“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”
— Matthew 7:15
The Altar Was Meant for Fire
I’m not a preacher. I don’t speak for a church. But I’ve seen the shape of reverence, and I know what it looks like when it’s defiled.
I speak as a humanist, not because I reject the sacred, but because I believe in its original promise—compassion, conscience, care. The sacred is not owned by doctrine. It lives wherever we treat the vulnerable with reverence, wherever we tell the truth when it costs us, wherever love is stronger than fear.
The altar was never meant to sell things.
The pulpit was not built for performance.
The Gospel was not written as a get-out-of-conscience-free card.
There was a time—however flawed—when spiritual leaders were expected to carry burdens heavier than slogans. To speak with trembling. To call for mercy when the mob howled for blood. They were supposed to be shepherds, not stage managers. Watchmen, not warmongers. Vessels of truth, not vendors of power.
The sacred was not convenience.
It was confrontation.
It was costly.
It was fire.
And they called it sacred.
Then Came the Golden Calf Network
But fire doesn’t sell as well as flash. And sometime between the megachurch boom and the political marriage bed of evangelicalism and empire, something holy was sold for thirty pieces of ratings gold.
They traded the cross for a flag.
The altar for a stage.
The Word for a slogan.
And they dare call it revival.
Let’s name them.
Jerry Falwell Jr., baptized in nepotism, drowned in scandal.
Paula White, prosperity gospel prophetess to a bankrupt Caesar.
Franklin Graham, who inherited faith and returned it as nationalism.
Robert Jeffress, who blessed violence from a velvet chair.
Greg Locke, frothing rage with a Bible as prop.
Eric Metaxas, rewriting martyrdom as merchandise.
Sean Feucht, guitar-slinging insurrectionist with holy hair gel.
Mark Burns, whose sermons are soundbites.
Kenneth Copeland, who once blew COVID away with a holy wind—and still cashed the check.
These aren’t prophets. They’re pitchmen.
Not shepherds. Dealers.
Not defenders of the sacred.
But demolition crews in vestments.
They didn’t kneel to God.
They bowed to algorithms.
To cameras.
To the whims of a single man so far from Christ you’d have to squint to see the outline.
And they called it sacred.
A Gospel According to Power
Christian Nationalism is not a faith.
It’s a funnel.
It siphons belief into loyalty.
It wraps a boot in the language of blessing.
They call it revival, but it reeks of Rome.
Not the early church huddled in catacombs, but the empire that made crosses standard-issue.
The state that baptized swords.
The emperors who made heresy a bureaucratic offense.
There is precedent.
Constantine crowned Christianity, and it became a thing of conquest.
The Inquisition claimed to protect the soul, but burned the body.
Calvin’s Geneva hanged a man for disagreeing with doctrine.
And every theocracy that ever set itself ablaze began by confusing obedience with salvation.
As Hannah Arendt once warned, the greatest evil grows not from fanatics but from bureaucrats who lose their capacity to think as human beings.
This isn’t preaching Christ.
It’s preaching Caesar, with better branding.
And they called it sacred.
The Prophets Were Not Invited
Real prophets don’t get network deals.
They get shunned. Fired. Exiled.
Look for them among the silenced.
Rev. William Barber, preaching the poor into power.
Rev. Traci Blackmon, unsettling the comfortable.
Rev. Jacqui Lewis, loving too wide for the doctrine police.
Sister Simone Campbell, calling out cruelty with a rosary in hand.
Nadia Bolz-Weber, tattooed and dangerous to the patriarchal machine.
John Pavlovitz, whose crime was quoting Jesus too honestly.
They are not treasured. They are troublesome.
They still read the Sermon on the Mount out loud, and mean it.
They still believe the soul of a refugee is worth more than the comfort of a donor.
They still think a gospel without love is no gospel at all.
And for this—they are ridiculed.
Cast out.
Labeled false by the very wolves who come dressed in robes.
And they called them the heretics.
And they called it sacred.
When the Sacred Is Used to Justify the Profane
The moment that Bible was held upside down, everything was exposed.
A sacred book, hoisted like a weapon, not in reverence but in domination—while tear gas choked the streets and riot shields pushed back the poor.
The crowd hadn’t yet dispersed. The air still burned. And yet, there it was:
A Bible, not quoted, not opened, not understood—
But brandished like a holy club.
That wasn’t the beginning.
It was the confirmation.
Pastors calling for civil war.
Baptisms held beneath Trump flags.
Chants of “Let’s Go Brandon” echoing between praise songs.
Prayers screamed into microphones with veins bulging and eyes wild.
They called this a movement of the Spirit.
I call it possession.
And while the grift grew louder, real people were maimed—
in spirit, in body, in soul.
Children shamed for who they loved.
Women denied care in God’s name.
Refugees turned away by men quoting Leviticus.
As James Baldwin said, “If the concept of God has any use, it is to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If it does not, then it is time we got rid of it.”
When the sacred is used to bless cruelty, it becomes cursed.
When scripture is used to license domination, it becomes propaganda.
And they called it sacred.
What Is to Be Saved?
I don’t know if the American church can be saved.
Not the empire-church.
Not the one that burns with grievance and trembles at empathy.
Not the one that believes power is proof of divine favor.
But there is always a remnant.
There always has been.
You won’t find them trending.
They aren’t selling books or keychains.
But they still exist.
I’ve seen them.
A chaplain wiping vomit off a prison floor.
A pastor who refuses to bless a lie.
An elder woman who brings food to the sick and weeps in prayer where no cameras roll.
A trans youth curled into the arms of a nurse who doesn’t ask for paperwork before offering dignity.
They are still building what was torn down.
They are still tending the fire others tried to monetize.
They are not loud.
But they are sacred.
And they don’t call it that.
They just do it.
Benediction for the Betrayed
To those who turned the sacred into a slogan,
may your pulpits fall silent.
To those who invoked the divine while serving only themselves,
may your names be forgotten.
To those who stood, grieving, faithful, unbowed—
may your fire not die.
To those still searching—still scarred by what was done in God’s name—
may you know this:
You are sacred still.
If you’ve walked away from church because it broke you—
If you’ve been told you were unholy for being who you are—
If you’ve stood trembling before a God that looked more like a tyrant than a healer—
Let this be your unspoken liturgy:
You are not damned.
You are not alone.
You are not wrong to walk away.
The sacred lives elsewhere now.
It has left the stage.
It has fled the screens.
It has returned to the quiet.
To the kitchen table.
To the hands that heal.
To the mouth that speaks truth, even when no one listens.
Let no man speak for God
who cannot first weep for man.
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