Zachary Peters

I see a problem. A problem, that has been around forever, but one I really started to notice in high school and college. I want to explore the impact of organized propaganda against the truth in traditional orthodox Christian circles. I am a former student of a small, Christian liberal arts college in southeast Tennessee. I witnessed something interesting in my time there that, roughly a decade later, informs my opinion of some of the problems pastors and church leaders, who hold onto the truth of the Gospel and God’s Word, face today.

For context, I was a history major. My history professors were not necessarily from my denomination, but as far as I could tell, they loosely held the same biblical values and beliefs that I did. Most of my elective courses were Bible courses or pastoral courses. Additionally, I went on to get a Master’s degree in Christian Ministries at the same university. I was in a ministry-based and ministry-focused choir of 100+ persons who traveled the country to sing in various churches. I share all of this to be open and upfront with the sources of my experiences with multiple departments, teachers, professors, students, and contexts at the university and ministry during my time as a student. I expect that many have experienced this in their own context.

As I have already alluded to, what was astounding was the number of students who seemingly had no respect for, no appreciation for, or no grounding in Scripture. The majority of those I knew held traditional values and beliefs, but there seemed to be a surprising portion that did not. The choices and beliefs of a surprising number of people were primarily based on feelings, emotions, and logical fallacies that one may hear in popular culture. It is almost as if their Christian education was formed not by healthy teachers, pastors, or church leaders, but by descriptions of what Christianity should be, as displayed in popular media on MTV, Grey’s Anatomy, and the like. Many ascribed to a cool Christianity that was more palpable to the secular world.

Of course, they would never admit to not valuing or taking Scripture seriously, but even if they tried to use Scripture, it was somehow always warped from reality and common sense. The references would be disjointed fragments with no regard for the context of the Scripture. In most cases, the greatest crime was turning Jesus into a radical hippie with a distaste for common sense and tradition.

Worst of all, this seemed more prevalent in my Bible classes with people that existed for explicit ministry purposes and in the ministry-focused choir. There was, in parts of the religion department, just under the surface, an attitude of subversive nature towards orthodoxy and traditional biblical beliefs. It is almost as if many secretly laughed at the students they deemed too simple in their faith or who adhered to conventional Christianity. It was academic haughtiness. (I’d like to be clear that not all classes or professors expressed this, but enough to matter.)

It is not like I was some overly-gifted student or super intelligent. Yet, during my time in college, it seemed blindingly obvious to me that something happened and was continuing to happen with many of my peers that I couldn’t quite comprehend or understand at the time. I have vivid memories of walking around campus thinking about this. However, with time and reflection, I have a grasp of at least one of the core problems that created this disaster for a generation of Christians.

Stating the problem, there has been a systematic and well-funded attempt to propagate lies and destructive attitudes into young Christians and centers of Christian academics. This problem is not a surprising claim for many, but it matters to say out loud. I find it necessary to agitate the problem to the surface.

I’m tired of people being blinded by propaganda they do not recognize. The Truth has been wrestled away from the lives of countless teenagers and college students. It has not been done by accident or by some altruistic pursuit of knowledge, but by purposeful attempts for varied reasons by specific organizations and groups to subvert the church’s power in the United States and the world.

Communism, in general, hates Christians and the church. While I do not want to rehash or recreate a “Red Scare” like the early 1950s, there were undoubtedly communist influences in the church in the United States in the 20th century that we are still dealing with today. The influence was primarily through a few prominent pastors and many mainline seminaries.

The communists/Marxists, encouraged if not funded by Soviet Russia, understood that the U.S. was not going to be easy to push into revolution. One of the main issues was the church and devout Christians, who comprised most of the population. The solution: place socialist teachers at their academic institutions. They would not directly push communism or Marxism, but rather push ideas and subjects that are not so obviously Marxist, or connect Marxist ideas to existing philosophies. It was through this deliberate process that we ended up with several horrible creations. One of them is liberation theology that has partially destroyed the mainline denominations.

Liberation theology is why heaven has slightly lost its significance to many people. Jesus has been pushed aside and turned into a revolutionary comrade to give way to the communist-infected gospel message of forced material equality. In other words, for many young people growing up with this uncorrected and unchallenged perspective, the Jesus of Scripture is just a guy trying to revolutionize the economy and tear down the material order. For them, Jesus isn’t there to deal with their sin or its consequences on an eternal level. It is all about the now and the material.

Jesus, of course, cares about the present material and physical problems and pain of the world in all their forms, but it was never the driving force that caused Him to show up. Jesus showing up was the solution to something bigger than material power. His presence is a solution of divine intervention for our eternal souls.

