As a North Carolinian, I watched Governor Roy Cooper’s COVID restrictions unfold, a stark display of globalist overreach that branded workers “nonessential” and shuttered churches for the “public good.” Families grieved in solitude, and the elderly faced death alone, while Cooper’s mandates crushed freedoms under the pretext of virus control. Courageous pastors, like Dr. Ron Baity of Return America and myself, defied these orders, holding services to honor God and suing Cooper for his authoritarian grip. Such resistance demanded boldness, yet not all stepped forward.
J.D. Greear, pastor of The Summit Church and former Southern Baptist Convention president, chose silence during this fight, cloaking his inaction in Romans 13 and urging compliance while chasing cultural trends like racial quotas. His absence was telling, and now, in his article “Faithfulness Amid the Culture War” for The Gospel Coalition (TGC), Greear admonishes believers to sidestep “culture wars.” Public records from the North Carolina Board of Elections reveal he didn’t vote in the 2024 General Election, consistent with his pattern of disengagement. Citing 2 Timothy 2:23–26 and Daniel 1, he pushes a “third way” of quiet discipleship over public confrontation.
Yet, Scripture challenges such passivity—James 4:17 declares that knowing what is right and failing to act is sin. True discipleship, as Matthew 5:13-16 commands, calls us to be salt and light, leading boldly for Christ, not retreating into silence. While some of Greear’s ideas may carry weight, his approach mirrors the same timidity we’ve seen before. Bold faith, not quiet compliance, is the call of the hour.
Greear’s call to “transcend” the culture war—those fiery clashes over abortion, gender ideology, and morality—sounds pious, urging pastors to stay “above the fray” and focus on evangelism while laypeople navigate the mess. It’s appealing to those weary of political venom, but as someone who endured Cooper’s lockdowns and was also forbidden to see my father in his last days, I see it for what it is: a retreat, a cowardice retreat. The culture war isn’t separate from spiritual warfare; it is spiritual warfare, where Satan’s schemes corrupt schools, laws, and souls. To dodge this fight isn’t transcendence—it’s surrender.
Greear points to Daniel, but his reading is half-baked. Daniel didn’t just pray in private; he confronted kings, defied idolatrous laws, and faced lions for public faithfulness. When North Carolina’s churches were ordered closed, bold pastors stood firm, risking legal fallout to proclaim God’s sovereignty. Greear? He was a soy-boy pastor, silent on tyranny, nowhere to be found when Return America took Cooper to court. In every moment where North Carolina needed the church to be salt and light, Greear has been absent.
This cowardice isn’t new. For four years, as we sat under Biden’s autopen presidency, Greear and his soy-boy cohorts at TGC—Russell Moore included—said nothing. No articles condemning the Biden administration’s evil: transgenderism pushed on kids, mass immigration flooding our borders, gender mutilating surgeries, or the destruction of families like Laken Riley’s, murdered by unchecked policies. Instead, we got sermons on “loving” immigrant families at risk of deportation, with no mention of the victims of open-border chaos. The hypocrisy of Greear, Moore, and TGC is sickening. These are not great men; they are weak men with little morals and no love of country, cloaking their spinelessness in gospel jargon.
Greear’s support for Black Lives Matter, a movement rooted in anti-biblical ideologies, raises questions. Was this predestined, as TGC’s hyper-Reformed theology might imply, where God’s sovereignty reduces us to robots? Or was it Greear’s choice to bow to cultural pressures? TGC’s obsession with divine determinism often negates human responsibility, yet Scripture demands we act, choose, and fight. Ephesians 6:12 reminds us we wrestle against spiritual forces in heavenly places—forces that infiltrate classrooms, courtrooms, and Congress, demanding a response. Greear’s vision produces churches that are safe, inoffensive, and irrelevant, leaving laypeople unequipped for battles pastors refuse to name.
If today’s pastors lived during the American Revolution, we’d be in chains. Men like Samuel Adams preached liberty from pulpits, rallying believers to resist tyranny. Greear’s third way may pack pews, but it produces timid disciples, unfit for the fight. Some may value Greear’s words or TGC’s polished prose, but Christendom must follow Scripture, not men—especially those who rarely act like men. The gospel declares Jesus’ lordship over all—from pews to parliaments. Pastors must equip the flock to stand, not flee. Laypeople deserve leaders who call evil by name and wield truth boldly. Real men like Ken Graves, who, in Bangor, Maine, refused to follow a tyrannical governor’s edict— God give us men!
The gates of hell won’t prevail against Christ’s church—but they might against one that sits out the fight. So, when the world demands we bow, will we stand like Daniel, or will we kneel like cowards, letting a culture we refused to confront devour us whole?
Not me. Not today. Not ever.
