Penna Dexter

Back in 2017, Ed Stetzer, then a professor, dean and executive director of Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center, published an essay on the website, In All Things, titled “How Can the Christian Church Thrive In a Non-Christian World?” He wrote, “Our society no longer assumes the gospel, which means the Church often stands at odds with the rest of society.”

Seven years later, a U.S president proclaimed that Transgender Day of Visibility will be recognized on March 31, Easter Sunday. Was the president trying to spite Christians? Though Trans Day of Visibility has been around for 10 years, the president’s words in affirmation of “transgender Americans” stand in direct opposition to Christianity. He stated that transgenders “deserve, and are entitled to, the same rights and freedoms as every other American, including the most fundamental freedom to be their true selves.” He then blasted Americans working to protect society and its children from the fruits of the transgender movement: pornography in schools, mutilating surgeries, violations of basic female privacy, and fairness in athletics.

If this is not hostility to Christianity, it is blindness. Cultural commentator Rod Dreher writes, “The more troubling thing is that Biden’s kind of Christian sees no contradiction between linking Easter with Trans Day.”

He wrote, “In the 1970’s, the gay rights movement adopted the Greek letter lambda as its symbol. This is why the premiere gay rights advocacy organization is called Lambda Legal. What we are living through now is a cosmological struggle within our culture, a fight to the death between the Lamb and the Lambda. The ruling Class — our political leaders, but not only them — is on the side of the Lambda.”

Dr. Stetzer wrote, “the gospel is always clearer in an age when it is not culturally assumed.” We can proclaim a “radically distinct” gospel message. But Rod Dreher wonders: “Can Christian faith be sustained for long without the support of a nurturing Christian culture?”

Lord help us.