The Church has been exploited as a woman beguiled into prostitution. Much like the prostitutor uses the prostitute as an instrument to gain wealth by the exploitation of others, so the church has been used as an instrument to exploit those less fortunate, those ignorant of scriptures, and those easily led by herd mentality. Although the prostitutor is manipulating the church, are her hands completely blood-free? Let’s allow history make that determination. 

Definitions

Prostituted – to devote a person, place, or entity (talent, organization) to corrupt or debase purposes.

Prostitutor – the person, organization, or entity that controls and directs the prostitute.

Church – an organization of religious believers.

Prostituted Church – an organization of religious believers that has been used to facilitate, knowingly or unknowingly, corrupt or debased objectives.

The church has been prostituted as a cover for unscrupulous activities such as unbridled wealth, political influence, and Christianized injustices. The breathing body of believers is at a crossroads. Do we close our eyes and “go along to get along” or do we examine the true nature of the 21st-century church?

Questions of Conscience

• Has the church been used to propagate violence and injustice under the cover of preserving and spreading Christian ideology? If so, is the church a victim of the perpetrators or a co-conspirator
• Does the church have blood on its hands due to active support of oppressive objectives or because of its silence and complacency in the face of oppression?
• Where does the prostituted church replace the Church of Christ in matters of an egalitarian existence for all people?

These are questions for you to ponder as you work your way through this article.

The Body of Believers

In this article, I will examine several periods in which the church was used to promote political and religious agendas. Christians who were in step with those agendas mostly fell into three categories. The first were those who embraced the movement for the good of their own kind. The second group was extremists who felt nothing less than extreme radicalization would eradicate the perceived problem.  Finally, the third group was unwittingly effective. They were those who remained silent, appearing to present fairness and neutrality, who did not register an official opinion but, behind closed doors, leaned toward popular opinion. Additionally, I will say, with every period in history, there are outliers, people fewer in number, who brave unpopular witness to contend for the moral right, and many times they paid the price.

The Prostituted Church

It was not easy for me to associate “prostituted” with the church. However, it is undeniable, especially of late, that many changes in how our government operates have been attributed to Christianity being reinserted into American society. The church, although not the sole driver, was a significant influence on certain issues, whose actions reverberate not only in America but also across the globe.

My seminary professors have often told me that “history does not repeat itself”.  It may not–but aspirations certainly do. Historically, I want to look at how clergy, in the name of the church, were instrumental in influencing the body and the general populace in what may have seemed right at the time but ultimately was not. Proverbs 14:12 says,

¹² There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the ways of death.

I am examining the church’s role in history and its results. Can we learn anything from what was done in the past, or do we get swept away in the rigor of the present moment with our conscience lobotomized?

The Church and the Crusades

The Christian crusades were initiated to reclaim land that Muslims had captured, with emphasis on recapturing Jerusalem. This was partially true. Reclaiming Jerusalem was second to a rising economic profile and the need to supply labor to growing urban centers in Christian Europe. Emerging wealth and the potential for hostilities prompted many rural dwellers to relocate to these centers. There arose a need for labor to support the growing menial tasks in urban centers and to work the land in rural areas. Muslim slaves, captured in the Crusades and other conflicts, became a resource that satisfied the need for uncompensated laborers.

Christian thought in the eleventh century viewed warfare as sin regardless of how legitimate it might seem. However, twelfth-century Cistercian monks, a very powerful, influential ascetic sect, supported the conversion or extermination of unbelieving Muslims. At that time, Jews, Christians, and Muslims all had various regulations forbidding or at least discouraging the enslavement of co-religionists. This curtailed the offer of Christian conversion to the Muslim slave.[1] So that Muslims could remain slaves, they were not permitted to convert to Christianity.

The Church and the Third Reich

The German church joined the Nazi Party. From their perspective, it was not an unreasonable thought at the time. You know the old saying, “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” That sums it up. The Third Reich was a nationalist movement that sought to restore pride in Germany after their devastating defeat in WWI. Additionally, the Treaty of Versailles imposed humiliating and punitive conditions on the German state. Hence, movement toward nationalism and renewed respect for Germany seemed right.

German nationalism in the nineteenth century promoted the “notion of a superior ‘Aryan’ race”. The introduction of the Aryan race meant fierce competition with German Jews for the seat of superiority in the world as God’s chosen.”[2]  To the Germans, it meant weeding out inferior people– those deemed criminal and non-Christian. The largest target was on the Jews.

