Occupying the City Gate

We have received sermons, conferences, Bible studies, worship music, Christian schools, seminaries, publishing houses, radio stations, podcasts, buildings, budgets, and tax exemptions. Yet too little flows out into the city gate, in the form of school boards, city councils, county commissions, courtrooms, legislatures, precincts, and Election Day.

In 2015, I was invited to New York City for a meeting with a prospective donor, arranged by Kellyanne Conway. Toward the end of the meeting, Kellyanne remarked, “There is a church on every corner in New York City.”

Although not literally true, it is strategically very close to the truth.

Now take the June 23 Democratic primary in NY-13, won by Darializa Avila Chevalier, a self-declared democratic socialist, Democratic Socialists of America member, and part of the hard-Left movement pushing anti-capitalism, anti-ICE, Medicare-for-All, and housing-for-all politics.

NY-13 is an overwhelmingly Democratic district that includes Harlem, East Harlem, West Harlem, Hamilton Heights, Washington Heights, Inwood, Marble Hill, and the northwest Bronx.

Yet only about 20% of active registered Democrats voted in the June Democratic primary. Chevalier’s winning vote total amounted to just 7% of all active registered voters in the district.

Although NY-13 is not a conservative district, it does contain older African American church voters, older Hispanic and Catholic voters, and working-class immigrant communities that are often far more moderate, and far less ideological, than the Democratic Socialists of America activists now organizing low-turnout Democratic primaries.

NY-13 is neither lacking churches. Public church directories identify well over 150, and likely 200 or more, Christian congregations across Harlem, East Harlem, Hamilton Heights, Washington Heights, Inwood, Marble Hill, and the northwest Bronx.

The deeper problem in America is not the absence of churches. It is the absence of courage, and the absence of a working knowledge of the currency required for civic engagement.

Unfortunately, too many church leaders would rather preserve their standing than confront the cultural Marxist revolution now pressing its claims through schools, courts, corporations, media, entertainment, government, and even church leadership.

Like Balaam, they know enough religious language to sound prophetic while carefully avoiding the cost of obedience. They speak often of unity, but too often their unity is with the culture rather than with the Truth.

The result is predictable: while disciplined cultural Marxists and Leftist ideological minorities organize, vote, and take possession of the city gate, much of the Church remains passive and politically irrelevant.

Take deep-red Plano, Texas, in 2014. The Plano City Council passed the Plano Equal Rights Ordinance by a 5-3 vote, “outlawing discrimination on the basis of ‘sexual orientation and gender identity.’” Conservatives labeled it “the dangerous LGBT special rights ordinance.”

But not Plano Mayor Harry LaRosiliere, a Republican serving in an officially nonpartisan municipal office.

According to the LGBT-friendly Dallas Observer, “Plano remains a byword for the deep-crimson conservatism of the Texas suburb. Nevertheless, its LGBT ordinance zipped through city government with lightning speed, passing only three days after the item was posted on the City Council agenda.”

The Observer then added, with obvious glee, that “Plano is also different because nowhere else in Texas has the religious right been so satisfyingly brushed aside.”

Mayor LaRosiliere, the paper said, “delivered an immensely satisfying rebuttal that can best be described as badass.” He then “ticked off an incomplete history of injustices inflicted upon minority groups in the United States.” [read: special rights for homosexuals]

Following the City Council vote, one North Texas conservative snapped at the mayor, “We’ll see you in November!”

Mayor LaRosiliere answered with a remedial lesson in municipal elections: “It’s May, by the way. The election is in May, not November.”

There it is.

Os Guinness expressed his displeasure some years ago with our turn of phrase that “hanging political scalps on the wall is the only thing politicians understand.”

But in light of America’s present state of affairs - with the cultural revolution now marching openly through the commanding heights of government, education, media, and corporate life - political consequences may indeed be the only language the ruling class still understands.

Persuasion without accountability is not a strategy. At some point, officeholders must be defeated, seats must be taken, and the city gate must be occupied by those who understand both the times and the stakes.

Three years later following the Plano Equal Rights Ordinance victory, on May 6, 2017, in Plano, the bill came due.

In the Plano municipal election, only about 17% of registered voters cast ballots, and Harry LaRosiliere was reelected mayor with just 14,180 votes.

Plano’s largest church, Prestonwood Baptist Church, pastored by Dr. Jack Graham, had more than 40,000 members in 2017.

That is the arithmetic of cultural surrender.

The issue was not that Plano lacked churches. The issue was that the churches were not organized at the ballot box. While the Left understood municipal elections, political currency, and the importance of occupying the city gate, much of the Church treated Election Day as optional.

In a city of approximately 287,000 residents, with some 150 to 200 active religious congregations, one of the largest Baptist churches in America among them, a mayor who helped advance the LGBT ordinance was reelected with 14,180 votes.

That is not a demographic problem. That is a discipleship and civic-engagement problem.

We will close with one final observation.

With the contemporary Church having little to no footprint in the culture, and with its impotent model of success measured by attendance, acreage, buildings, holdings, portfolios, livestream views, and weekend headcounts, American Christendom has become more and more like the Dead Sea.

It receives, but it does not release.

Water flows in, but nothing flows out. And because it only receives and never gives, it becomes lifeless. What should have been living water becomes stagnant.

So it is with much of the American Church.

We have received sermons, conferences, Bible studies, worship music, Christian schools, seminaries, publishing houses, radio stations, podcasts, buildings, budgets, and tax exemptions. Yet too little flows out into the city gate, in the form of school boards, city councils, county commissions, courtrooms, legislatures, precincts, and Election Day.

We have confused attendance with obedience, crowds with courage, and religious activity with cultural impact.

The Left understands the city gate. The question is whether the Church will do so before it is too late.

The issue is not whether there are churches on every corner.

The issue is whether those churches will once again become the Church.

Thankfully, Gideons and Rahabs are entering the public square.

David Lane

American Renewal Project