a doctrine of demons,” Lucas Miles, pastor of Nfluence church, tells The Daily Signal Podcast at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Orlando Monday. “I mean, its intention is to divide people.”   He warns that “woke Christianity” or “progressive Christianity” or “the Christian Left” boils down to a false version of the faith tracing back to a Marxist sub-structure” that reframes the faith in terms of oppressors and oppressed. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, May 26th. I'm Virginia Allen. A doctrine of demons is invading Christian churches across America, according to Lucas Miles. Miles is the pastor of influencer church and author of woke Jesus, the false Messiah, destroying Christianity. Miles warns that woke Christianity or progressive Christianity or the Christian left boils down to a false version of the faith, tracing back to Marxist sub-structure that reframes the faith in terms of oppressors and oppressed. The Daily Signal's Tyler O'Neill sat down with Miles at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Orlando this week to discuss what can and should be done about the false political agenda influencing the church. Stay tuned for Tyler's conversation with Lucas Miles after this.

conservative women are problematic women why because we don't adhere to the agenda of the radical left every thursday morning on the problematic women podcast christin i cammer Lauren evans and me virginia allen are joined by other conservative women to break down the big issues and news you care about whether you're interested in hot takes and conversations on pop culture or what congress is up to problematic women has you covered. We sort through the news to keep you up to date on the issues that are of particular interest to conservative leaning that is problematic women. Find problematic women wherever you like to listen to podcasts and follow the show on Instagram. This is Tyler O'Neill, managing editor at The Daily Signal. I'm joined by Lucas Miles,

a pastor, host of the show Church and State with Lucas Miles, and author of the new book, Jesus, the false Messiah, destroying Christianity. Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. So, Lucas, can you walk us through how the left aims to subvert Jesus? I've seen Democrats claim Jesus was a radical, a refugee, even transgender. What's going on? So without a doubt, there's a concerted effort that seems to be picking up a lot of momentum

in recent years of the left's redefining of Christianity. Christianity, reimagining Christ, what he looks like, what his nature is, and of course, outside of a biblical worldview. But I think it's important that people understand that this isn't necessarily a new phenomenon, that this, you know, in my book, woke Jesus. I go back to as early as the 1700s after the Enlightenment during the post-enlightment period. The world was at a different place and actually a very similar place that it is today where there was a paradigm shift.

And so for the first time, there was an elevation of man's intellect over this idea of faith. And so logic and reason, the scientific method, Darwin, all these things, Hegel, Kant. All of these sort of new machinations, if you will, of man became paramount. And so the church was in a dilemma. It had to find a way to make scripture stay relevant. And they did that actually by wrongly. but they, you know, probably with good intention, they did it by minimizing the divinity of Christ and uplifting his humanity.

And that's the same debate we have today, is, is Jesus just a great human example and a human witness? And that promotes a social gospel, and at times a socialist gospel, or is he truly divine? And of course, the Christian answer is he's both. But that has certain implications. So what we're seeing today and what I write about in woke Jesus are the various iterations of Christ that we see presented,

and now financed by the left, and that's what makes this different than just what happened in the 1700s. 1700s, I think, as many ways, was a natural discourse of theology in the conversations. What we see today is the monetization and the funding of a woke gospel in order to divide the church so that the left can really weaken the evangelical vote in this country, win elections, and gain more power. So how would you just define or explain our executive? explain this woke gospel. Yeah. So if you're talking to somebody who who is an adherent to it, they would say probably something like, although it would be much more complex than this, that wokeism is a higher awareness or increased sensitivity to the systemic oppression of various

demographics, whether that be people of color or, you know, people based upon their gender or sexual preference or something like that. The way that I would describe, but, you know, first off, I think it is a doctrine of demons. I mean, it's, it's, uh, uh, its intention is, um, to divide people. It's a Marxist substructure that really lines it. And this idea that there's oppressor and oppressed and that everybody's divided in these categories. So whether we're talking about critical race theory or, or critical queer theory, these are attributes of the woke, uh, gospel. And I think what woke Christianity or progressive Christianity or the Christian left that can go by all these different names, it's important to understand that there's a spectrum. We have some

