Introduction
So last Thursday, Michael Cassidy, a Christian brother and veteran from Mississippi found himself at the capitol building in Iowa where a satanic shrine was on display, apparently pieced together with foam noodles and bungee cords. Cassidy pulled its head off, which was appropriately stuffed with trash bags, and threw the image down. Being a law-abiding citizen, he immediately turned himself into the capitol security and received their citation. A GiveSendGo campaign was quickly opened for his legal defense, and as of the time of this writing around $74K had been raised in his support.
In the week leading up to this, a fairly significant outcry had issued over Iowa’s decision to permit such use of public space. Among those defending Iowa lawmakers was evangelical Christian and state representative Jon Dunwell, insisting that while he personally disagreed with what the statue intended to communicate, Christians must not prohibit such displays. In fact, Dunwell insisted that the Satanic shrine was necessary to defend for the sake of “freedom of religious expression.”
As it happened, I’ve been in the midst of an Advent-Christmas sermon series, and yesterday’s message was titled “Deck Your Idols.” And as I mentioned to my congregation yesterday, I had prepared the sermon before any of this stuff with Michael Cassidy had taken place. But God works in mysterious ways, and make of the timing of all this what you will. I preached from Micah 5 where the prophecy is given that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2), and when the Messiah comes, He will save His people, gathering a remnant, and in and through them, God will destroy all witchcraft and idols. The birth of Christ in Bethlehem means the destruction of all idols.
But It’s Just Spiritual!
However, huffing on cans of secularism for the last century, many Christians have been quick to side with Rep. Dunwell, insisting that Christ only came to destroy idols metaphorically or spiritually deep, deep down in your heart (where?) down in your heart. One X commenter named “Aaroninwriting” wrote: “Smashing statues, no matter how evil and idolatrous they are, is not what the Christian is called to do. There’s a large swath of the church that’s embracing what is an Islamic ethos, because it’s dressed up in Christian garb and wrapped in a flag. The deception that’s currently afoot seems so reasonable, so righteous, but it’s going to end in the judgement of God. This emerging Militant Christian Zeitgeist is not of the Biblical Christ whatsoever.” This fellow was kind enough to label this tendency in his bio with the self-ascribed descriptor “anabaptist.” Which is exactly what this position is. This should be distinguished from regular old “baptists” who may or may not subscribe to this retreatism and Gnosticism.
I replied to Mr. Aaroninwriting thusly: “Um. Smashing idols is exactly what Christians are called to do. It’s the only thing we’re called to do. Somebody get this guy a Bible.” Followed by: “It’s the only thing we’re called to do —with regard to idols. “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away…” (Col. 3:5-8). And a little later to at least one thread, arguing that my Colossians verse could not possibly apply to Mr. Cassidy, I wrote, “While I do not believe there is a direct correspondence between what Gideon did with the idol in his home town and our situation, there is an important lesson and analogy to be applied in our public square, and I think it’s a legitimate application of Colossians 3.”
Jenna Ellis, among others, also lent her voice to objecting to Mr. Cassidy’s actions, arguing that it was a mistake to see God’s commands to Israel to destroy idols applying to any Christian today. Ellis raised the question of whether those defending Mr. Cassidy would also defend someone who beheaded a statue of Allah. Thankfully, 69% answered her poll in the affirmative, and she seemed to think this was proof that “Christian Nationalism” is a subversive movement to undermine our constitutional order, replacing it with “a theocracy, including blasphemy laws and criminalizing other religions and their practice.” While Ellis says she hates such satanic shrines, she believes that Christians are not required to tear it down because the statue has no innate power, is not requiring Christians to disobey God, and because our war is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness.
From Israel to America
While it is true that Christ teaches that idols begin and must be uprooted primarily from the hearts of men and our personal lives, it is also true that He teaches that external and public actions must often be taken to eradicate them. Plucking out the eye that causes sin and cutting off the hand certainly begins with personal repentance, but does not necessarily end there. On what basis would Rep. Dunwell or Jenna Ellis prohibit a pornographic display at the Iowa State Capitol building? Remember, we are now at the point where the Sisters of Perpetual Perversion are insisting on their “religious right” to publicly display their private parts to little kids in the name of what David French calls the First Amendment.
While Ellis and Michael O’Fallon and others are insisting that this display and others like it are traps for conservative Christians, intending to get them to over-react in violence and so invoke a tyrannical response from the left, I do not think they see how the whole set-up of supposed constitutional neutrality is a trap. Let me grant the point: are there some on the left hoping that some right wing kook will blow up an abortion clinic or assassinate a prominent LGBTQ activist? Absolutely. And let me state clearly: we must not condone, support, or encourage any of those sorts of revolutionary tactics. But that does not mean that all external, public acts are thereby off the table. Calmly beheading a satanic shrine made out of trash bags and pool noodles is not joining the BLM mob, not joining Islamists, or turning our struggle into a “flesh and blood” war or somehow taking matters into our hands.
Was Moses taking matters into his own hands when he broke the golden calf down and ground it to powder? Was Gideon taking matters into his own hands when he tore down the altar in his home town? Was Samuel taking matters into his own hands when he hacked Agag to pieces before Saul and his anabaptist struggle session? The point is that Jesus and the apostles certainly teach that the training of Israel in holy war has its first and primary application in individual piety, familial faithfulness, and church discipline, but it does not and cannot end there. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Christ. Just wars, capital punishment of murderers, and yes, the suppression of false religions and blasphemy are the foundations of Western liberty. Just ask Augustine, King Alfred, John Calvin, or even George Washington.
