08/14/2026
𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝟏𝟕 (𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭) 𝐨𝐟 𝐨𝐮𝐫 “𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬” 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬…𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭: It is commonly known that people who worship together over an extended period of time tend to view the outside world in similar ways, and this is also true of CREC churches. Given the important role that political and cultural issues have in our era, it may be helpful to make a few comments. Cultural and political engagement on the part of Christian churches is a good thing (conservative as opposed to progressive), but that should not be mistaken for partisanship (Republican as opposed to Democrat, etc.). The first reason for this distinction is principled—the role of the Church is to be prophetic, and not to be a constituency to be flattered, cajoled, or manipulated by any political party. The second reason is that a number of our churches are located in places like Poland, Russia, Japan, and Canada, and the partisan issues there are quite different than they are here in America. For example, commitment to the dignity of human life is a constant among us while commitment to a particular political party would have to vary according to the circumstances on the ground.
That said, the following is the sort of thing you can expect to find in our churches. On a string of basic social issues (abortion, homosexual marriage, women in combat, assisted su***de) you will find CREC churches uniformly hostile to the leftist agenda. With regard to economic issues, there is a broad antipathy toward socialism in all its forms and guises. Statist collectivism is one of the great idols of our age, and our churches are overwhelmingly opposed to it. On questions related to American foreign policy, you will find a diverse range of opinions, but they will generally vary between support based on conservative Christian principles and opposition also based on conservative Christian principles.
If you grew up in a conservative evangelical or fundamentalist home, you can expect to find a good deal more liberty on questions of alcohol or pipes and ci**rs than you are perhaps used to seeing from conservatives. This should not be understood as an exception to our commitment to liberty, but rather an expression of it.
Whenever words like “conservative” or “progressive” are used, it is always worthwhile to ask what we think we are conserving, and what we think we are progressing toward. In our churches we are trying to conserve the cultural gains made by the Holy Spirit in the development of the first Christendom. Because those gains were real, we are real conservatives. Where our concerns overlap with those of more secular conservatives, it is a function of them receiving the gift without acknowledging the Giver—but the gift is real for all that. There is a completely different sense in which we look forward to what the Holy Spirit will do to our culture as we progress toward the future (and so someone could call us “progressives” in that sense). But leftist progressives are utopians, and their vision for the future is unreal, and what the Holy Spirit will actually do is nothing like what they are describing. And this is why it would be misleading to call us progressives of any stripe. We are real conservatives because we really are conserving something. We are not progressives...because we are actually going somewhere.
Hope to see you for worship this Sunday morning at 11:30!
