There are many books that fall under the category of anti-Christian Nationalism or “It’s okay to vote Democrat” published by Big Eva. Joshua Butler is retreading this banality to save his career. Preston Sprinkle is also wading into this publishing niche with his book, .
Preston Sprinkle is one of the leading advocates of Side B Theology which teaches that homosexual and transvestite identity and desires are not sinful and therefore compatible with the Christian life.
Yet despite placating the Big Eva narrative, Christianity Today pans Sprinkle’s book in their review, calling him out for obvious hypocrisy in the process.
Unfortunately, this application portion is also the weakest part of Exiles. Sprinkle’s message is particularly confused on whether and how Christians can wield state power.
He says that whenever the church has gained power from the state, it “has never ended well”: “It’s almost always the case that when the church becomes too enmeshed with the power of the state, the upside-down kingdom of God is turned right side up. Christianity is simply not designed to occupy positions of worldly power without betraying its mission and witness.”
But that comes just a few pages after he praises Martin Luther King Jr. for using state power to end segregation—not only state-enforced inequality like segregated public schools or buses but private segregation in restaurants and other public accommodations. Similarly, Sprinkle is skeptical of “working in and through the demonically empowered authorities of earth to bring justice to the world,” likening it to “working with a dragon-empowered beast to defeat … the dragon.” Yet he supports passing laws to ban slavery and segregation and approvingly quotes King’s observation that “the law can’t make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me.”
Here, Christianity Today called out the inconsistent application of Preston Sprinkle’s political theology. Christians wielding power is bad unless it’s MLK, which is quite the hypocrisy as MLK was not a Christian. This article came before Christianity Today attacked John MacArthur for criticizing MLK.
On abortion, Sprinkle’s charge for churches to become more “hospitable and forgiving places for women with unwanted pregnancies” is disappointing as well. It’s right, so far as it goes. But it misses the work Christians are already doing to welcome and care for mothers who might otherwise seek abortions due to practical and financial hardship. It neglects the difficulty of balancing welcome with accountability in a culture that increasingly treats the two as mutually exclusive.
And it ignores complicating facts, like how higher-income women are more likely to have abortions, which suggests lack of financial support from Christians is not the only reason American women choose to abort. All this means that sincere Christians looking for a practical, nonpartisan path forward on abortion will find little actionable guidance in Exiles.
The article concludes by calling out Preston Sprinkle from a more conservative stance on abortion, dispelling the myth that poverty drives abortion rather than the female girl boss. So if that’s what Christianity Today thinks, how much worse is the actual book?
