There are a few things I know about leftist evangelicals. The first, is that they really like Starbucks and MacBooks. The second, is that they are on a constant quest to be liked by people who don’t like Jesus. And third, is that there’s hardly a mainstream media talking point that they won’t immediately adopt in lieu of having an actual conscience of their own.
And it’s this third observation that’s likely the best explanation for their adopting of the positions on cultural or political issues that they adopt. Whether its the supposed necessity of vaccinating folks against a mild respiratory virus, the efficacy of masks, the health benefits of fluoride in the water supply, or why USAID is necessary to supply funding for minority midget fashion shows in Morocco, whatever Anderson Cooper’s perspective is, seems to become their own.
But when it comes to matters like life or death, one would think that their evangelical conscience would kick in, and they might be inclined to put important issues like war through the sieve of Christian ethics and see what comes out the other side. Surely the same bleeding hearts that can’t be brought to enforce immigration law lest someone drown crossing the Rio Grande, would be slow to endorse a blank check for endless bloodshed in a theater of foreign war.
But just when you think you have the evangelical lefties figured out, you figure out you don’t. They’re a complicated bunch, and making sense of where they land on important societal issues is like trying to make sense of a schizophrenic person imaginary friend list. It’s hard sometimes.
The last three years have shown immense support for war carnage in Ukraine, on the part of American evangelicals closely aligned with the political left. At first, one would assume it’s only natural that they adopt the perspective of Rachel Maddow, or some other lesbian talking head from where they get their news. Perhaps their unyielding support for the Ukrainian dictator is no more complicated than their support for Black Lives Matter; they’re told what to think, and lacking the Holy Ghost, they’re led by liberal propaganda.
But in actuality, it’s quite a bit more complicated than that. Let me explain where the evangelical leftwing support for endless war is coming from.
THE POST-WAR CONSENSUS
I’ll summarize this briefly, because I’ve written about it extensively already at Insight to Incite. But for those disinclined to look, this is the summary:
After World War II, society had to wrap its mind around the carnage as the dust was settling and blood was still soaking into the soil. The cause of the war is more complicated than most would like to admit, and largely has to do with the treatment that the victors of World War I gave the German people. Starved, blockaded, and widely mistreated, Germany was at the mercy of a regime installed by their enemies and was subjected to a government that cared virtually nothing for the German people or their interests. Along came Hitler, who promised them that their needs would no longer be ignored and - in fact - their needs would be prioritized from that point onward, was he soon endowed with the power to do what he went ahead to do.
Meanwhile, Britain’s policy of constant warfare with whoever their chief competitor in Europe might be, combined with the fact that Germany had again become their chief competitor in Europe, put the two nations on a collision course for war. But this explanation would impugn the Allies to a small extent for the environment in Germany that led to Hitler’s rise. And because the victors write the history books (that quotation is from Churchill himself), very careful messaging was contrived to cast blame upon strong national leaders who prioritized their country’s national interests.
And because the messaging was successful, the western world as a whole rejected nationalism and adopted a slogan similar to that of the United Methodist Church of “open minds, open hearts, open doors.” Strong leaders were bad, national interests were selfish, and closed borders were fascist.
Another message that came part-and-parcel to the Post-War Consensus lionized Churchill in particular, and instead of accurately portraying him as a war monger who did everything he possibly could to turn a regional conflict into a world war, instead championed him as a foresighted hero who invented the idea of fighting wars preemptively, designed to keep the enemies from getting stronger. And this is how preemptive, unnecessary wars became the status quo in the post-WWII world. You can here that motto echoed following 9-11 as the war-drums sounded for a preemptive war in Iraq, “We fight them there, so we don’t have to fight them here.”
This idea - that wars are necessary to bring peace - became the conventional wisdom following WWII. The history of world conflict since then proves the idea as absurd as it first sounds. Each war the United States participates in under the guise of stopping the enemy before they have a chance to attack us, has only led to the creation of more additional enemies, and more additional wars that have to be fought.
The Post-War Consensus doctrine of using war to bring peace has undergirded support for the Industrial War Complex, which Eisenhower warned us about. And this War Complex needs to be constantly fed, with one subsequent war planned before the previous war even ends. You can hear this in the words of war-hawks like Lindsay Graham who keep actual lists of nations we have to check off of our war list, like he were grocery shopping. The history of the United States after WWII is a testament to this endless war doctrine, as proxy conflicts like Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq were all fought under the belief such wars are necessary to keep our enemies in check, just in case we want to fight them one day. In the mean time, they enrich the Industrial War Complex that donates billions to America’s politicians (and greases their hands under the table).
RUSSIA AS THE BUGBEAR
As Orwell pointed out in 1984, government need Citizens to fear an enemy in order to keep them in check. Citizens will not so easily surrender their liberties and are less than eager to increase the power and scope of government, unless the government is needed to keep them safe. And if no enemy currently exists, they’ll find one that will do.