The Jews were a tight-knit group, formidable enough for German statesmen to launch political and religious antisemitic campaigns. Jews were criminalized for gaining wealth as the “loan sharks” of their time. They were accused of blasphemies such as denying that Jesus was the Messiah and that he was born by virgin birth. The Jews eventually suffered in the polls, which allowed the spread of antisemitism into various cultural groups and associations, such as academia, elementary and secondary educational institutions, and the Protestant church. In fact, Protestantism and nationalism went hand in hand as kaiser, Wilhelm I, and the subsequent Wilhelmine society demanded church loyalty to the state.”[3]

Antisemitic publications and propaganda filled the airwaves, classrooms, and theological settings. The Jews were no longer relegated to being the government’s nemesis; they also became the people’s problem, the church’s problem. The Protestant population “provided the broadest and deepest reservoir of support for the Nazi party in all social groups during its electoral triumphs of the early 1930s.”[4]

Protestant Positions on the Question of the Jews

The Protestant church pondered the “Question of the Jews.”  Althaus, president of the Luther Society, dubbed them as “foreign invaders” that led to the breakdown of the national community. Sound familiar? Concerning Hitler’s appointment, he said, “Our Protestant churches have greeted the German turning point of 1933 as a gift and miracle of God.”[5]  Pastor G. Feix encourages his readers, primarily teachers, to “join the Third Reich to fight against the Jewry since they still sin against all Christians and non-Christian people in the most noxious way. Baptism of Jews is [unacceptable] until the creation of a national Jewish Christian Church”.[6]  Martin Luther, famous for igniting the Protestant Reformation with his Ninety-five Theses, was also the ignition for antisemitic sentiments as he railed against them in “crude deprecating language” in his treaty On the Jews and Their Lies.[7]  This publication was reprinted many times, eventually influencing, to some extent, the repressive legislation imposed on German Jews in 1933 and the Nuremberg Laws of 1935.

On the “Question of the Jews”, the Protestant opinion divided into four groups. The first considered the racist legislation and the exclusion of Jews from various spheres of life as a possible permanent solution for social, cultural, and biological segregation predicated upon the enforcement of the law. These sought to contain the Jews by regulations, legal or jury-rigged. The second group felt the laws would not sufficiently contain the Jews, so they launched a series of violent insurgencies aimed at accelerating and radicalizing the solution. These were the extremists. The third group consisted of liberal intellectuals who overtly criticized the measures based on religious or economic grounds. They were the conscientious objectors. The final group took no clear position on the issue.[8]  These were content as long as the Jew problem did not encroach upon their lives. Ultimately, this plethora of positioning led to the final solution– the deportation and extermination of Jews.

I would be remiss if I did not mention a sampling of those who were anti-Nazi dissidents.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran theologian and pastor, was executed for his role in resisting the regime. Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who bought Jews to work in his factories and hence sheltered them in plain sight, was among those whose moral boundaries could not be stretched to comply with the Nazi agenda.

The Church in the New World

The European economy reached beyond the European seas to Africa, the Far East, and the Americas. As told in history,  Christianization of the indigenous people was the primary reason for subduing and colonization. At the same time, with European resources waning due to an ever-growing population, the need arose to search out additional land and resources. Under the guise of commissioning missionaries to spread the gospel, indigenous people were subdued and colonized.  The Church, depending on the religious order, would withhold baptism from the enslaved so they could remain slaves. In other instances, clergy would perform hundreds of daily sprinklings to report Christianity’s progress, thereby securing the support needed from the European church.[9]

The first generations of churched slaves in North America were taught only from scriptures that supported subjection, obedience, and the Hamitic curse of the Black people for fear that unedited and enlightened exposure to scriptures would seed rebellion. So, there was no hope presented by the church that was redeemable on this side of heaven for the New World slave. Even those churches that did not believe in owning slaves, such as the Quakers, eventually succumbed to doing so as they became part of elite society. The colonizing church became one of the principal prostitutors and oppressors of the enslaved in the New World, again, motivated by wealth, dominance (Manifest Destiny), and Europe’s commercialization of the New World.

The Church Today

What should be clear is that the church has been used as a vehicle to promote separation, hatred, and hegemony (domination). Consider the grouping of the German Protestant church during the Third Reich (see Protestant Positions on the Question of the Jews, second paragraph), there are similar groups today whose goal is to preserve their race and dominance. Consider the goals of White Christian Nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and White Supremacy groups. Consider the unhinged dismantling of parts of the federal government in the name of building equity, the deportation of non-white immigrants by militia-style troops, some of whom have been lying in wait for years for such an unbridled opportunity sanctioned by the highest office in the union.

