Dear white evangelicals, I was wrong

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on October 8, 2025.

I need to offer a full apology to white evangelicals. I was wrong. You were right.

I make no excuses and offer no explanations or caveats. I wish I would have listened to you and taken your warnings seriously.

The other day, I saw an image of a Christian pastor falling backward as masked, armed soldiers pepper sprayed and shot him in the head with non-lethal bullets on the streets of Chicago. His crime was simply being present in and among the least of these by peacefully protesting government violence against immigrants.

Rick Pidcock

This use of force by the government against Christians is exactly what you’ve warned us about for years.

For decades, you told us the U.S. government would one day criticize Christian sermons. And you were right. After Bishop Marian Budde preached a sermon about mercy, the House of Representatives drafted a resolution “condemning its distorted message.” Even the president himself said Bishop Budde was “nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.”

I’d never seen a government come after pastors like that. So it didn’t seem possible. But it happened.

We laughed when you claimed the U.S. government would one day arrest Christians during prayer. But again, you were right. When William Barber was praying for the poor while wearing a “Jesus was a poor man” clerical stole in the Capitol Rotunda, the police interrupted and arrested him.

“This use of force by the government against Christians is exactly what you’ve warned us about for years.”

When we were kids, you made movies for us to watch about Christian heroes who went into dangerous places on the earth to rescue, feed or heal the least of these, while facing threats from the government. We thought your movies were cheesy and over the top. Surely, nobody would want to shut down Christians who were feeding the hungry or treating the sick. But that’s exactly what happened when the U.S. government shut down USAID, causing Christian humanitarian work to implode and leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths with millions more on the way.

You were right when you said the federal government would one day police our words, telling us what we could and could not say about such topics as race and ethnicity or gender and sexuality. I wish I would have listened to you because now the U.S. government has created a list of 350 words that must be erased from government websites and documents.

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