CRT (Critical Race Theory) is an evolution of Marxism and liberation theology that focuses on racial inequalities (typically Western society vs. everyone else). It replaces class conflict with racial conflict. It creates and drives division, and yet it is often advocated by segments of people who call themselves Christians. Let me be clear, racism exists (it always has, and hasn’t always been based on the color of skin); it is evil, but Jesus came for more than racial “justice.” Jesus came for radical life transformation of the individual. That radical personal transformation will solve a lot social issues people care about without the gospel of Jesus being wrapped up in a flawed ideology. Yet, CRT gets thrown into lessons, sermons, and classes consistently with the caveat that, somehow, the Gospel is aligned with this broken offshoot of atheistic Marxism that is obsessed with the material and destruction of society.

Alfred Kinsey and his “research” on sexual behaviors has been pushed by secular society for seventy years as a “truth” that does away with those pesky Christian values. Kinsey himself hated the church. Despite his poor research riddled the ethical issues and the clear hateful bias towards Christians, the vile results of his work have wormed their way into all sorts of Christian settings and environments. Inclusion and love have become radicalized as goals that Jesus himself would champion. Disregard that in zero places does that fit with who Jesus is as revealed in Scripture without making stuff up or interpretational gymnastics. Love is not love. God is love, and God created order that was destroyed by sin. Jesus did not come to make sin somehow fit into God’s redeemed order. Kinsey’s philosophies have somehow shaded the truth of God’s Word for our lives. Again, people my age and younger have been consistently exposed to this rhetoric since they were born as if it was scientific fact. It is propaganda, not truth or even scientific fact.

John Money and his broken and vile ideas on gender are now the norm for society that is displayed before us 24/7. Let’s not forget that his most significant and most celebrated success, the Reimer twins, ended with death by substance abuse, suicide, and a story riddled with childhood molestation. And yet, that is the “truth” broadcasted in classrooms, on TikTok, and even in some churches.

Some organizations have spent millions of dollars trying to introduce these contemptible ideologies into the church. It doesn’t matter the motive or the end goal, only that it has been happening for a long time. One result is that the authority of God’s Holy Word is somehow questioned when these lies go unaddressed for fear of being called backwards or a bigot.

This attack on God’s Word is the simplest example I will focus on for the rest of this essay.

One of the results of these attacks over the last 70 years is the eroding of Scripture’s trustworthiness for the masses. Propaganda shifts the mindset of the masses, but with the Truth, there is still a chance for souls to be saved.

It is 2 Timothy 3:16-17 that says, “All scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for teaching reproof, correction, training, and righteousness, and to be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” The only way that Scripture matters is if it matters. I know that is a bit convoluted, but if Scripture is untrustworthy, throw out the whole thing. You cannot pick and choose what matters and what doesn’t matter. If one starts doing that, they can create whatever religion they want, and they have in many cases. People can shape the teaching of Jesus to make a morality that justifies their sinful behavior. It might work on an emotional level, but it falls apart quickly with some examination and challenging questions. The typical response to the tricky questions about their “custom Jesus” or form of Christianity is yelling, anger, or some gaslighting.

Without a trustworthy truth outside of ourselves, Christians are left to sway this way or that way. They float around with nothing to anchor them in a perpetually shifting culture. Without a truth, Christians are carried away from faith on every cultural whim. Every societal change has the potential to shift what it means to believe and follow Jesus. This is especially true if who Jesus is and what He taught is not connected to something concrete and permanent in our lives. If Jesus is a Marxist or an “antiracist,” then he becomes something less than who He actually is. This is obvious to those who want to destroy the church and the power of the church.

Over the last thirty years, much money has been spent on questioning and inserting doubts about the usefulness of God’s Word. I hate to say it, but the enemy has had some success in sending many young Christians, my contemporaries, floating in an endless sea of ideologies, fighting for relevance in their heads. It is not a new attack or strategy.

Genesis 3:1

“Did God actually say?…”

With that phrase, everything started falling apart for humanity. The enemy used those words to begin separating Eve (and eventually humanity) from the words of God. The separation was enough to enable the deceit that ensued.

The enemy still uses that question today, just dressed in different words. “Is that Scripture still culturally relevant? Can you trust something written so long ago? Do we know who wrote that? That was for people 2,000 years ago; surely, it doesn’t really mean anything today. The Bible isn’t unique; it’s just like other ancient books.” These are different words but have the same fundamental question: “Did God actually say?”