Although history may not repeat itself, it certainly stutters. The prophets of the Old Testament constantly called out the sins of the kings of Judah and Israel, as well as the Levitical priesthood. There are stark similarities between what ancient rulers did and what the ruling class is doing today. Romans15:4 states,

“Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.”

Based on the first half of this scripture, the past should provide some insight into our present and future. God left it up to us to choose the options that brings hope to all.

Comparing the Past to Present

God’s Accusations Against the Kings and Nobility of Israel and Judah

Amos 2:6-8

• They sell out the righteous and needy for gain
• They trample the head of the poor and take what little they have
• They push the sick and afflicted out of the way
• They indulge in sexual improprieties
• They become drunk on wine purchased with fines they have imposed on the poor

Micah 6:10-12

• They build false scales and dishonest weights
• The wealthy are full of violence
• They have deceitful speech

God’s Warning

God’s warning to the son of King Josiah in Jeremiah 22:13-17.

¹³ Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbors work for nothing and does not give them their wages,
¹⁴ who says, “I will build myself a spacious house with large upper rooms,” and who cuts out windows for it, paneling it with cedar and painting it with vermilion.
¹⁵ Are you a king because you compete in cedar? Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him.
¹⁶ He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? says the Lord.
¹⁷ But your eyes and heart are only on your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for practicing oppression and violence.

God’s Accusations Against the Prophets and Priests

The priests were condemned for “going far from the Lord when Israel went astray, Ezekiel 44:10.

Old Testament

Hosea 5:1

• You have been a snare to the people

Micah 3:11

• Rulers accept bribes for judgments
• Priests teach for a price
• Prophets prophesy for money
• All proclaim that God is with them

Ezekiel 22:26

• They have done violence and profane the holy things

New Testament

Matthew 23:12-14

• You hypocritical scribes and priests
• You do not live holy lives and prevent others from doing so

2 Timothy 3:1-7

• You are without natural affection, haters of good
• Lovers of pleasures instead of lovers of God
• Have a form of godliness but deny its power
• Ever learning but never able to recognize truth

God’s Warning

Malachi 2:1-3

• I will curse your blessings
• I will spread dung on your faces [You will be made to be ashamed]
• I will put you out of my presence

Acts 20: 29-30

• Persons will come to scatter and divide the church and some will follow them

What God Requires of Us

Old Testament

Micah 6:8

• To do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God.

Isaiah 1: 10-17

• God is weary of fake offerings; your hands are full of blood, so wash yourselves and cease to do evil
• Seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow

New Testament

• Unity – I Corinthians 12:12, Philippians 2:2
• Holiness and Purity – Ephesians 5:25-27
• Love – John 13:34
• Missions – Matthew 28:19-20, Acts 1:8
• Edify one another through gifts – 1 Corinthians 12:4-5, I Peter 4:10

Conclusion

The depravity of God’s chosen—his kings and his priests is seen throughout history. And still today, the apostate church operates outside the boundaries for which it was called. There are clear similarities between the Old Testament reign of kings and priests and the church’s interface with wealth and imperial governments throughout history up to this present time.

I leave it with you to decide for yourself. Is the church innocent? The most important point I want to make is that just because movements say they are Christian, or church-based, does not make it so. We are responsible for examining the thoughts and intents, and if they don’t align with agape love, then there is reason to question motives. My final point is that there is no place for silence when injustices permeate our land.  I pray that as the need arises, and it will, that you speak out against atrocities that undermine the principles of Christ in this compromising world. Silence is not an option.

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Bibliography

Gonzalez, Justo L. “The Beginnings of Colonial Christianity Part IV.” In The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of Reformation, vol. 1. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.

Probst, Christopher J. Demonizing the Jews: Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany. New York: Indiana University Press, 2012.

Rayborn, Tim. The Violent Pilgrimage: Christians, Muslims and Holy Conflicts, 850-1150. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers, 2013.

 

[1] Rayborn, Tim, The Violent Pilgrimage: Christians, Muslims and Holy Conflicts, 850-1150 (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers, 2013).

[2] Probst, Christopher J., Demonizing the Jews: Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany. (New York: Indiana University Press, 2012).

[3] Probst, Demonizing the Jews, 35, 41.

[4] Probst, Demonizing the Jews, 41.

[5] Probst, Demonizing the Jews,  41.

[6] Probst, Demonizing the Jews, 136.

[7] Probst, Demonizing the Jews,  43.

[8] Probst, Demonizing the Jews, 100.

[9] Gonzalez, Justo L., “The Beginnings of Colonial Christianity Part IV,” in The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of Reformation, vol. 1 (New York: HarperCollins, 2010). 456