How Reformed "Discernment Ministries" Prime Their Audience for Extremism

Within the national pop-Reformed conference/book/podcast world exists a sub-genre of “ministries” that focus on exposing supposed false teachings. These individuals and organizations are commonly referred to as “discernment ministries.” Among this sub-genre are many heavily-followed personalities:

• The anonymous X user, Woke Preacher Clips, who, as his name entails, focuses on “woke” activity from mostly mainline pastors.

• The church “news” site, Protestia, and its most prolific discernment writer, David Morrill, who writes mainly about mainline liberals, but who also goes as far as to claim that the late PCA pastor, Tim Keller, preached a false social justice gospel and is likely in hell.

• Gabriel Hughes and his ministry, When We Understand the Text, which focuses mainly on false teachings popular among larger, non-Reformed Christian media figures, as well as regularly defending the doctrine of cessationism.

• Justin Peters and his self-named ministry, which focuses mostly on refuting the false teachings of Neo-Apostolic Reformation “prophets,” but who will also regularly, and vigorously, declare certain popular non-Reformed personalities “false teachers” on his X account.

What you will not find among any of the pop-Reformed discernment ministries is a single person that periodically looks inward for potentially false teachings among other personalities that move in the same missionary and economic circles as them, and who, therefore, have a far greater influence on their audience than the people these ministries commonly go after, like Beth Moore, TD Jakes, or an otherwise unknown mainline pastor reciting the “Sparkle Creed.” That is because, in practical application, these “ministries” are not designed to inform and challenge their audience to self-reflect on what potentially dangerous teachings they may be ingesting. They are designed to define the enemies of the pop-Reformed world, resulting in the audience seeking cathartic release in publicly condemning the specified targets, in a way that often resembles a Two Minutes Hate. For “discernment bloggers” who derive an income from the pop-Reformed conference world, there is a clear motivation to not look inward, because, quite literally, every major player in the industry has at least a second-degree financial tie to someone who teaches false doctrine and/or regularly exhibits rotten spiritual fruit. These figures include Doug Wilson (who has recently returned to pushing the heresy of semi-Arianism), Joel Webbon (who falsely teaches that the children of believers will be saved based on the parents’ faithfulness), and even prolific antisemite Andrew Torba and the people in his orbit who share many of his views, such as his co-author, Andrew Isker.

The discernment ministry sub-genre primes its conservative Reformed audience, many of whom are already susceptible to falling into heresy-hunting legalist excess—I write this as a conservative Reformed Christian who recognizes that common urge in myself, especially as someone who used to financially support Peters’s ministry. This priming actively pushes their followers into an us versus them view of the universal church that is far removed from reality. In practical application, it is a Christianized version of Carl Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction, where someone begins to define himself as much, if not more, by what he is opposed to than what he is for. Out of this priming come the Christian Authoritarians, those who wrap early-20th-century volkish authoritarian-nationalism in selective quotes from Reformers, to launder it to Christians. They find a young man obsessed with ultra-orthodoxy and defining enemies, then pull him aside and say to him, “Hey, kid, let me tell you about all the other things the regime is lying to you about. Have you heard about the ordo amoris?”

Many in the discernment ministry space are even friendly with this element; Woke Preacher Clips is very friendly with anonymous, volkish Christian Nationalists, such as Philip Derrida, and often promotes anti-leftist posts from Christian Nationalists.

Hughes’s platform is hosted by the Moscow-aligned and openly Christian Nationalist The Majesty’s Men network and its persistently vitriolic owner, Riley Adam Voth, who has been known to use the company X account to berate people with whom he disagrees. Justin Peters has been a guest on theonomic dominionist Webbon’s podcast (which also regularly has Isker on), ironically once to discuss “abusive churches,” something that Webbon himself is regularly accused of running, by multiple prominent pastors and theologians.

These men’s audience have no reason to believe that this authoritarian element may be promoting false ideologies and doctrines, or leading them into political idolatry. After all, would not their trusted discernment ministry podcast warn them if that was the case?