The Grift Goes Both Ways

The willful ignoring of false teachers and bad actors in the pop-Reformed conference world

When I began paying attention to the social media activity of those in the pop-Reformed conference/book/podcast world a year and a half ago, I was a fan of the space. I still am the kind of guy who will sit on the couch, open the YouTube app on my television and put on an old R.C. Sproul lecture or John MacArthur sermon for fun. But, not that long ago, the list of popular, conference-hopping Reformed teachers who graced my television screen was much longer. I even watched the occasional Doug Wilson video, though an earlier experience with someone in church who had become obsessed with his worldview, and who subsequently fell head-first into a self-destructive political idolatry, had already soured me to his perpetually aggressive stance.

What I did not expect when I began directly interacting with this world through social media in 2022 was to eventually discover that it often functions as a bottom-line protecting bubble for a select group of industry insiders, some of who teach unadulterated falsities designed to maintain control over their congregations. In this way, it functions similarly to the world of charismaticism and the prosperity gospel, which caused me to reject the faith many years ago. Praise be to God that, in His providence, my sinful rejection of Him brought about by that spiritual crisis turned into a decade-long epistemological examination that ended in me exhausting every other option and having no choice but to acknowledge the truth of the gospel. This time, the realization that yet another sub-genre of the church that I devotedly followed is filled with political idolatry and unchallenged grifters in no way shakes my faith.

But it does fill me with righteous anger.

I am absolutely fed up with watching people in the pop-Reformed world, even those whom I respect, dedicate the vast majority of their time to condemning those in the other grifter-filled sub-genres of the Christian media industry, while turning what can only be a willful blind eye to the very well-known, self-aggrandizing grifters and false teachers in their own ecosystem. I have no more patience for watching people in this industry turn their social media presence into a Christianized LibsOfTikTok, perpetually judging the sexual immorality of the world, while they actively ignore the rot of child abuse scandals within their own circles—a new one seems to pop up every week and several of the most prominent men in pop-Reformed national “missions” are credibly implicated as accomplices. I am tired of these men badgering Christians into a “vote red no matter who” mindset, as if our Lord’s work on the cross is ineffectual should you vote for a Democrat city comptroller. Their persistent political, and often conspiratorial, obsessions fuel the existential fears and political idolatry of their followers, at a time of great political crisis where those people need a steady hand and calming voice that points them to their surety in Christ.

• Why are these men obsessed with female preachers, but not equally obsessed with men in their own circles who also publicly, and horribly, fail the 1 Timothy 3 test?

• Why are these men persistently hyperventilating over whatever new thing the postmodern left has to say about sexual liberation this week, while completely ignoring, or even defending, the men in their own circles who have aided and abetted pedophiles?

• Why are these men so obsessed with combating the second thing of charismaticism, while ignoring the first thing of semi-Arianism (teaching a difference between the divine natures of the persons of the Trinity), or the denial of the Protestant doctrine of justification that is claiming the children of believers will be saved based on the parents’ faithfulness? These blatantly false teachings are promulgated by men who share much fan crossover with the “mainstream” pop-Reformed world, and they have been promoted through several prominent national ministries.

• Why are these men all cheering the firing of Claudine Gay for plagiarism, or decrying the plagiarism of their intra-denominational political opposition, while completely ignoring a credible accusation of plagiarism against one of their most celebrated speakers?

• Why are these men perpetually writing books about the race-obsession of the postmodern left, while ignoring the growing threat of white nationalism within their own missionary ecosystem?¹

When exegeting Luke 14:26, where Christ calls us to place him above all earthly relationships, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

But since we are bound to abhor any deception which hides the truth from our sight, we must of necessity repudiate any direct relationship with the things of this world—and that for the sake of Christ. Wherever a group, be it large or small, prevents us from standing alone before Christ, wherever such a group raises a claim of immediacy it must be hated for the sake of Christ. For every immediacy, whether we realize it or not, means hatred of Christ, and this is especially true where such relationships claim the sanction of Christian principles.²

The pop-Reformed world is rife with such immediacies, and those immediacies are so persistent that they regularly render the industry a danger to the body of Christ. I humbly plead with those men embedded in this world who still claim to place our Lord first, stand up for the gospel, repudiate the grifters and false teachers in your midst, and risk losing some of your earthly treasure for the sake of your heavenly reward.

1. I would like to acknowledge the principled stances that both Virgil Walker and Owen Strachan have taken in this regard, but one blog post or conference speech is not enough to combat this threat. I would challenge both of them to dedicate as much time to this subject as they do to “wokeism.” Ethnic hatred and antisemitism are especially gaining ground among young pastors, ministers and authors associated with postmillennial theonomic reconstructionist ministries, and both of these men have a second-degree economic relationship with that world.

2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 1st Paperback ed (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 108.