The United States is faced with a lose-lose situation right now — either continue in near-total lockdown to fight the coronavirus at the expense of the economy or loosen the lockdown restrictions to keep the economy going at the expense of lives. It’s kind of a big deal. And during this crisis, the Church — and our Evangelical leaders — should be preaching the gospel and bearing witness to the fact that Jesus Christ is sovereign over our calamities and He is returning soon.

Nope. Instead, they’re continuing to push their pet cause of racism — a distraction from the work and mission of the Church that was born out of The Gospel Coalition and the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

For the past several years, the Church has turned its focus away from the gospel and has embraced a cultural movement in social justice. Southern Baptist seminaries have largely become social justice war factories creating soldiers trained to target the enemy of “whiteness.” Southern Baptist pastors are continually preaching against racism — despite the fact that real problems exist in our society. And “racism” has become the topic of discussion at Evangelical conferences around the country — even to the point of elevating false teachers to the status of “Christian hero.”

Some Southern Baptist churches are even excommunicating members because they voted against a pastoral candidate (who happened to be black) and labeled them racists — even though they’re concerns with him had nothing to do with race.

You would think that when calamity and judgment are poured out over our nation — and the entire world — as it is during this coronavirus pandemic, that Evangelical leaders would put their petty causes aside and proclaim the name of Christ and preach the gospel. These are desperate times. But they’re not — they’re using the coronavirus to advance their “racism” cause.

Mark Dever, leader of the Evangelical ministry 9Marks (better known as 9Marx) uses the coronavirus pandemic to stoke the fires of racial division. Notice, this was retweeted by another TGC social justice warrior, Jared Wilson.

When Christians are offended, he goes on to label racism as “blasphemy.”

Despite the fact that racism is not blasphemy (the Scriptures never define it that way), the reason people are offended by his “racism” posts is that his definition of “racism” is an equivocation of Critical Race Theory and Cultural Marxism.

That this continues to be their focus during this crisis is mind-boggling, but they’re not the only ones. Other Evangelical leaders are using any means they can to attack the president and further stoke racial division. Eugene Cho, a former pastor of a Seattle church who was just tapped to begin leading a large Christian nonprofit called Bread for the World in July attacks the president for calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus.”

If these people understood the gospel, this garbage would not be at the forefront of their minds. That pastors continue to elevate these men as great leaders to be modeled and learned from exposes a deficiency in logical and critical thinking among church leaders. That people like this are who our churches look to for guidance and direction during times of crisis is simply baffling. It’s time we get back to church autonomy and let these people go back into their caves. Times are changing and now, more than ever before, the Church needs to get back to the Scriptures.