As Joe Boot said to Jenna Ellis on X, “Madam, you need to read some history. The modern West has only recently repealed Christian blasphemy laws replaced by pagan ones. US states throughout the 20th century started repealing these laws. England in 2008 & Scotland only in 2020. All social orders limit some speech.” In other words, it is certainly true that the specific laws and instructions that God gave to Israel do not apply to modern Americans in a one-to-one way, but the moral principles of those laws and commands certainly do stand and have a public application. Christians have understood this for centuries.
The point is that there is no such thing as neutrality. This was a wet dream of the Enlightenment, and I mean that pretty much literally. Freud and Marquis De Sade were assisted by Darwin and Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke – in their own ways, to posit a neutral public square that would ultimately allow for freedom of orgasm, which is basically what the First Amendment means to modern Leftists and their deceived conservative acolytes. The problem with the Ellis-O’Fallon powerplay narrative is that it doesn’t go deep enough. Enlightenment secularism was wrong. And this is demonstrated easily by the simple question: by what standard? By what standard would Ellis or O’Fallon or Dunwell prohibit pornography or a sodomite shrine? And appeals to “common sense” or “basic human decency” are really meaningless at this point. Turns out “common sense” and “basic human decency” now require things that the founders of our nation would have never countenanced: from Drag Queens in our libraries to the Sisters of Perpetual Perversion in our baseball parks — sorry your so-called “neutrality” looks an awful lot like a baseball bat coming down on our head.
The Ellis-O’Fallon-Dunwell position pictures Leftists and Christians in a death struggle on the mountain of civic Justice. In their view, our job is to basically hold still as much as possible while the Leftists jerk and shake and convulse with their revolutionary lusts. In their view, if we respond with anything other than what the Supreme Court has handed down as the current law of the land, we will allow the Leftists to convulse even more and that will lead to loss of Christian freedom and inevitably a stumble further down the mountain of civic justice. The problem with this view is that it imagines that we are playing on relatively neutral ground, as though we both have our feet planted on something solid, even if the Leftists are apoplectic and epileptic. But the so-called “secular experiment” was always a set up. Turns out that the neutral public square is actually a slip-n-slide and just to keep things colorful it’s generously lubed with K-Y Jelly. In other words, the myth of neutrality is a lie, which means it’s immoral and therefore it never could produce true civil justice or religious equality. Ellis and Company think if we only hold still we can preserve some semblance of the “liberal order,” but we’ve been sliding down this mountainside for the last fifty years and no amount of compliance has slowed us down. The answer is to get off the slip-n-slide of neutrality, and start hiking back up the mountain of biblical law. That isn’t tyranny. That’s the only path to real freedom and justice.
Speaking of heads getting cracked, C.S. Lewis wrestled through this very point in the second volume of his Ransom Trilogy. In Perelandra, the hero Ransom experiences a sort of parallel universe version of the original Garden of Eden on the planet Venus with its very own Satanic-tempter, a demon-possessed scientist named Weston who has become the “Un-man.” After reasoning and arguing for many days, Ransom finally concludes that the only way to win this battle will be by literally killing the Un-man. “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, here goes—I mean Amen,’ said Ransom, and hurled the stone as hard as he could into the Un-man’s face.”
Of course, some will say that I’ve just condoned literal violence, and how can I praise this while saying I do not support vigilante violence? I would simply refer you to the founding of America. How were the Boston Tea Party, the Declaration of Independence, and the War for Independence justified? You cannot celebrate the founding of our nation and then condemn the very same spirit and principles that established our freedom. It was on thoroughly biblical and Christian principles that we refused to submit to tyrannical taxes and the breach of natural law and our covenants with the King of England. And this is because God’s Word always reigns supreme. God’s Word defines and defends true religious freedom, freedom of conscience, and separation of powers – including the separation of church and state. But by that same Biblical standard, there comes a time to topple statues, even the kind crafted out of flotation devices.
Conclusion
Jenna Ellis claims that civil disobedience is sometimes called for but only when the magistrate is requiring disobedience to God. Now to be clear: I have not claimed nor would I insist that every Christian has a moral duty to physically tear down every symbol of unbelief, like tearing down every pride flag next June – as though you are in sin if you walk by a rainbow flag and fail to deface it. However, I am claiming that what Michael Cassidy did appears to have been nothing but virtuous, and therefore something to be celebrated and emulated.
Presumably, Ellis and others would say that pornographic displays ought to be prohibited because they pose some kind of immediate threat in a way that a cheesy Halloween display does not. But I beg to differ. Ellis would be right that no one is seriously tempted to convert to “satanism” because of this shrine in Iowa. No, not hardly. But we have all witnessed another seduction taking place actively, and that is the ongoing seduction of secularism. I’m not worried about Iowans turning to the dark demons of the occult just yet (although that is certainly waiting in the wings), but what I am worried about right now is our lawmakers humping our modern goddess of neutrality. The satanic shrine is Enlightenment porn. It’s a Victoria’s Secret display for naïve lawmakers and journalists.
The Iowan shrine is just another kind of drag queen on display. The seduction isn’t an overtly sexual perversion yet. This is the secular foreplay, grooming our leaders and neighbors to snuggle up to the myth of neutrality and so-called religious equality. But after that comes the sodomy and the pedophilia and the cancel culture. It always does. You cannot celebrate immorality and then somehow preserve justice in the public square. You cannot pull justice out of the hat of neutrality. There is no true justice or equality under the law unless Christ is King. There can be no true religious freedom in human society apart from the Word of God.
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