“Did God actually say?” can damage our connection to God’s Word. That then enables a complete separation from the grounding in truth and reality that God’s Word provides. Humans must have structural beliefs for our lives, so we create our own “truth.” However, the problem is that our “truths” fall short of providing a cohesive way of life. It becomes much easier for lies to become part of our life. That’s how we get people shouting for inclusion and acceptance while hating anyone who disagrees with them, which is an incoherent nonsense and hypocritical ideology.

I remember learning my first set play in basketball in middle school. We went from running around doing whatever we wanted to having a system to know and understand with organized, synchronized movements and systems. Learning those movements and systems required concrete examples; in other words, truth must be seen to judge our progress towards mimicking that truth. We would see an idealized version of the play or series of movements on the screen or the board, and then we would have a way to judge how close we were to achieving the goal of learning to play in a system that would provide success on the court. There has to be a set truth to learn anything.

Learning a language, reading, and writing are astounding gifts that we have been given and enabled to do. The process of learning to read and write is grounded in reality. In other words, truth statements, in the form of grammar and the alphabet, enable language. Someone has written the letter “A.” We know it’s “A” because we agreed it is “A.” It is a truth that enables life to work.

Science, strict science, not some soft pseudoscience, is based on what you can see and measure, meaning it exists in a physical form. It is a point of truth in existence that we can use as a frame of reference to make sense of the world. If that is the case, then why would we doubt whether there is also a set of spiritual truths or overarching truths that can be known, discovered, and figured out that help make sense of all of life? The chaos of life would soon overwhelm us if there were no truths that tame the chaos into something that makes sense physically and spiritually.

Many religions claim to have those truth statements, but I am a Christian. I am talking primarily to Christians, and in my opinion, Christianity makes the most sense as a truth statement that allows life to flourish and have a purpose. In Christianity, we are given truth statements in Scripture that tell us about Jesus Christ himself and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. To subvert and damage our trust in our foundational truth documents is an easy tool to weaken Christianity on a grand scale.

(The sad part is I recently heard a prominent pastor do just that from his platform.)

That is what has happened to many of my contemporaries who went to the same type of church as I did, had a similar family as I did, and went to the same Christian college as I did. Before they got there, a public school teacher, a lousy Sunday school teacher, their favorite TV show, their favorite musical artist, or any number of sources on social media planted seeds of doubt, and the doubt and lies were never addressed in any real way. In fact, in the case of my personal experience, the doubts were flamed by misguided or malevolent Christian college professors. Some of those professors are impacted by the same broken propaganda that infected their students. The sick could not help the sick.

It pains me to see some of my contemporaries being led astray. While I youth pastored, it hurt to see some of my students succumb to the propaganda they were washed in day and night. I hate when parents feel hopeless to the wave of attacks directed at their children. It is staggering that so many pastors have bent under the weight of social and cultural pressure that attacks Scripture. Propaganda is powerful.

But there is hope.

Part of the hope starts with normal, everyday Christians standing up for the Gospel—not with eloquence or worldly wisdom, but with a simple, steadfast faith. There is a place for eloquence and a place for wisdom and knowledge, but the church needs simple faith and lives of obedience. Children must see their parents and elders living out the Scriptures earnestly. Fight the lies that threaten the confidence in truth by living the truth in unmistakable ways.

Another starting spot is with church leaders and educational leaders, emboldened by the Holy Spirit, growing a steel spine. Stand up for Truth in an age of lies dominated by the father of lies. I know how awkward it can be to hold onto God’s Word in this culture. Yet, I have seen the damage done by bending Jesus to our time instead of letting Him challenge our time.

Leaders have to speak the Truth with love. This is not a call to be mean or nasty, but to be strong, yet compassionate. It is understanding that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood. The harmful lies and ideologies we attribute to human creation are, in fact, inspired by the enemy of our souls. He ensnares those who God loves, and who Jesus died for 2,000 years ago. So, those in positions of influence and authority ought to fight back, not just with the tools of the world, but with prayer first and foremost. We are not trying to destroy people but are seeking to destroy the lies that hold them hostage.

Propaganda aimed at the church and the Word of God is powerful and dangerous, but they are not all-powerful. Jesus declared to a group of Jewish disciples who were following him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The Truth is still more powerful than the lie.

We are given the gift of Scripture, which contains a record of Truth. It is in Scripture where we see the life of Jesus. In Scripture, we are given the great news that the Holy Spirit will guide us into all Truth. The power of propaganda that attempts to question the Truth of Scripture is also weakest against the Truth found in that Scripture. Value His Word above the wisdom of the age or the academic milieu of the culture.

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” This is the attitude we must reach to correct the drift in our church towards lies of the age. When we honestly attempt to live this out, as Jesus shows us in his great temptation, we can combat the enemy’s lies. In other words, in propaganda vs. Truth, Truth is the greater.

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