Jack Hibbs, whom I have not known of until recently, is the founder and senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Southern California and has a daily half-hour program on Bott Radio. This post was sparked by a Jan. 21 article by Hibbs on The Christian Post’s website.
The “Christian
Values” of Conservative White Evangelicals
In the just-mentioned piece, titled “What’s next for evangelicals post-Trump,” Hibbs (b. 1958) declares that “President
Biden is clearly not interested in the concerns of evangelicals.”
“So,” Hibbs asks, “what are we to do, now that Trump is
leaving office and we have a new president who goes against our values?”
The “we” he refers to, I assume, are most of the readers of The
Christian Post and those who attend his church, said to be about five thousand
adults each Sunday, not including teens and children.
Hibbs concludes that “we need to look to 2024 with an eye
towards finding the next president whose policies will be in line with our
values.”
What, though, are the values of this conservative evangelical
pastor? Well, we have some clue in the last five of the 15 points in Hibbs’s
church’s “statement of faith” (see here).
Those “Christian values” were succinctly expressed in a Facebook
post of West Virginia singer David Ferrell (shared by one of my FB friends
earlier this week): “No pastor can support same sex marriage, homosexuality,
transgender, abortion and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
But, where in the Gospels do we find Jesus condemning same-sex
marriage, homosexuality, transgender, or abortion? The values that Jesus emphasized
seem to be quite different.
Jesus’ values are largely affirmed by progressive Christians,
including many prominent Black pastors, most of whom were strongly opposed to President
Trump—in spite of his being extensively supported by conservative White evangelicals
because of his championing “Christian values.”
The Values of Progressive Christians
Last month I read The
Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope (2017), a powerful book by Wendell Griffen,
who is both a pastor and a circuit judge in Arkansas. He also wrote a
provocative Jan.
21 article titled “The end of Trump’s presidency does not end America’s
root problem.”
In stark contrast to Pastor Hibbs, Pastor Griffen asserts,
Trump will forever be remembered as the most vicious, politically incompetent and corrupt president in U.S. history. He left office dishonored, defeated and despised by most people who value justice, truth, integrity, peace and hope.
Griffen also extols
the Christian values of MLK, Jr., including his
condemnation of racism, materialism, and militarism.
The same emphasis on
the Christian values articulated by Griffen—and ignored by Hibbs—is prominently
seen in other noted Black pastors, such as William Barber, Jr., of North
Carolina; Raphael Warnock, our new Senator from Georgia; and Episcopal Bishop Michael
Curry, among many others.
What gall to suggest
that these Black pastors—and the many progressive Christians, White and Black,
who agree with them—all of whom spoke out in opposition to President Trump, are
opposed to Christian values!
Which Christian Values Do You Endorse?
In his January 3
sermon, a prominent Southern Baptist pastor of a church near Dallas said that
President-elect Biden would be a “cognitively dysfunctional president” and then
asked: “what if something happens to him and Jezebel has to take over? Jezebel
Harris, isn’t that her name?”
According to this
1/29 article, that pastor, Steve Swofford, also said that the Biden-Harris
administration would not likely be “doing things our way,” so he urged his
congregation to maintain their “convictions for Christ”—or, in other words, to
stand firm for the “Christian values” of evangelicals.
On the other hand, in
the Conclusion of his book Griffen challenges his hearers to “prophetic citizenship,” which,
he says, focuses “on the needs of the people God cares most about.” That is, “people who are hungry, thirsty, homeless, frail, imprisoned, and unwelcomed.”
So, in reflecting on
these different sets of values, which do you endorse as the more important and
most in harmony with the teachings of Jesus?
