Wireless headphones shouting with negative feedback from podcast at tiny businessman. By Vadym/stock.adobe.com.
Jennifer Welch was an Oklahoma City-based interior designer and reality show actress before launching a podcast in 2022. Titled “I’ve Had It,” her podcast now has 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube and 4.5 million followers across social media. She has interviewed former President Barack Obama, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), then-Vice President Kamala Harris, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, among many others.
Known for her profane rants against conservatives—she claims the 2024 assassination attempt on President Trump was “totally staged,” for example—she has now turned her ire on evangelicals.
Bonnie Kristian reports in the Free Press that Welch recently called us “the worst people in our country” and said in May, “I detest, with every molecule . . . in my being, evangelical Christianity. I think it is a dumb factory.”
Welch claims that “evangelical Christianity is the biggest racket on the planet” and repeatedly uses the epithet “cancer” to describe us. In her view, “Until we start dealing with this horrific cancer that is white evangelical Christianity in this country, we’re going to continue to have these problems.”
Kristian notes that “scorn heaped on evangelicals is not new.” She cites Yale University legal scholar Stephen L. Carter, who wrote in 1994 that secular progressives saw evangelicals as “wide-eyed zealots.”
Political scientist Ryan Burge explains: “People on the left side of the political spectrum need an enemy. They need to personify what the other side is, and because white evangelicals are so prominent in America, they have become the totem for all the liberal ire against conservatives in America.”
As corrosive to the common good as Welch’s rhetoric is, it is also a signal of something even more systemic, a trend we must recognize clearly so we can respond redemptively.
The four-part strategy continues
My wife and I watched a television show this week in which one of the female characters develops a romantic relationship with another woman. The other characters respond with delight that their colleague has finally “found someone” and hope their relationship lasts.
I was reminded again of the LGBTQ strategy that has been developed and followed over recent decades: normalize unbiblical immorality, legalize it, stigmatize those who disagree, and criminalize such disagreement.
However, the apparent chronological staging of this strategy is deceptive. Those who follow it will continue their efforts to normalize such immorality until they convince us that it is not immoral. Many will continue their work to legalize their immorality, as with current efforts to protect and legalize pedophilia. And they will continue stigmatizing those who disagree until there is no one left to disagree, all the while criminalizing such opposition in the service of the first three stages.
Jennifer Welch’s profane diatribes against evangelicals are obviously in the service of the stigmatizing stage. If Dr. Burge is right (and I think he is), we should not assume that there will not be others, or that criminalization of evangelicals who defend biblical morality is not in our future.
Numerous efforts have already been mounted to threaten our religious liberty, as the so-called Equality Act that passed the House twice demonstrates. Christianity Today reports that “across Western Europe, Christians report ‘discrimination and bullying’ and in some instances even ‘loss of employment’ for expressing faith-based opinions in their workplaces.” Some have even faced repercussions for views they expressed in private conversations or posted on private social media accounts.
Of course, such persecution does not begin to rise to the opposition believers face in North Korea, China, Cuba, and parts of the Muslim world. But when evangelicals are so blatantly stigmatized on one of the most popular podcasts in America, we should take note of where things are and where they may be going.
An “anonymous Christian” is a contradiction in terms
At this point, you might be discouraged by what you’ve read. My purpose, however, is just the opposite.
Jesus assured his followers, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:11, my emphasis). Our Lord warned us that we would be persecuted just as he was persecuted, which makes sense: those who saw him as a threat would see his followers as a threat. If they opposed him for proclaiming truth, they would oppose his followers for doing the same (cf. Acts 5:17–40).
A simple way out of this, of course, is to be silent about our faith as we hide our beliefs from those who would oppose them. However, an “anonymous Christian” is a contradiction in terms. If a “Christian” is a “Christ imitator” (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:1; 1 John 2:6), we cannot imitate our Lord and be anything but vocal and courageous in speaking his word and advancing his kingdom (cf. Acts 4:19–20).
As a result, the more we are stigmatized for our faith, the more we can know that we are being appropriately public with our biblical beliefs. And the more we can know that Satan himself is using those willing to be used as he fights truth with lies.
Four practical responses
In this sense, it is an odd compliment when someone like Jennifer Welch castigates us so profanely and hatefully. Our response should be to expect such attacks, then to redeem them for God’s glory.
Here’s how the Bible teaches us to respond to those who oppose our faith:
- “Forgive others their trespasses” (Matthew 6:14), choosing to pardon rather than to punish in the knowledge that we have been forgiven much as well (cf. Luke 7:47).
- “Pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44), recognizing that the more they reject biblical truth, the more they need it.
- “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27), seeking tangible ways to meet their needs so as to earn the right to share Christ with them.
- “Be strong and courageous” (Joshua 1:9), asking God to help us “continue to speak your word with all boldness” (Acts 4:29).
In all things, we must remember that we are not “culture warriors” for whom people like Jennifer Welch are our enemies, but cultural missionaries for whom they are our mission field. The good news, as my wife writes in her latest blog, is that God’s Spirit can fill us with the same agape love that God’s Son has for us.
Then, as Janet notes, “we can love like Jesus.”
Whom do you know who needs such love today?
Quote for the day:
“The good man has his enemies. He would not be like his Lord if he had not. If we were without enemies, we might fear that we were not the friends of God, for friendship of the world is enmity to God.” —Charles Spurgeon
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