Pastor Allen Jackson urges Christians to call out ‘fake church’ amid heresy: ‘Polite for too long’
BY : Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter
Pastor Allen Jackson recently urged Christians to have the courage to call out what he described as “the fake church” that promotes heresy and behavior he said is incompatible with biblical Christianity.
Jackson, senior pastor of World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, said during a Saturday interview on Fox News that Christians who express historically orthodox theological views in the public square are increasingly maligned as “Christian nationalists,” while those who hold the liberal views of Democratic Texas state Rep. James Talarico are applauded.
“If you hold views that are left-of-center, and you express those in the public square from a religious background, you’re celebrated. If we go to the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, if you hold orthodox Christian views and you express those in the public square, we’re told you’re threatening and you’re dangerous,” Jackson said.
“Where are the labels of ‘Christian nationalist’ for Talarico?” he asked.
Jackson went on to claim that Talarico, who secured a decisive U.S. Senate primary win last week, is “hiding behind religious language” to make his far-left political and theological positions more palatable to the public. He noted Christians who hold to biblical views on key issues smack up against “all sorts of threats and anger and hostility.”
Jackson said the situation caused by Talarico, who has appealed to the first verses of Genesis to defend his views supporting transgenderism for children, is one humanity has faced since the beginning.
“The reality of this is: heresy is not new or progressive,” he said. “It goes all the way back to the Garden when they said, ‘We’re not going to cooperate with what God said or the boundaries that He’s given us.’ And unfortunately, I think Mr. Talarico is just kind of a modern-day reflection of rejecting the boundaries that God’s given us with kind of a designer faith. It’s unfortunate.”
Jackson also said Talarico’s suggestion that the story of the Annunciation supports abortion is “very disrespectful” to Mary, who suffered for the role she was given as the mother of Jesus, was falsely suspected of sexual sin when she conceived Him and was one of the few who remained with Him during the Crucifixion.
During a viral appearance last July on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Talarico claimed Mary’s assent to the angel Gabriel’s message suggests the Bible is pro-choice, and that a woman’s consent to having a baby is an inextricable part of the creation process.
Jackson described Mary’s faith as “a step of courageous obedience on the behalf of a young teenage woman.”
“It is not by any means a diminishment of the sacred nature of life as presented throughout the broader context of Scripture. You can pull any single verse out of its context and prove whatever you want to prove. And [Talarico] has enough training and experience to know that, but he’s ignoring those boundaries to make his point,” he said.
Jackson said anyone attempting to use the Bible to justify killing the unborn is engaging in “theological gymnastics,” and that such doctrines are indicative of “a false church” that must be exposed and resisted by Bible-believing Christians.
“It’s not orthodox, and we’re going to have to have the courage to make those distinctions,” he said. “We have been polite for too long. President Trump had the courage to say fake news existed. We’re going to have to have the courage within the church to say there’s a false church that exists, and be willing to call it out.”
Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian who has made his Christian faith a key pillar of his political platform, has drawn widespread accusations of heresy since rising to the national stage. Some have suggested the worldview of the young lawmaker, a lifelong member of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is symptomatic of a deeper spiritual rot in mainline Protestant churches and seminaries.
In a Tuesday op-ed for WORLD excoriating New York Times columnist David French for effectively endorsing Talarico, Southern Baptist theologian Al Mohler dismissed the idea that liberal Christians such as Talarico are any less desirous of the political power they often accuse so-called “Christian nationalists” of coveting.
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