(Photo: Screengrab/SBC Annual Meeting)

In what can be described as another wildly misguided missive poorly aimed and good only for virtue signaling to a cadre of reality-oblivious followers, William Dwight McKissic, an African-American Texas pastor, drafted a resolution that was considered at the annual Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Phoenix this week. What was misguided about his resolution? Simply this – McKissic sees in the so-called Alt Right, a source of unparalleled evil and hatred such that any rational individual would condemn it.

The Christian Post writer Michael Gryboski states in his write-up about the Resolution that, “The Alt Right is a political movement generally associated with white nationalism and known for launching intense attacks on ideological enemies on social media.” Oh the evil of such individuals who would oppose other people’s viewpoints along ideological lines! Note to Gryboski – this IS political discourse in America today. Social Media IS a political battlefield occupied by people of all ideologies including black supremacists, Hispanic and Latino supremacists, and every other ethnicity who has a grievance to advance.

The New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Salon, and dozens of other media platforms have all crafted a very specific progressive-leftist ideology and routinely attack people of other viewpoints. Gryboski’s seemingly innocuous statement is in fact a clear example of the fallacy of prima facie – assuming something to be true when even a cursory investigation proves that it is not. His attempt to smear the Alt Right by connecting it with white supremacists is an old ploy often used by individuals with an agenda to minimize and marginalize when public discourse cannot persuade.

Let’s look at the Resolution itself. Pastor McKissic included in his Resolution statements such as:

“… there has arisen in the United States a growing menace to political order and justice that seeks to reignite social animosities, reverse improvements in race relations, divide our people, and foment hatred, classism, and ethnic cleansing,”

For many Americans, this writer included, McKissic perfectly described the 8 year reign of terror known as the Obama presidency. Then he adds this gem:

“… this toxic menace, self-identified among some of its chief proponents as ‘White Nationalism’ and the ‘Alt-Right,’ must be opposed for the totalitarian impulses, xenophobic biases, and bigoted ideologies that infect the minds and actions of its violent disciples.”

The irony and timing of this piece in light of yesterday’s Washington DC shooting by an avowed liberal progressive hater of all things on the political “right,” Republicans in general, and Donald Trump specifically is breath-taking. Because of the immediate Alt Right reporting on the incident the mainstream media had to do something they are loath to do – report the facts about the attack. Hearing the television talking heads soberly report that the shooter was a Bernie Sanders supporter who was a member of the Facebook group “Terminate the Republican Party” was admittedly a bit surreal.

The truth is that because the Alt Right exists as a media counterbalance to the lying mainstream media, freedom and liberty on a foundation of political discourse and investigative journalism is healthier than it has been at any point in the last sixty-plus years. In case you think describing the mainstream media as liars is over-the-top, I suggest you do some research on any of the networks – Fox News, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC – or the network of your choice, as to the number of times they have been exposed for lying in what they broadcast and the pictures, backgrounds, and even locations they use to support their lies. Print media is no different either. Their lies are bold font front page news but their subsequent retraction and mea culpa are normally below the fold on page 5 when offered at all.

The fact is that without the Alt Right America is surely doomed to the very totalitarian future McKissic envisions. And that brings me to the point of this article. In my view Pastor McKissic’s Resolution is a microcosm of the malady, the infection of uncritical thinking that has rendered most of the visible Church impotent. And because the Church is largely compromised, America suffers. I say this with sadness.

Let me be clear. I am not attacking Pastor McKissic, the Southern Baptist Convention, or anyone sympathetic to McKissic’s viewpoint. What I am saying as clearly as I possibly can is this – the Resolution is alarmingly blind to the reality of the problems facing America, and that this blindness within the very ranks of those who should be leading the way to truth regardless of where it leads is shocking but unfortunately not surprising.

Christians should be torch bearers of truth. Christians should denounce evil in every form. We should call upon those in elected offices to carry out the duties of their offices with a view toward integrity, honor, and righteousness. But the Church in America today can not agree on what constitutes evil. Indeed good and evil has been turned upside down today in many churches.

There is a reason that many within the Alt Right media are Christians. We recognize that the citizens of America have been purposely lied to for decades by those in the media that were once trusted. It is no coincidence that the truthfulness of America’s major media outlets in its reporting has an inverse relationship to the drive to consolidate ownership of the majority of media entities. In other words as more and more media outlets merged to create larger media conglomerates, the level of truthfulness plummeted. Do you understand that up to 75% or more (some have suggested that it is up to 90%) of America’s biggest media outlets are owned by 5 or 6 major corporations? America’s media are wholly owned by corporations with a vested interest in a particular narrative. Truth has become a casualty in this war on our freedom and liberty.

When pastors are blind to this truth and the real sources of truth among media entities, when pastors believe the mainstream media consistently presents truth, when pastors believe the lie that the Alt Right is clamoring for a totalitarian political system, when pastors believe that an ideology that encourages personal responsibility within a context of freedom and liberty is the enemy of Americans, then America is doomed to the very things McKissic envisioned except those he sees as friends will be the very ones to bring this terror on America.

Friends we must continue to press the truth that:

• government is the servant of the people,
• that immigration is something that America must manage wisely with a view toward the safety and livelihood of Americans having greater importance than potential immigrants,
• that ideologies that do not represent those established by our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence are not valid expressions of freedom and liberty in America and must not be entertained for a moment,
• and that unless all Americans challenge the views of leftist, globalist, progressive Marxists, we are all doomed.

Here is a truth that I believe must ring out in every church in this land: America will only be great again when God is made great again in our lives. God will only be great again when Christians awake from the mass deception that has lulled them to sleep and keeps them anesthetized in a Disney World Matrix of fake news and fake conclusions that are carefully crafted by the God-haters in our mainstream media.

My prayer is that you will take a bold, courageous, and much-needed stand for truth today. Do not be intimidated by evil but instead push back with truth which is mightier than a lie.

Dr. Mike Spaulding

Pastor, Calvary Chapel of Lima

Host. Soaring Eagle Radio