Proto-Protestantism: A Confessional Presbyterian Revels in Idolatry, Nationalism, Apostasy, and Trump

15 February 2026

A Confessional Presbyterian Revels in Idolatry, Nationalism, Apostasy, and Trump

https://reformedpolitics.substack.com/p/religious-gains-2025

Hall's work has been repeatedly promoted on websites like The Aquila Report and I've also encountered him in the podcast world. Hall thinks 'gains' are being made with the Trump presidency. Needless to say there are a lot of assumptions being made as well as the typical pronoun confusion (and the thought that undergirds it) that we've come to expect.

Regarding Transgenderism - as I've often stated, I don't lament the state taking measures to curb this sort of thing. The majority testimony of history has been against such extreme forms of perversion and admittedly the contemporary Western version (driven by absolutized (and now decadent) individualism along with psychology) has taken it to a new level of crisis.

I am concerned that the backlash against it is perceived as being tied to Christian dominion and it's inordinate lust for cultural supremacy. This fact undermines the testimony of the gospel.

The Hellenistic world of the New Testament was also characterized by degeneracy, decadence, and perversion and while such conduct is roundly condemned, there is never any indication of an imperative to try and change the culture or the hope or expectation of a future capturing of the state in order to pursue that agenda. Quite the opposite in fact. And in addition to the dozens of verses that indicate otherwise and point to a completely different ethos, I contend there are strong warnings against these very Dominionist efforts.
And further, contrary to Hall and other Evangelicals, I don't believe for a moment the culture is really changing for the better. What I've seen is the transgender moment proved a bridge too far but most of society has (within only a generation) fully embraced homosexuality. That, (even in Appalachia where I live) is something people can accept. The transgender stuff was too much.

But that's only for now. In a generation we will likely see another push - that's certainly what happened with the sodomite movement. It emerged with a bang in the 1960's and then struggled over the next three decades - only to triumph in the 2000's, with legal victory sealed in 2015. And it was at that moment that the whole Transgender movement kicked into high gear. We've not heard the last of this.

The only way this process of wave-trough-amplified wave can be arrested is through authoritarian government. If that's the direction this country is headed - so be it. In some ways it seems inevitable but it won't be Christian even if some think it is. But I'm not going to support that move and those that do so will think they're winning victories when in fact they are (and already have) destroyed the testimony and integrity of the Church. I don't think we have to wait for this to happen. I think what we're waiting for is the backlash and the collapse of American Christianity. I firmly believe it's mostly form with very little substance that will not stand in the face of crisis. The Church's response to Covid-19 and its jettisoning of basic Christian ethics revealed that in the starkest terms. And that was nothing compared with the backlash that will come down the pike in the next few decades. Unbelievers used to respect Christians or in some cases just roll their eyes. Now, more and more of them view Christians as just plain evil. In some cases it's because these unbelievers simply hate the truth of the gospel and Jesus Christ. But more often than not they hate Christians - not because of their Biblical fidelity and testimony, but because they've transformed the gospel into boot-in-your-face violence, deceit, avarice, and raw power grabs. I immediately think of not just Mike Johnson, Noem, and Leavitt, but of all the deluded Christians who support these charlatans and evildoers.

I know people like Hall think there's a big revival going on right now among the young people. I wish I could agree (and by no means do I have all the information), but from what I've seen, I'm not that encouraged. It's a broad pool but very shallow and like the New Calvinist wave that emerged 20 years ago - such movements contain a warning. They may not go in the direction you think. I see a lot of politics behind it, a lot of culture war. When these young people become disillusioned with either the GOP or whatever they happen to think are conservative values (which often are not) - what then? In many cases the faith they professed will be revealed as being all form and no substance and they'll be worse off than they were before. Others will stray down even darker roads.

The Shiny Happy People series of documentaries are deeply flawed to be sure, but they do reveal just what happens when young people get caught up in culture war and politically-motivated religious movements that are all about form and action. Once that's removed - recalcitrance, anger, and apostasy fill the gap. It's both sad and sobering to behold.

Hall also celebrates the misnamed Council on Religious Freedom. What is this but a political mechanism for Evangelicals to throw their weight around and threaten those (with state violence) who oppose them? It actually rather disgusting and instead of celebrating it, Christians should demand that it be disbanded. Trump's disingenuous bombing of Nigeria is also connected to this mindset and that event alone testifies to how quickly such agendas and declarations quickly get lost in the morass of politics. The Church cuts these Faustian bargains with the state and ends up signing up to its evils, manipulations, and murder.

The New Testament teaches a completely different response to opposition from the world. Hall can talk about how 'we' are celebrating 'our' 250th Anniversary. Would that he understood that for Christians 'we' celebrate the Kingdom inaugurated 2000 years ago - a Kingdom which doesn't celebrate America's rebellion but in fact proclaims America's doom. Bestial Empires like America come and go but the Scriptures warn us of those who take the Bride and change her into a Whore riding on the Beast. Trump's Council is but a tiny component of this - all the more tiny when considering the centuries of such compromise and corruption. In the grand scheme of things it's a small move but still troubling and not to be celebrated. America was born in sin, rebellion, and disobedience and it is even now reaping the harvest. I tremble but as I read history and see how these things go - I wonder if our grandchildren won't be killing and eating each other before all is said and done. If you think that's extreme or ridiculous then you need to study events like the Thirty Years War.

Unlike Hall, I can say this - God willing I will live to see the utter collapse of Liberty University, that seat of evil and heresy. But I doubt it, and obviously there are plenty like Hall that are effervescent about not only the Falwell legacy of lies and worldly corruption but also the confused and compromised testimony of Albert Mohler and the many like him who flourish within the spiritual sewer that is American Evangelicalism.

