Should devout Christians who are pro-white and red-pilled on the Jewish Question and race remain in their normie cucked churches?
The decision of whether or not to separate is serious because it seems to go against our duty to love and support Christ’s Church. However, the disgust and revulsion that we feel under tyrannical ecclesiocrats pushing sin and errors of all kinds speaks to our duty (and right) to separate from such.
Thankfully, ours is not the first generation of Christians to have to figure this out.
Across Christian history, when a generation figures out how to identify what defines the true Church, that generation of Christians can then answer the question of if, when, and how to morally separate from a wayward body of clergymen. When has enough become enough? What constitutes legitimate grounds for separating, and how does one go about it?
The early Church had to contend with open persecution from the Roman Empire and the Jews. There were false teachers with false teachings and false moral codes masquerading as Christ’s apostles. There were false faiths that drew on elements of Christian theology and the life of Christ. The books of the New Testament were circulating and were authoritative, but the canon was not fully defined and texts were scarce. One of the surest ways to preserve the Faith in that context was to refer people to the bishops who had been mentored, in unbroken succession, with the teaching handed down from Christ and the apostles. The common man had to rely on what he heard from the bishops and the presbyters under them in order to know what was, and was not, from God. For example, the common man would want to know that their bishops had been taught by so-and-so, who had been taught by so-and-so, who had been taught by St. Polycarp, who had been taught by St. John, who had been taught by Jesus. That way they could trust that the preaching they heard on Sundays was not a twisted distortion of what the Bible taught, and that the books they heard read to them on Sundays were authentically apostolic. As an aside, we still proclaim the four marks of the early Church when we confess the Faith in the Nicene Creed: “one, holy, catholic, apostolic.”
Then as now, the Bible was fully and ultimately authoritative, but since the clergy had the Bible (and no one else, for financial and technological reasons) the saying “where the bishop is, the Church is” was practically true, if not necessarily and doctrinally true. In addition, since the Faith was still new and not socially acceptable (think lions in the Colosseum and burning as torches in Nero’s gardens), receiving the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper set apart Christians from non-Christians and/or heretics. If you read the writings of the early Church fathers, you see repeated references to the sacraments and the bishops as if those marks embodied and defined what a Christian was.
The situation was quite different in the Reformers’ day. In the Middle Ages, practically every European had been baptized and admitted to the Lord’s Table, and worshipped under bishops whose ecclesiastical lineage could be traced back to the apostles. Those weren’t good tests anymore. The Church could proclaim itself as “one, holy, catholic, apostolic,” but those tests hadn’t stopped the moral and doctrinal abuses by the clergy. They hadn’t motivated Rome to properly discipline anyone.
The bishops of the early Church may indeed have been faithful witnesses to the Faith handed down from the apostles to successive generations. However, one look at many bishops across history (and our day) will tell you that the doctrines some preach and the morals some espouse are the stuff of devils. Protestants of the no-bishops persuasion can say the same about some of the ministers in our pulpits. This is one of the reasons why Protestants talk about both the visible church and the invisible church — to distinguish between the mixed assortment of real believers and false believers sitting in the pews, and the communion of authentic saints spanning centuries and continents. The Church and the Faith aren’t defined by the cleric or the denominational leadership, but rather are their norm and measure.
In the context of a culture permeated by Christianity like medieval Europe, the best way to preserve the Faith was to go to the source of the Faith — ad fontes — the divinely-authored, inerrant Scriptures. Because Johann Gutenberg had invented his printing press, and biblical manuscripts in Hebrew and Greek were becoming more readily available to scholars, the common folk had more access to original sources in their native languages. The Roman hierarchy was wearing down non-Italians with excessive moral, spiritual, and financial burdens. As Paul had commended the Bereans for doing when he preached to them, the common man could compare the teachings and lifestyles of the clergy, all the way up to the pope himself, against the Bible. That amount of widespread transparency, scrutiny, and access to God’s Word fueled the Reformation.
That greatest generation had to clearly define why and how they ought to worship apart from the Roman pontiff rather than submit to his decrees on indulgences, reading and preaching the Bible only in Latin, the necessity of works plus faith in order to be saved, the role of Mary and the saints in our prayers and salvation, etc.
Like the Founding Fathers in American history, the Reformers were a diverse bunch of white men who went ad fontes for solutions to the problems of their day. As they tackled the question of how to proceed in the face of a hierarchy centered in Rome that obstinately refused to heed the clear teachings of Scripture, the Reformers devised several new tests or marks of what the true Church looked like.
First, the true Church clearly preached the Word of God. At a minimum, it means that the true Church is not preaching some other word, whether that of a competitor religion, or stuff simply made up by the preachers. Better yet, it means that the true Church preaches the Word of God as interpreted by the Word of God. We use the analogy of faith, or let Scripture interpret Scripture, in our preaching and teaching. We don’t disregard parts of the Bible or openly contradict them. Unfortunately, such was the case when St. Paul’s clear and repeated teaching on justification by faith (and nothing else added to it) was openly contradicted by Rome, as it still is to this day.
Second, the true Church administers the sacraments properly. In the Reformers’ day, the cup was reserved for the clergy. Only the bread was given to the faithful when they came to the Lord’s Table — and sometimes the common folk would not even receive the bread! The priests’ argument was that the bread included all the benefits of the whole communion. However, Christ had instituted the bread and the cup and given it to His people. Why should the faithful be denied access to the two elements that Christ had given them as His gift? Similarly, why should the faithful be taught that the bread and the wine were not bread and wine when it was obvious to anyone, and admitted in Scripture, that they remained bread and wine even as they were consecrated? Protestants today still hold divided opinions on how the bread and wine become Christ’s body and blood, or merely symbolize it, but the doctrine of transubstantiation — of the bread and wine ceasing to be bread and wine at all — was not taught in Scripture. Also, why should the faithful be taught that the priest was re-crucifying Christ as a sacrifice for new sins, when the Bible clearly said that Christ had died once, for all the sins of His people, and never would again? The Reformers held that the true Church would not mar or distort the sacraments as the Roman church had in their day. Ergo, perhaps the Roman church was not authentically the Church anymore, thought the Reformers.
Finally, many Reformers added a third mark to what constituted the true Church: the correct use of church discipline. In their day and ours, some clergy openly flaunt God’s law and man’s. Pastors embezzling funds, ministers openly preaching heresy, bishops shuffling around pedophile priests to protect them from the law and from bad publicity, clergy engaged in sexual immorality, all were problems that the Reformers saw in their day — and we still see it today. The correct use of church discipline would protect the faithful from these predators, and protect the Church’s reputation as an institution that put God and His standards for holiness above personal reputations.
In response to several centuries’ worth of problems in the medieval church, and Rome’s refusal to adequately deal with those problems, the Reformers had to create litmus tests to define what the true Church was in order to determine how to proceed. Interestingly, those marks or litmus tests were not ones that the early Church had enunciated. Why? Because they had to contend with different problems.
If these generations of Christians had to sort out truth from falsehood, and pursue both personal and corporate holiness, while contending with diverse problems through the use of different means than had their forefathers, perhaps there is ground for our generation to do the same. Perhaps it is appropriate for our generation, facing a new set of problems, to devise new tests or marks to determine what the true Church looks like. If we ought to look out for the wolf in sheep’s clothing as did our ancestors, ought we not also look out for him when he wears feathers or scales in our generation? Our forefathers thought so. We’ll explore that idea more in a future article.
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