Welcome To Church: Atheist Pastors, Drag Clowns And Terrorist Apologies

The slow death of a church never happens all at once. It begins with a subtle doubt--"Did God really say?"--and ends in full-scale rebellion against the Lord who purchased it. The United Church of Canada has been on this road for decades, and this week we get two fresh reminders that once you toss aside the authority of Scripture, the decline never stops. It only deepens.

This isn't a case of minor theological differences. This is a church replacing the gospel of Jesus Christ with the gospel of self--and the results are heartbreaking, outrageous, and dangerous.

Canadian Memorial United Church in Vancouver calls itself a "vibrant progressive spiritual community and center for peace." Under the leadership of Jeffrey Rock--a man who lives with his long-time boyfriend and is now asking for $100,000 in lieu of wedding gifts to fund a surrogacy adoption--the church has long championed causes that would have shocked any Bible-believing congregation just one generation ago.

Rock has previously argued for the "radical inclusion" of Christians in polygamous and "ethical non-monogamous" relationships. Now, his church is going further.

During a recent Sunday service, Children's Church Coordinator Mary Toth gathered the kids up front for storytime and began reading The Rainbow Parade--a book about a little girl attending her first Pride parade. On one page, adults appear in leather bondage gear. Another states that "everyone is wearing whatever makes them feel like themselves... even if that means wearing hardly anything at all."

If that wasn't troubling enough, Toth told the children point-blank that it is perfectly fine for adults to attend Pride parades completely nude.

Let that sink in: in a church, the children's leader was normalizing public nudity at sexually charged events. This is not just poor judgment--it's a direct assault on innocence under the banner of "inclusion." And instead of condemning it, the church is helping normalize it.

Meanwhile, at the national level, the United Church is preparing to vote on a resolution (GC45 HF01) that demands Canada take harsher action against Israel for what it calls a "genocide" in Gaza. But the most stunning--and chilling--line in the proposal describes the October 7 Hamas terror attacks as "expressions of resistance."

Those "expressions" included the slaughter of 1,200 Israelis--men, women, children, even babies--along with mass kidnappings, sexual violence, and the burning of entire families alive.

This is not resistance. This is not justice. This is the spirit of murder given theological cover by a church that no longer recognizes the difference between standing against oppression and blessing evil.

If you're tempted to think these are extreme outliers, think again.

It was only last month we reported on West Hill United Church in Toronto, where the pulpit became the stage for a "drag clown" named Julian Munro. Mid-sermon, Munro painted clown makeup on his face as a "visual metaphor of transformation." But this was not transformation by the renewing of the mind (Romans 12:2)--it was transformation into self-expression, queerness, and personal identity, divorced entirely from the cross of Christ.

And let's not forget: this same church proudly kept Gretta Vosper, an atheist, in its pulpit for over a decade. She rejected belief in God, Christ, and the Bible, yet the denomination embraced her. That was the moment the lampstand was removed. Everything since--drag clowns, pride storytime for kids, and moral justifications for terrorism--is just the rotten fruit of that choice.

This is what theological deconstruction without repentance looks like:

Doubt God's Word - "The Bible doesn't really mean that."

Redefine sin - "Love means affirming all choices."

Replace the gospel with activism - Political causes become the new mission.

Celebrate what God calls evil - Sexual immorality, blasphemy, and even mass violence reframed as virtue.

The altar is no longer a place of surrender to God--it's a stage for political messaging, personal identity, and spectacle. The sheep are unfed. The wolves roam freely. And the shepherds cheer them on.

We must not see these stories as distant Canadian curiosities. They are warnings. Any church that trades holiness for cultural approval is on the same road, whether it knows it or not.

The Apostle Paul warned Timothy that a time would come when people "will not endure sound doctrine" but instead "turn their ears away from the truth" (2 Timothy 4:3-4). That time is now. The question is: will the true Church be silent while pulpits are turned into platforms for sin, or will we call the lost to the only true hope--Jesus Christ?

Because without Him, there is no flock. Only a crowd. And the crowd will cheer for anything.