Ronnie Floyd, senior pastor of Cross Church in NW Arkansas, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and president of the National 
Day of Prayer, has written an editorial for CBNNews (claiming to offer THE Christian Perspective on today’s affairs) under the headline “America Needs a Spiritual Breakthrough.” Here are a few excerpts from pastor Ronnie’s missive:
“America is broken and in deep need of a spiritual breakthrough. Division and hatefulness are abounding as none of us would ever imagine. Our greatest hope is a spiritual breakthrough in America…
“We are facing one of the most dangerous times across the globe in our lifetime. While encouragement occurs from time to time, we remain in fragile moments globally…
“The churches in America are in need of a spiritual visitation by the Holy Spirit that will call them out of their lukewarm status and cause them to return to the power of the gospel. Jesus is still the greatest hope in every town, city, and region in America…
“Politically, America is in trouble. The disappointment of our political leaders not working together for the common good of our nation has Americans filled with all sorts of emotions, many of which are not healthy. This partisan decision making is hurting the progress and future of our nation greatly.”
Alas, what hope is there for American evangelicalism when such poisonous, spiritual gruel passes for prophetic witness and is guzzled like cool-aid by the average church-goer?
How can God’s people hope to see clearly when their leaders are so willfully blind? How will the people hear truth when their preachers are deaf to any words but their own? How can the church mature when her teachers think and act (and write) like ignorant children?
When pastors like Ronnie persist in leading their congregations ‘round and ‘round in circles, I am not surprised that so much of the church remains confused, dizzy and socially ineffective.
The pastor of Cross Church is at cross purposes with himself, for he represents the most common theological confusions of American evangelicals, all of which I disentangle in my book, 
I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018). At the heart of this confusion is his mashing together of church and state which is then sifted through the grotesque assumption that God is a Republican who voted for Donald Trump.
Let’s not be so naïve as to think that Ronnie’s lament over “division and hatefulness” while facing “the most dangerous times across the globe,” dealing with “the disappointment of our political leaders not working together for the common good” is anything other than the predictably partisan judgments of a Trump-loyalist. For people like Ronnie, healing national divisions for the common good means falling into lock-step behind an obscene, racist, malignantly narcissistic president and then following him anywhere like dumb lemmings running to the cliff.
But these political errors are the easy-to-see, low-hanging fruit.
Let’s move on to grab hold of the more substantial core of Ronnie’s theological errors. Errors that identify him as only one more false prophet in the American pantheon of wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing defrauding God’s flock.
The tell-tale sign that Ronnie is up to no good appears with his blatantly utilitarian view of the gospel. Notice that his ultimate objective for preaching the good news of Jesus Christ is not to glorify God or to expand God’s kingdom. Those are merely penultimate goals. Excellent goals, certainly, but not the final goal.
No, the final objective for Ronnie and his misguided kinfolk is the unification of America’s body-politic behind the president and his policies. (Again, we will leave aside how shockingly immoral many of Trump’s policies are.) What evidence will finally tell us that America’s “spiritual breakthrough” has arrived? Well, we will see (1) a renewed political scene that is (2) free of partisanship (3) with “political leaders working together for the common good of our nation.”
When these things happen, then we can know that the America church has “received a spiritual visitation by the Holy Spirit” (what other kind of visitation would the Holy Spirit make?) that has “called it out of its lukewarm status.” So the Holy Spirit will work in America as in ancient Israel. The Spirit’s task is to unite the nation. The church and the gospel are tools for achieving that greater end.
But Ronnie’s vision confuses the church with the world and the world with the church. God’s people are called to become strangers and aliens within American society. Proclaiming the saving work of Jesus’ death and resurrection recruits new citizens into God’s kingdom who will demonstrate their newfound redemption by their own transformation into strangers and aliens.
Declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ honestly will highlight the stark contrasts between the church and this fallen world. It will never bring them closer together. Gospel preaching is nothing if not a heavenly bombardment that destroys our flesh-pot idols of civil religion, nationalism, and salvation by politics. Genuine followers of Jesus are not deceived by this ancient, beastly triumvirate of bogus, copy-cat Christianity.
Yet, this three-headed monster spewing out recycled false religion like “a dog returning to its vomit” (2 Peter 2:22) is exactly what Pastor Ronnie – and the bulk of evangelical leaders sharing his devotion to American redemption by politics – is offering both the readers of CBNNews and those attending his multi-campus megachurch.
Ironically, the true evidence that American evangelicalism is more than satisfied with its damnably “lukewarm status,” with no intention of confessing its sins or repenting of its many offenses against the Lord Jesus and his kingdom, is its blind, self-satisfied allegiance to such atrociously false teachers as Ronnie Floyd.
Yes, American evangelicalism desperately needs a spiritual breakthrough. But it’s not the one pastor Ronnie is looking for. We will know that the real breakthrough has arrived when Ronnie Floyd and others like him publicly renounce their idolatrous Christian nationalism, confess that the kingdom of God has nothing to do with American politics, repent of their adulteration of the gospel with the bile of civil religion, and then call their congregations to sell their excessive belongings, giving the proceeds to the poor.
Now, that would be a breakthrough.