individuals that have maybe some, you know, theological imaginations or, or leanings towards some of these doctrines. And then we have all-out activists that are, you know, really leftist operatives within the church. And I think it's important to give, you know, to give recognition to that, because our response to those different groups is different. Somebody who's truly a believer that's maybe embraced a social justice message because they think it's going to be the best thing to help the world, I'm going to respond to differently than a leftist infiltrator into the church that's trying to create a bunch of havoc. And so, you know, we, we utilize grace and truth, which are, you know, obviously very, very strong, you know, Christian principles and values that we hold to in order to kind of

walk our way through this. But wokeism is, it's antithetical to Christianity. And I think one of the things that's important to point out is that one of the greatest problems with wokeism from a Christian standpoint is it robs us of the ability to be able to suffer for Christ. As believers, one of the only things that we can give to the Lord on this side of heaven that we can't give to him for eternity is glory in the midst of persecution and suffering. There will be no persecution and suffering in heaven. I only have my lifetime in order to offer obedience to him and faithfulness in the face of persecution during this life.

But wokeism removes persecution for the sake of Christ because persecution, according to is always based upon my, my, you know, socioeconomic status, my skin color, my country of origin, my sexual preference, my gender, you know, immigration status, all of these things. So that's driving why people are being persecuted. It's a very self-focused, man-focused view of persecution and suffering, and it never gives credence to being able to suffer for Christ. And the other thing it does is it robs us, it robs us of the ability to offer forgiveness. There is no such thing as redemption or forgiveness, because the other group is always classified as the oppressor. And so, and the wokeism would teach you, or whether we're talking about other iterations of it,

of things like Black Liberation theology, would teach you to never be nice or graceful to your oppressors, which of course goes against the Christian gospel as well. So do we have in wokeism this sort of bifurcation of, you know, black queer theory, oh, Jesus was a black LGBT person or whatever and you know perhaps like Hispanic queer theory like are there different versions and they they grab different parts of Jesus or is this all one thing would you say so I think that you know you could probably best to explain this as like a hydra you know it or you know you have the the giant octopus sea monster that we're all we're all experiencing a different tentacle of the same thing and so oftentimes these groups don't even know that they're part of the same

kind of body of belief or structure. But we saw this, we saw this, I think, early with BLM. BLM comes out on the scene. You start having corporate donations to them. You go on their website, like many Americans. And what I saw was that they were committed to, you know, basically a dismantling of the nuclear family. And then you go down the list a little bit more and you see that they're committed to

supporting black trans rights. And very quickly, I think BLM, you know, which from my vantage point has done virtually nothing to help, you know, disadvantage people in, in, you know, urban, urban neighborhoods or people of color, what it has done more than anything is it very quickly started, you know, it kind of opened the door for this trans revolution that we've seen. I think that that really came out of the BLM movement in a lot of ways. And so these groups oftentimes will sort of hijack each other. They'll fight for the top of the food chain. They all want the same thing. And that, is a dismantling of this Western way of life.

It's a Marxism. You know, Marxism never encourages fixing something. It doesn't look at something and go, how can we improve this? You know, that's a capitalist framework. What Marxism does is says, let's burn it to the ground and the Phoenix will arise out of the ashes. And I think that that's the goal of all these different groups. And so are critical race theorists or Black Liberation theologians or critical queer theorists or the TikTok pastors that are wearing the rainbow scarves, are they all, you know, part

the same group. I don't think that they think they are. I think they're probably think that they're friendly with one another, but I think that there is a greater school of thought, and that is critical theory in general, that is driving all of them. And it makes it very difficult to combat, because even though they are unique in each of their, you know, focus and messaging for us on the other side of this that are trying to stand for truth in a biblical worldview, it does. does, they do produce, whether, you know, they even realize it sometimes, a very united front against truth and, and, and, and, you know, scripture and these things that we see today. So it's definitely an interesting time to be alive.

Yeah, and we've touched on a few of the issues where there's clear disconnect between the Christian gospel and, you know, the modern, woke view, transgender ideology. where are some of those conflict points and then what encourages some of these people to re-examine and actually come to an understanding of the gospel? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, let's say that we look at an issue like the issue of gender. The Bible is very clear that there is male and female, that marriage is male and female. And so, you know, we could go through a whole series of scriptures over that.