After the Cold War, the world became one of unilateral power held by the United States. One would have thought that NATO, which was created to ‘contain’ the Soviet threat, would have disbanded after there ceased to be a Soviet Union at all. But not only did NATO remain, it continued to grow in power and size, adding nations to its war party and extending its promises of mutual defense to “allies” that in no significant way could help the United States or NATO’s original members. This growth only increased NATO’s liabilities, not its assets, under its policy of mutual protection.
Promising in 1990 to not extend NATO eastward toward Russia, U.S. Secretary of State, Jim Baker, sealed the deal to end the Cold War. But since then, NATO has inched closer to Russia, and antagonized the nation much in the same way that the Allied Powers antagonized Germany after WWI.
Because a significant portion of Ukraine was at one time Russia, and a significant portion of Ukrainians are cultural Russians, Ukraine had an increasingly pro-Russian government. But in 2014, led by Victoria Nuland, the United States funded and organized a coup against the democratically elected government in Ukraine, and installed in its place, President Zelenskyy. The J6-style insurrection (only a real one) was widely heralded at the time as a success of American planning, and nobody denied it. Nuland, in fact, was on the ground at the time of the insurrection, handing out water bottles to Ukrainians overthrowing their democracy.
Following the 2014 coup, Zelenskyy aimed to rid Ukraine of all Russian influence, which was a brutal task considering much of Eastern Ukraine is Russian. Banning Russian books, Russian culture, Russian language, and Russian religion, Zelenskyy engaged in what the United Nations classifies as ethnic cleansing.
Keeping that in mind, when U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris announced in Munich in 2022 that NATO would bring Ukraine into NATO - allowing NATO to place missiles along their border with Russia and point missiles at Moscow, it served as the straw that broke the camel’s back. The Russian invasion was then on like Donkey Kong.
Finally, the U.S. had the proxy war they had been waiting for, and the American Deep State finally had the evidence it needed that Russia was the enemy they failed to make it out to be during the first term of Donald Trump.
THE ETHNIC CLEANSING PROBLEM
In order to justify sending hundreds of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to Ukraine, which they would in turn send back to American politicians as campaign donations through FTX, Americans needed to be on board. And despite the peer pressure propaganda to put Ukrainian flags in our Twitter bios, that wouldn’t be enough to really garner the support of most U.S. Citizens.
The problem with convincing Americans that the conflict in Ukraine was a black and white matter, is that Zelenskyy’s rule in Ukraine was no less draconian than Putin’s rule in Russia. Determining who was the good guy, and who was the bad guy, was hard work.
Zelenskyy, for example, had been imprisoning journalists for years. He had engaged in the previously mentioned ethnic cleansing against those of Russian descent. Zelenskyy had - most tragically - imprisoned, tortured, beaten, and killed priests and clergy men of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
With this in mind, it was going to be exceedingly hard to convince Americans of a “Putin = bad, Zelenskyy = good” narrative. His persecution of professing Christians (yes, I realize they’re technically not by Protestant standards) was terrible optics. But what would be the solution to this?
The first solution for the war-hawks was to amp-up the arrest and persecution of journalists, which Zelenskyy did. But the second was to install fake media outlets churning our war propaganda, who could help cover up the crimes against the Christian faith. This was accomplished when the U.S. State Department funded fake “independent” news outlets in Ukraine, replacing the journalists who had fled the country and the news organizations shuttered by Zelenksyy. On my X account today, I showed the receipts; the funding given to Ukraine’s state-sponsored media outlets obtained through USAID. See that here.
With the new media apparatus in place, now serving as a public relations organization to influence Americans to air-drop cash to Ukraine, there was only one important piece of propaganda left to orchestrate; covering up the persecution of Christians.
COVERING UP THE CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION
Zelenskyy had signed Bill 8374, criminalizing the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (propaganda outlets refer to it as the “Russian Orthodox Church”). This is the church of which 71% of all Ukrainians are members. Zelenskyy then authorized his government to confiscate more than 1500 church houses, and exile Orthodox priests. Those who refused were beaten and imprisoned.
Keep in mind, this is classified as ethnic cleansing by the international community, and when it happens in war time, it’s classified as a War Crime. Americans wouldn’t be down with this.
So Zelenskyy wouldn’t be accused of “banning Christianity,” the U.S. State Department facilitated the creation (and funded) a state-sponsored religion in Ukraine, similar to state-sponsored religions in totalitarian regimes like China. They created the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).
The OCU was officially established on December 15, 2018, through a unification council held in Kyiv at Saint Sophia Cathedral. This created a single, not-at-all independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and broke the canonical tie to Orthodox churches across the world, including the Russian Orthodox Church. Propaganda outlets speak of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s (the original and real one) “ties” to Russia, but this is misinformation. The only tie was that of canonical tradition, not of organizational structure. No one in Russia was controlling the church in Ukraine.
