Jessica Bates was a mother of five, a woman who knew what it meant to love, to sacrifice, to open her home to those in need. She wasn’t asking for much—just the chance to take in a child from Oregon’s foster care system, a system that, incidentally, never seems to have enough willing families.

But Oregon had different plans. The state wasn’t looking for mothers, it was looking for ideological soldiers, caretakers who would pledge allegiance to the new moral order. Bates, with her old-fashioned belief that boys are boys and girls are girls, was unacceptable.

When she sat through the mandatory training for potential adoptive parents, the state’s expectations became clear. Prospective parents had to “respect, accept, and support” a child’s gender identity and sexual orientation. Not tolerate. Not provide love and stability despite disagreement.

Support. Endorse. Celebrate.

A government-mandated catechism, with rainbow robes replacing priestly vestments. She could not, in good conscience, comply. For that, she was cast out, told she was unfit to provide a home for a child who needed one.

The irony, of course, is that the very same state that deems her too dangerous to parent is perfectly fine allowing children to languish in underfunded group homes, cycling through a foster system notorious for neglect and instability. Stability wasn’t the goal. Submission was.

As Bates’ legal battle unfolded, a certain class of evangelical voices sat in their comfortable chairs, nodding along with furrowed brows and concerned expressions but never speaking. They knew, of course, that this was wrong. They could see the injustice as plainly as anyone else. And yet, they remained quiet. They always do.

These are the men who claim to be “thoughtful,” the ones who insist that Christian conviction must be tempered by “nuance,” “empathy,” and “dialogue.” They issue statements filled with cloudy language, statements that condemn no one in particular and resolve nothing at all. They traffic in vague moralism, careful never to say anything that might cause discomfort at the next big donor dinner.

They are the Nicodemites, the shadow-dwellers, the men who, like their namesake from the Gospel of John, whisper their sympathies in private but dare not risk them in public. In the dark, they are troubled by the direction of the culture. By daylight, they are silent. Theirs is a peculiar cowardice, not the cowardice of the man who runs from the battlefield, but of the man who stays just long enough to feign participation.

They write essays about how they “struggle” with issues of religious liberty, how they see “both sides” of an argument that has no moral equivalence. They place their faith in winsome conversations, as if soft words and careful phrasing have ever satisfied those who want to reshape the culture by force.

Their passivity is not harmless. It is not benign. It is an active collaboration with the forces that seek to dismantle everything they claim to believe. The culture does not need their permission to advance its agenda, it merely requires their silence. And it has it. Time and again, it has it.

These men who posture as the intellectual stewards of evangelicalism refuse to defend the very people who look to them for guidance. They are forever consulting, forever reflecting, forever calling for conversations that never happen. And while they are busy curating their public personas, the culture marches forward, unopposed.

It would be one thing if these men were simply ineffectual, but they are worse than that. They are enablers. The bureaucrats and activists who push policies like Oregon’s adoption rule count on their compliance. They know these men will never call them out by name. They know they will never organize resistance, never encourage Christians to stand their ground. They will, at best, issue a vague statement about how “the church must do better” and move on to their next book deal.

And when the persecution is undeniable—when Christians are fined, fired, or dragged into court—they will shake their heads solemnly and ask how we got here, as if their silence wasn’t part of the answer.

Nicodemus, at least, found his courage in the end. He stood with Joseph of Arimathea and took the body of Christ from the cross, risking his reputation and his standing to honor his Lord. But these modern Nicodemites do not follow this arc. They do not grow bolder with time. They do not step into the light. They cling to their influence, their invitations to polite society, their carefully curated personas. They have made their choice.

And so, as Jessica Bates and those like her fight battles these men should be leading, they will sit in their offices and pen another essay about how “complicated” it all is. And the world will move on, unchallenged, because the men who were supposed to fight decided long ago that it was safer to watch from the shadows.