The LGBT community, you will hear arguments about a 1948 translation of scripture and that this word, you know, that we use for homosexuality, a sinecoite, I believe is the word, you know, was not used prior to that time period. And when you really understand what happens here, that this word that we see that's translated from the Greek into this word for homosexuality is, is a word that Paul essentially made up. And he took two words from the, I believe it was the Septuagint, that he put these together and sort of created this compound word. And it's essentially a word that implies those who lay with other men.

And so this, but, you know, even if you just, even if you just went to that passage, that's not the only passage there. So we could have an argument about that passage, but you still have to deal with all the other places in scripture where it talks about fornication and evil in these things. And I don't know how any Christian could be on the side when you look at, you know, a gay parade or a trans parade that's happening and ever look at that and say that looks like an event that's promoting righteousness or holiness and so that's that's one issue we could also talk about something you know the um the covid you know um you know pandemic for lack of a better better term i know we

we'd probably rather think of it as a pandemic in many in many ways right but but this this this thing that happened what we saw is that for you know the left who's known for pushing this idea of separate in church and state against Christians. So anytime somebody prays in the in the Senate or a or a football game, somebody's going to on the left is going to say, no, no, no, what about separation in church and state? But all of a sudden the left was the one promoting the idea. Well, what would Jesus do in this situation? Wouldn't Jesus love his neighbor by getting the vaccine? And wouldn't Jesus be vaccinated? And so we started seeing this push. And I think a lot of Christians struggled to go, what does scripture offer to this. And so, you know, I point to two places. We look at something like what in theology, what's known as sphere sovereignty, that God

has given, there's an order to creation, that he's given kings and rulers, authority over their nations and their sovereign borders. He's given fathers, authority over the family. He's given elders and pastors authority over the church. He's given all of us individual authority over our own body and that we see that in the form of free will. And we could have theological discussions about that, but regardless of which side of the free will debate you're on, I think that everybody would acknowledge that there is a sphere of sovereignty over your own physical body. This is why we have laws that if you violate somebody's body or you harass them or you, you know, you abuse them in some way that that's against the law. Why? Because you're violating their sphere

of sovereignty. And so this is, there's all sorts of theological arguments against these different iterations that we see in wokeism from the vaccine to even separating people based upon race and color or, you know, even, even the conversation about reparations for, for something. This is, when you look at scripture, it talks about not punishing people. based upon the acts of their parents or the acts of their ancestors. And so there are so many ideas that are being presented today as this is what Jesus would do or this is this biblical position that anybody who has any biblical sense whatsoever should easily be able to spot those.

The problem is that we have such a increase of biblical illiteracy in the church that most people can't recognize it. So what I've done in this new book, Woke Jesus, I actually quote Ironaeus, who is an early church father in the start of the book. and, you know, his, he wrote a book called Against Heresies, trying to defeat Gnosticism, an early heresy that came against the church in the, in the, he wrote it 180, AD, and he said the reason why the first century church was not able to refute Gnosticism is they didn't understand it fully.

And I believe the same is true today. Unless we start understanding wokeism, critical theory, critical race theory, critical queer theory, and we see it as more than just, well, that's not true. Why is it not true? And really be able to wrap our minds around it and, untangle these doctrinal fishing lines that we can really clearly stand on sort of knowing confidently we're on biblical grounds to be able to say this is unbiblical and here is why until the church is able to do that I think we're going to continue to run into this and have a hard time getting past it.

How have you seen, you know, when you go up against this left word twisting of Christianity, You know, it seems as though many of the institutions in our society are tilted in that direction, where they're constantly pushing the Overton window on reparations, on, you know, these claims from the left on transgenderism in particular. I can't see a Reuters or an AP article that ever cites criticism of gender affirming care. It's just always assumed that, oh, all the hospitals, all the medical organizations support this. how is it, you know, preaching into this void saying like, no, Jesus doesn't support all this stuff that seems to be pushed down upon us? Yeah. Yeah, I think that, you know, we have to continue to fight this battle on multiple fronts. And of course, we want to do whatever we can. You know, if there's a media outlet that will let me go on and talk about these issues and they'll give it an honest shake, I'll do it.