The churches confiscated by Zelenskyy’s government were then given to the state-sponsored religion. Reports from Ukraine on the ground indicate that to this day, those fake churches are mostly empty, with worshippers abstaining from the ruse, and worshipping underground with their original bishops, who have largely become wanted men.
THE EVANGELICALS
The tiny evangelical minority in Ukraine was able to maintain distance from Zelenskyy’s persecution of Orthodox believers, primarily because they aren’t Orthodox. Early on in the Ukrainian conflict, Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian propaganda outlets funded by USAID saw the evangelicals in Ukraine as instrumental in drumming up support for the war effort, and used them accordingly.
Ukraine’s evangelical community—though a minority at roughly 2-3% of the population (about 1 million people)—is vibrant and well-connected to Western, especially American, evangelicals. Ukraine has been called Eastern Europe’s “Bible Belt,” with a strong Protestant presence, including the largest Baptist community in the region, tied to groups like the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).
Ukrainian evangelicals actively lobbied their American counterparts to frame the war as a fight for faith. Leaders like Yaroslav Pyzh of the Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminary and Igor Bandura of the Ukrainian Baptist Union traveled to the U.S., speaking at churches, Christian colleges, and events like the SBC annual meeting.
American evangelicals wield significant political influence, especially within the Republican Party, where they form a key voting bloc. Evangelical leaders—Brent Leatherwood of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Steven Moore of the Ukraine Freedom Project flooded Christian media (Christianity Today, Baptist Press) with stories of Russian persecution, and shifting sentiment. By April 2024, when Congress debated a $61 billion aid package, evangelicals were pivotal in swaying House Speaker Mike Johnson, an evangelical himself, to support it, overcoming MAGA resistance.
This worked. Polls from Razom showed 70% of evangelicals favored aid after learning of Russia’s actions against Ukrainian Christians, with even 63% of GOP primary voters agreeing. This wasn’t just sentiment—evangelicals’ lobbying ensured tangible outcomes, like the aid package passing despite a divided House GOP.
All of this is only possible because Zelenskyy’s persecution of the Orthodox has been kept quiet by U.S. funded propaganda outlets and Zelenskyy’s banning of legitimate media operation within the country.
THE WORLD EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE, STATE-SPONSORED ASTRO-TURF
Almost all of the connections between Ukrainian evangelicals and American evangelicals has gone through the World Evangelical Alliance. The WEA claims to represent over 600 million evangelicals across 143 countries, though this figure reflects the aggregate membership of its affiliates, not direct adherents. It operates as an umbrella organization, linking 134 national evangelical bodies (including the super-liberal National Association of Evangelicals in the U.S.), nine regions, over 100 international organizations (e.g., World Vision, Lausanne Movement) and denominations tied to its mission.
In case you aren’t familiar with the Lausanne Movement, just take my word for it that it’s basically the Anti-Christ.
The International Council of Christian Churches call the WEA “apostate” for ecumenical ties with Catholics or mainline Protestants. Critics also claim that its funding (mostly donations, no centralized budget is public) raises transparency queries, and that its funded deeply by globalist Dark Money tied to the CIA and the U.S. State Department.
The WEA’s Special Consultative Status at the UN (since 1997) puts Schirrmacher at forums in New York and Geneva, where State Department diplomats—like those from the Office of International Religious Freedom—operate. Schirrmacher meets regularly with officials from the United Nations. During Mike Pompeo’s tenure (2018-2021), the State Department hosted Ministerials to Advance Religious Freedom, utilizing Schirrmacher’s WEA.
USEFUL IDIOTS
Some evangelical leaders, like Schirrmacher, are indeed in the pockets of globalist organizations and the international power structure committed the Post-War Consensus doctrine of endless war. But others, particularly down the rungs of the ladder, are likely just “useful idiots,” a term referring to those who are unwilling accomplices thanks to their diet of propaganda.
Many evangelical leaders in America have been inundated with the propaganda coming out of Ukraine, and the propaganda they’ve been subjected to in their denomination, like Southern Baptists having been fed a steady war-hawk diet of endless bloodshed by the ERLC’s Brent Leatherwood. Some, like Leatherwood himself - or Ed Stetzer and Dr. Russell Moore - likely know better.
In either event, evangelicals decrying the end to this senseless and pointless bloodshed are doing so in a way that is only making life worse and more dangerous for evangelicals in Ukraine. Putin has caught on to their role in fetching billions of dollars of U.S. tax money to support the Zelenskyy regime in Ukraine, and this is putting them in harm’s way.
It’s certainly odd that leftwing evangelicals who insist that issues like abortion and homosexuality require “nuance,” are so insistent that global conflict is so morally black and white.
If you want to understand why, consider Ecclesiastes 10:19, “Money answereth all things.”
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