Let me share with you an answer to the below question I had to formulate for a church history class I am taking through LBTS:
What political developments of the 20th century had the greatest impact on the church?
Is it possible that the spirit and endeavor to be politically correct can be classified as a political development? If this in fact can be seen as a political development, then I certainly would like to argue that this is the development that has had the greatest negative effect on the collective church.
By church, I presume the definition is limited to evangelical and fundamental assemblies. I certainly would not think that anything associated with Rome or anything that exalts a mother as another mediator could be part of the body of Christ. Furthermore, I would think that the church could not include any religious entity that denies the only begotten Son of God as God Himself!
Yet it appears that the political correctness that permeated our society has secretly infiltrated into the studies and pulpits of pastors all across America who no longer proclaim the exclusivity of Christ to the exclusion of anyone who doesn’t exalt Christ and Christ alone. (Think about the number of times you have heard LDS referred to as Christian by the mainstream media.)
The fear of offending a visitor or the desire to be politically correct when referring to sin and sinners has so affected the thinking of church leaders that churches are actually classified as seeker-sensitive. In these institutions of social networking (churches), the gospel is difficult to find because there isn’t anything politically correct about “repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!”
The Apostle Peter wasn’t concerned about being politically correct; he and the apostles chose to obey God rather than man without regard to who their message of repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus would offend.
Billy Sunday told people unabashedly that outside of Christ they were dying and going to hell—it almost sounds like, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” But it simply isn’t politically correct to tell homosexuals that their perverted sexual activity makes God sick! It isn’t politically correct to tell Governor Mitt Romney that his brand of Christianity is a cult. Pastor Joel Osteen refuses to tell his congregation that they sin and their sin separates them from a holy and righteous God outside of the shed blood of the Lamb of God. Larry King presses him to tell the world what happens to people outside of Christ when they die, and Joel isn’t willing to be anything but politically correct; so this son of a Baptist preacher misses a glorious opportunity to preach the Word and let the world know that God will sort that out. Check it out for yourself and see how the political correctness of the 20th century has so affected Joel in this You Tube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfwYU2pmWYQ.
God has already revealed His plan of sorting things out—His plan is called the gospel, but the exclusivity of the gospel is not politically correct. Jesus said it like this: “if you don’t repent you will perish” and then as though they perhaps didn’t get it He said it again (Luke 13.3). Joel knows that the Apostle John’s message in 1 John 2.23 that if you don’t have the Son you don’t have the Father will not go over well in India—it just isn’t politically correct to go to a foreign country and tell them they are heathens. Someone should have told William Carey that “heathen” isn’t very politically correct.
No, the political correctness of the 20th century has so infiltrated evangelical and fundamental Bible believing churches that in the 21st century people are now offended at absolute truth.
One can only wonder about how complicit the church has been in setting the conditions for the denial of absolute truth by being politically correct in the 20th century.