At one time I might have been encouraged by the growth of homeschooling and the proliferation of Christian colleges and seminaries, but the last decade or so has revealed just where all of this headed and the agendas driving these institutions. I'm not excited or encouraged, instead I tremble. I've seen too many of these stories go wrong and so many other 'success' stories are simply the tales of educational pipelines pushing Christians into Wall Street, the military, and business. They'll become rich and influential, but I also believe the majority of them are probably going to lose their way and their souls in the process.

Homeschooling is about the only viable option for Christian parents and yet if your children have been raised right and are in the faith - I would probably counsel against most Christian colleges. Right-wing lies are actually more subversive as they can masquerade as Christian - something that's also true of homeschool curricula. Left-wing lies are no threat to young adults who are grounded in Scripture. In fact the secular college experience (if college is even worthwhile to begin with) can grant the spiritually mature Christian an opportunity to interact with the world and its ideas and come to a better and more grounded understanding of what they believe and why. Many of the Christian colleges are simply tickling ears, promoting the agenda of their backers, and promoting mythology in the realms of history and economics - all with a supposedly Christian stamp of Biblical Worldview.

In reality, I don't think there are a lot of good options at present when it comes to Christians and higher education.

David Hall is mistaken. There are no Christians in the Trump Administration - a point I have addressed elsewhere. It's only because of large-scale apostasy that these people are allowed to continue professing the name of Christ. They should be put out of the churches but corrupt ecclesiastical leaders like David Hall allow them to persist in their delusion and apostasy. These people are thieves, murderers, serial liars, and unrepentant at that. In fact they are defiant in their pursuit of sin - a clear indication that many of them (such as Mike Johnson and Pete Hegseth) are handed over. They flourish because of church leaders who are drunk on the possibilities of power and are willing to give them a pass, strengthening their hands even while they commit evil. Hall's resume lists many credentials associated with the likes of Francis Schaeffer, Abraham Kuyper, and its clear he promotes myths and revisionist reads concerning history, the American Founding, and the Magisterial Reformation. His substack is a catalogue of sacralist filth. This kind of delusion is the fruit of such deceit and doctrinal error - a complete ethical collapse and abandonment of all discernment and judgment.

And finally we're supposed to be moved by the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk. He was a martyr, but not a Christian one. He died for a hybrid heretical religion called Christo-Americanism, and Kirk was a fervent advocate of an even more degenerate and evil sect - Christo-Trumpism. His religion was MAGA - an ideology of idolatry, mammon worship, and the veneration of violence. I would argue based on his words and deeds that Kirk hated the Christ of the New Testament - I'm guessing that perhaps Hall does as well. I see no indication to think otherwise.

As the recent Turning Point USA Superbowl promotion revealed - Kirk's Sabbath teaching was a joke. Everything is subsumed under the quest for power and (certainly with Kirk) that power was and always is wed to mammon. Kirk, it must be remembered was a multi-millionaire, a point some deluded Evangelicals celebrate. It's a testimony to his success or so they think. The Prosperity Gospel comes in many forms and is fervently embraced by the vast majority of Evangelicals and Confessionalists.

Rather than celebrate his wealth, they ought to lament it, for it simply reveals he was but another false teacher making merchandise of God's people. And he's certainly not alone. Many perceived 'stalwarts' fell (and continue to fall) into the same deceptive traps. You cannot serve God and mammon - it's one of the most ignored and explained away passages today. It is incompatible with the sacralist vision. Cultural Christianity (which is not Christianity but another gospel) relies on the sword and coin and as such is completely at odds with New Testament teaching and ethics. In reading the Early Church Fathers one also discovers how alien and at odds modern Evangelicalism is when compared to the ethos of the ancient Church. They're like two different religions - because they are.

As he finishes his 2025 victory lap, Hall even makes a passing reference to the pope - as if somehow a 'conservative' Catholic Pope would be better for the Church of Jesus Christ? Again this just typifies the kind of confusion and delusional thinking such sacralism produces.

I will simply say this - it's possible that the visions posited by both Hall and myself are wrong.

But we cannot both be right. You must judge. And if Hall is right, then obviously I'm wrong, massively deceived, and probably unregenerate. I'm sure he would say so. Clearly (if Hall is right), I have misread the New Testament on a massive scale and have not grasped either the gospel message, the doctrine of the apostles, nor the ethics that we're called to live out.

But if I'm right - or even partly right, then what does this say about the state of the Church - a Church that (for the most part) agrees with Hall? I'm not speaking of the Mainline bodies which fell into apostasy long ago. I'm speaking of churches that supposedly are Bible-believing and theologically conservative. Most of them are on the same track as Hall - at least in the United States, but increasingly on a global scale.

If I'm right, then the apostasy that has been a reality for a long, long time is about to escalate - or rather, is already well into the process of escalation. This will be the hallmark and legacy of Trumpite Christianity. The positive (though admittedly failed) moves to correct the trajectory of Magisterial and Confessional Protestant churches in the 19th and early 20th centuries have run their course, and the new Constantinianism (in its Enlightenment Liberal, Capitalist, and Nationalist form) that emerged in the late 1940's has triumphed in terms of the Church - but due to its unfaithfulness is even now being handed over to judgment and the political and cultural degeneracy that emerged in Europe a century ago. The seeds of idolatry, mammon worship, and unfaithful thinking have borne fruit and the harvest is rotten, putrid, and growing more and more malignant by the day.

I'm again reminded of the Wars of Religion and how those that pursued them were filled with righteous zeal and yet they were so misguided that by the time it was all done a few generations later, they had not only compromised everything they had once stood for, they had sowed the seeds for their own destruction. History repeats itself. The cycles are always different but the patterns are there and they are tragic.

The utter blindness on display here is staggering.