You know, I don't care who it is. I'm going to go on there and really be able to, you know, to offer my best defense. I believe that's a position that the Lord has me in. Now, am I aware that there's certain media outlets that are never going to give this time a day or even certain, you know, whether it be government organizations or, you know, other leading foundations or NGOs or whatnot that are going to be at the front of moving a lot of these things along? There are powers that be that don't want this message to get out there. And they don't want, they don't want people to realize that the emperor has no clothes and to have the confidence to start admitting it. You know, they're not looking for that. But I think that there are places that are.

and so we have to celebrate those. I think that the conservatives and Christians are also doing a great job of creating new platforms to be able to get the word out and to be able to really gather their own audiences. I'm encouraged by many of the apps that are popping up that are conservative friendly, and there's danger in that

because a lot of the app platforms are governed by left-leaning companies and individuals. So it always is a dance and dangerous. Even having a book like this on Amazon, you always wonder like Amazon, you know, they can, they can pull the plug whenever they want. Thankfully they haven't. And I, I appreciate, you know, what I see, you know, to be at least still some sort of a value there to allow, to allow books

to breathe and, you know, regardless of content, which I'm certainly for. I think that the, the other aspect of this is that we as, we as Christians, we have to recognize that this, that this is, it's not just a physical battle. There's a spiritual aspect to this as well. And I talk about this later on in the book. And I think that, you know, for us to get through this, it can become very depressing, very overwhelming, very quickly when you realize how much you're up against, you know, in this whole equation. And it's not even just secular platforms. There are, there are Christian groups that are, that don't want this message to go out. And that's where a lot of my, you know, work and writing has gone. And so we have to remember why we're doing this, that ultimately,

um, it's not about me getting canceled. It's not about, uh, this, this fight that I'm trying to carry on. It's really about the Lord. And, and, and I think that, you know, that's what moves me and motivates me every day to get up. And if I can win somebody over and really help them to be able to see this, just had a woman come up to me and she watches my show, Church and State, and she, you know, she said, are you Lucas Miles? And I said, yes. And that doesn't happen every day to me, you know, and so, but I talk to her and she goes, I escaped communism. And she goes, I watch your show every single time it's on. And she goes, I just want you to know how much it means to me that you are bringing the truth to this that most people don't realize and they're not aware of. And,

And, you know, those sort of things really keep me going in the face of so much opposition that's truly out there. Yeah. And where are you a pastor? Where's your congregation? Yeah. So my church is called Influence Church. There's no I.

So it's N-F-L-U-E-N-C-E. And it's in, it's right outside of South Bend, Indiana, a suburb called Granger, Indiana, just about, you know, 10 minutes from the University of Notre Dame. And we like to think we're the center of the nation because we have the two highways that run east and west and north and south throughout the whole, country across about a mile from my church. So Indiana, that's been home. But, you know, we're on the road a lot. We're doing events around the country. Lots of different ways to get connected with us. And people can find all that and more on my website at Lucas Miles.org. So did a certain former mayor lead you to

consider writing these books? Yeah. So, you know, it's funny. People always ask me, because I haven't been in the political conversation, you know, forever. I really started probably ramping up 2012, 2013, 2014. and we started getting bolder, and it wasn't the national conversation that inspired this. It was really what was happening locally. And, you know, Mayor Pete, who obviously his regime kind of was built in South Bend, I started warning about him probably as early as 2012. I started talking to people about, hey, this guy's going to make a run for, you know, White House. He's doing all these things.

And people laughed at me early on, you know, about it. And, you know, we knew the history of, you know, his dad's involvement in translating Gramchie and all these, you know, sort of, you know, long history. of kind of critical theory ties, you know, with Pete and his family. And I know Pete, he might claim that he doesn't know me. I've been around him. I interviewed him for Chamber of Commerce years back. And, you know, we've had a little bit of interactions together over the years. But that was a big, it was a big wake-up call just to see, you know, if you go to downtown South Bend, there's aspects where you saw the, you know, Pete did a lot of things to clean up

the immediate downtown. But you go outside of that area at all. And it's, you know, it's a lot of, The city's probably the worst it's ever been. Our crime is up. I mean, it's just a disaster. And so, and what we're seeing now is, you know, it was kind of, you know, really a guy that Pete knighted to take over. It's been a Democratic-run city for, I think, 50, 60 years. And so I'm working with some local people hoping to change that as much as we can and, you know, really trying to do our part. But, yeah, there was definitely some inspiration there.

