Editor’s Note: Woke Wars, formerly an email newsletter from The Sentinel meant to cover the cultural insurgence of wokeness in our society, is now exclusively available on our website.

American Christians are sorrowfully used to unhinged theology from our evangelical elite.

For instance, during the lockdowns, we were told that “loving our neighbors” looked like receiving injections with experimental substances, while “honoring the governing authorities” looked like wearing diapers on our faces, merely because they mandated such conduct.

But such terrible theology has continued well after that period in our recent history.

No wonder American Christianity is dying.

Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California, recently used the fact that Jesus was crucified between two criminals as an excuse for subscribing to political centrism.

“If you’re looking for the real Jesus, not a caricature disfigured by partisan motivations, you’ll find him in the middle, not on either side,” Warren claimed to his more than two million followers.

This interpretation is a prime example of eisegesis. The minister is supposed to practice exegesis, meaning the drawing of ideas from the text, rather than eisegesis, meaning the using of the text to support preconceived ideas. The comment from Warren is an instance of the latter.

Christians were very quick to rebut the terrible abuse of the Bible, noting that centrism is a fluid category that depends on the context rather than an immutable truth commanded by God.

They also noted that centrism is by no means a valid response to a culture that murders babies, mutilates children, and otherwise commits vast atrocities against their own innocent people.

No compromise with modern progressivism.

Warren and other megachurch pastors like him have long built their ministries on never offending anyone and slowly drifting with the culture. That is why Saddleback Church now ordains women as pastors, prompting their removal from the Southern Baptist Convention.

The bad news for pastors like Warren is that only authentic Christianity can survive in a world increasingly hostile toward the true Jesus and his followers. Most of those who attend church these days are completely sold out for their Lord or on a trajectory toward leaving the faith.

The mushy middle where Warren has planted his feet is rapidly disappearing from under him.