Here’s the deal:
Round after round, firebrand, zealous men rise to lead the chaotic world of American evangelicalism. Each takes their own angle, attempting to consolidate a following from the scattered tribes. Using sectarian talking points and an us-versus-the-world piety, they carve out large factions: think the Wheaton-IV-Fuller-Christianity Today types, the later TGC leaders, the more conservative T4G crew, or today’s Moscow movement.
But the pattern is predictable. Once these leaders secure enough influence, they inevitably begin pushing their movements toward the mainstream, reconciling with the surrounding culture wherever they can. It’s the same trajectory we saw with the mainline churches in their National Council of Churches era, or the evangelicals in the National Association of Evangelicals and the ecumenical machine orbiting Billy Graham.
Take Graham as an example. My parents came to Christ through his preaching, and I’ll always be grateful for that. But over time, he surrounded himself with left-leaning compromisers who harassed no one but traditional Christians clinging to unfashionable beliefs and practices. I’ve seen this pattern confirmed both in public and through the testimony of his immediate family.
A key part of this mainstreaming process is the betrayal of those who were instrumental in building the movement, specifically those who do not switch loyalty from the older principles and practices to the people in charge and their current branding strategies. Leaders begin distancing themselves from, and eventually punishing, men who sincerely believed the original message—those who hold fast to doctrines and practices that were once promoted but are now deemed inconvenient. These men, who stand firm in conscience, conviction, and practices are dismissed as disloyal, harsh, narrow, legalistic, rebellious, or off-brand.
This is the classic “punch right, slide left” dynamic of progressivism in its “conservative” garb. And the worship of progress and openness—often masquerading in evangelical circles as “postmillennialism” (an otherwise venerable doctrine), “love,” or “evangelical concern”—is deeply ingrained in the American religious psyche. It’s no wonder this process seems universal and inevitable.
Without deeper repentance, we can’t break free from this cycle. But one of the saddest realities I’ve witnessed over my fifty years is how often men who once called for repentance themselves eventually slide to the other side. Few finish well. Very few. Instead, many grow ashamed of the faith of our fathers—or even of their own earlier ministries. Most simply rewrite their histories, discarding those who stayed faithful. And given the short attention spans of the average follower, their betrayals often go unnoticed.
But this is not how the faith, once for all delivered to the saints, is to be embodied in the church.
May the Lord bring about a new future, free from these sins of our fathers.