The Blatant Lie of Today’s Evangelicals:
“We Hold to an Unchanging Moral Code”

by Stuart DiNenno

Why would anyone go to the modern American evangelical church for moral guidance or expect others to do the same? The claim so often made among evangelicals is that they proclaim eternal truths and an unchanging moral code. But it is quite obvious that this is a lie.

Case in point: If we were to go back to the year 1900 in America, which is a just a few generations ago, and we met a black Christian man and a white Christian woman trying to find a church in which they could be married, we would find that they were pursuing an impossible task. There would be no church that would approve of racial intermarriage, let alone participate in it. If they did find a pastor who consented to perform a marriage ceremony for them, he would be looking for a job the next day. But it wouldn’t be a job in the ministry and it probably wouldn’t be any job in the same town. Furthermore, the marriage would be considered invalid and not recognized as legitimate by anyone. And if you were to advance to the same place half a century later in 1950, things wouldn’t be much different.

But today, we have reached a point where we have nearly the opposite. That is, almost every church in America would approve of the marriage and many would even portray racial intermarriage as a step forward in morality. Furthermore, they would likely condemn as sinful “racists” those who held the opposite view which was held by their grandparents or great-grandparents.

And it’s not the case that the churches are embracing a practice to which they formerly adhered and are now returning to it after a period of backsliding, and that they are now leading the general society in the right direction. No, the reality is that the non-Christians in America embraced interracial marriage first and now the churches are following suit. It is the apostate world that has led the church in regard to this practice and not the other way around.

But the issue here is not interracial marriage or any other particular practice; the issue is the claim of the churches regarding the immutable nature of their moral teaching. Their flip-flop on this one matter only reveals their true character. You may believe that interracial marriage is terribly sinful, or only consider it to be unwise, or think it should be accepted, or even believe that it is something to be praised and encouraged. Regardless of your view on the subject, it is a fact that the moral position of the so-called Bible-believing churches has changed and changed rather suddenly. And it is a fact that this change has not been led from within the church but from without. Therefore, the claim by today’s professing Christians that they have an unchanging, eternal code of morality is clearly shown to be a lie.

So again I ask: Why would anyone go to the modern American evangelical church for moral guidance or expect others to do the same?