Transgenderism says men can have babies and feminine products should go in men’s restrooms. There are only two reasons that stand in the way of such thinking. Today David covers the second, and it is a reason only available to Christians.

David introduces a short new series with transgender affirming testimony offered to the Tennessee legislature by an ACLU attorney and a minister who is a “follower of Jesus.” In the mini-series David will explain two doctrinal deficiencies within evangelicalism over the last 200 years that have made their testimony perfectly logical to so many. Only as these two doctrinal deficiencies are addressed will our nation’s present course change.

In today’s episode, David takes J. Gresham Machen’s explanation of justification by faith in his monograph, “What is Faith?” and, using audio clips from the Tennessee House floor, compares what Machen wrote to the way the state’s transgender legislation was defended. Justification by faith provides a conception of law that raises an important question, “Are Christians unwittingly undermining the gospel in the way we speak to this type of legislation?"

Today David draws on Abraham Kuyper to explain an “ah ha” moment he had last week regarding previous episodes discussing legislation in multiple states seeking to end “transgender care” for minors. It was the moment in which Kuyper’s distinction between religion for the sake of God vis-à-vis the sake of man came into focus and became practical and real.

Today David reflects on recent conversations with Christian policy makers regarding transgender legislation and on the growing emphasis by Christians on restoring “civil liberty” in light of what Hosea, Isaiah, and Augustine have to say. What might they tell us about the way Christians now “do” politics and their motivations for engagement, and what might that mean in the years to come?

In A Christian Manifesto, Francis Schaeffer connected Rousseau’s worldview to ours by the term “sociological law.” Today, David explains how that connection works and why it has become the basis for an increasing number of government officials (and others) to think that law is to “promote dignity.” Promoting dignity is at the heart of the battle over transgender legislation.

Legislation in multiple states will take on the issue of gender affirming care. Christians will support it and not realize that the reasons given for it deny the existence of any real law. This means real parental rights can no longer be based on real law. That leaves cancel culture in driver’s seat to cancel the parental rights and civil liberties that Christian so greatly prize. Welcome to the world Rousseau’s civil religion created when the evangelical gospel went Gnostic!

Rousseau’s Christianity of a spiritualized kingdom of God birthed not just the kind of civil religion the state needs to keep order but cancel culture.  The long connection between a gospel proclaiming a “spiritual” Kingdom of God and the rise of cancel culture is clear.

The root of Christian Nationalism lies in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s interpretation of Jesus’ mission in coming into a pagan world. It reads like what many evangelicals preach and believe. His reinterpretation of the Gospel paved the way for a purely secular state. It allowed religion to exist for the sake of the state, not God.

Christian nationalism arises out of justification for civil government and civil liberty grounded in bad theology. David uses Scripture and Abraham Kuyper to explain how a current Christian publication on this subject rests more on Rousseau’s contract theory of just government than on what the Bible says about God.