Yeah, because I thought during that presidential cycle, hearing him constantly, like, he took his face, seriously and yet he would twist it every time and it's you know life begins with breath and all this yeah so this is the one and I've talked about this a lot I've not heard a lot of other people actually other than you notice that and mentioned that Pete did something that I believe that no other presidential candidate has fully done before and he you know we've seen presidential candidates talk about their faith we've seen them we've seen them you know thank God for things we've seen them even pray Pete would exeatgeet passages on the campaign trail and so he's breaking down passages, using them really as, as in many ways sort of propaganda for his various views.

And so I believe that there was actually a turning point with him. I'm not going to say that Pete was single-handedly responsible for, you know, giving life to the Christian left. But I think that in, I think he was a major inspiration for a lot of people on that side for that reason, because he would build these arguments about why, you know, you know, Jesus was a refugee, so therefore we need open borders and illegal immigration. and, you know, Jesus, you know, I mean, it just, I mean, now, I saw something the other day on TikTok, they, they, they, it was a guy who said that, um, that Jesus was, was most likely either gay or transgender because he wore a tunic and that's a lot like a dress. And so therefore he was a crossdresser. You know, and it's, you know, just these, but, you know, I think there's probably young people out there that hear this and they go, oh, yeah, you know, that's so, so insightful, you know, but when, you know, you understand history, these are ludicrous, you know, they're, they're assinine ideas. But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, we are winning people over because I think that they have tapped into, you know, what

marks, you know, and others of just this, the useful idiot, you know, sort of framework. And they are taking advantage of people based upon pulling on their heartstrings, giving them these propaganda pieces. And I think that when you take the time to really talk to somebody, you really, they get educated about the policies, they start seeing the impact. You know, I've traveled all over the country. I've been in countries that are, that are controlled by dictators and corruption and everything else. And you see those things and you realize that, you know what, America is a pretty good place to live.

But there's some people, I think, that are going out of their way trying to damage that. Yeah. Do you see any tie with woke Jesus and, like, the deconversion stories we've been hearing? Yeah, I think this issue of deconversion is a major, major topic. And I think it's going to probably become even more so in the years that come. People have gone through a lot of church hurt. I call it post-traumatic church disorder. And I don't say that to belittle it.

They've gone through some really damaging things. I think the height of legalism that we saw probably when I was a kid did a lot of damage to people. And there wasn't, you know, in the balance of grace and truth, it was a high truth side and very little grace. And so, and then the pendulum swing. And it swung now to this high grace side with very little truth. And in some ways it's swinging back. And now we have this polarization where we have a group over here that's high grace and a group over here that's high truth. And sometimes they're both missing aspects of this.

And so sometimes it feels a little lonely. only are in the center there, but it's, I think this deconversion thing, we have to keep our eyes on this. I think that it really requires, there's a biblical concept to deconversion, kind of, it's called repentance. And repentance is, I get rid of my old ways of thinking, and I embrace his ways of thinking, and I get, I, you know, turn away from all the ideas that I've held that are contrary to him. The problem is with deconversion, they're going from one belief that they held, which was oftentimes wrong, to another belief that they hold, which is all. oftentimes wrong. And neither group is, is ever taking the time to go, what does Scripture really have to

say about this? I believe that we can look to the Lord. We can look to Scripture. It's, it is a book that is God breathed, that's inspired, it's authoritative. It is the Word of God. And it's useful for every single aspect of my life. And so my passion is to help young people and really people of all kinds to be able to come back to the Word of God as first place. And I think we can get rid of a lot of this kind of nonsense that's out there. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Lucas. Where can the people follow you. Yeah. So they can head over to Lucasmiles.org and find out more about me if they're interested in booking me for a speaking event or grabbing a copy of my book. My new book,

Woke Jesus, is available on Amazon or wherever else the books are sold. We just, this morning it hit number one new release in one of the bigger categories. So I was super excited to see that happen. But appreciate the support and your time. And with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us here on the Daily Signal podcast. A quick reminder that we do not have a top news show this afternoon in honor of Memorial Day, and we will also not have one on Monday, but we will be bringing you an interview edition, a special interview

edition on Monday morning in honor of Memorial Day and those who have served our country and paid the ultimate sacrifice. Thank you again for joining us on today's show. We hope that you all have a wonderful weekend, and we'll see you back. here on Monday morning as we honor Memorial Day. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Luey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.