Political Forfeiture

The After Party Encourages the Church to Capitulate to the Sexual Left

Released in time for what will surely be a tumultuous and divisive election season, The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics is a six-part, video-based curriculum developed by Curtis Chang, David French, and Russell Moore. The trio maintains they don’t intend to tell Christians what to think where political positions are concerned, but rather how to navigate relational spaces where political positions differ.

Moore says that tensions among churches today are not over the theological, doctrinal, or ecclesiological issues of yesterday, but rather are due to what he characterizes as the “partisan mind,” which, he says, “undermines the claims of the cross by drawing boundaries … in ways not defined by Christ.”

Reason for Surveillance

Early on, the curriculum developers hit a roadblock because evangelical donors had little interest in funding it. Secular, left-wing foundations, however, have opened their purses quite liberally. In May 2022, Rockefeller Philanthropic Advisors announced that The After Party would be among 32 beneficiaries sharing $10 million to “support local leaders, networks, and community groups who are addressing divisive forces in their neighborhoods, towns, and counties.” As part of the New Pluralists project, the aim of The After Party is to “transition the conversation away from polarizing topics at the national stage to the local context of loving one’s neighbor.”

While loving one’s neighbor is commendable, it should be noted that this same grant is funding “Out in the Open,” which seeks to create better visibility of rural LGBTQ+ people, along with several other left-wing initiatives. This same benefactor in 2019 awarded a whopping $100 million to the “Collaborative for Gender and Reproductive Equity,” an initiative dedicated to safeguarding abortion and “gender-affirming” care for youth. The After Party has also received funding from The Hewlett Foundation, which is the second-largest private donor to Planned Parenthood, and it lists as one of its partners One America Movement, which is also associated with funding abortion and promoting LGBTQ sexuality. The curriculum is being offered free to churches.

Most Glaring Oversight

Given the political leanings of The After Party’s financial backers, it isn’t surprising that we discover in it a conspicuous absence of two things: (1) a stand affirming the sanctity of human life and (2) any discussion—or even mention—of the very issues which are breaking up churches, namely, biblical marriage and sexual morality and identity. Given that all three founders hold professional positions that place them in dialogue with pastors and denominational and seminary leaders, it seems safe to assume they understand the degree to which churches are splitting over these matters. Yet, in apparent capitulation to the Spirit of the Age, The After Party is deafeningly silent on just these issues. Such silence is, at best, cowardly, and to encourage the church to remain silent on them is to encourage Christians to surrender their political voices to sexually profligate and anti-Christian forces.

Chang lauds the civil rights movement as an example of Christians demonstrating political resistance for the common good. He’s right about that. But he and his After Party co-activists seem to have forgotten that resistance is by definition partisan and divisive. As the sexual revolution rages on, division along sexual lines will inevitably reveal which church leaders are guarding the faith once for all delivered to the saints and are resisting the  sexually predatory Spirit of the Age, and which leaders are not.