Corruption in the Church Should Make You Angry

I’ve just finished reading “Patriot,” the gripping posthumous memoir of Russian opposition leader and political prisoner Alexei Navalny. Not only is the book haunting in its own right, but I’ve been amazed at how many of Navalny’s insights should serve as a warning to the American evangelical church about the problem of corruption.

A virulent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Navalny was founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which produced multiple investigations into the dirty dealings of top Russian government officials. He attracted the support of millions of ordinary Russians, who also were sick of the status quo and enthusiastically backed both Navalny’s exposes and his personal political ambition to try to right the ship and return Russia to the people.

But courageous truth-telling can still cost you in post-U.S.S.R. Russia, and Navalny paid a heavy price for his. He collapsed on an airplane in 2020 after he was poisoned with a nerve agent, an attack he blamed on Putin. He was detained, arrested, sentenced and imprisoned — even put into the worst of personal solitary confinement cells — in a years-long series of trumped-up charges and sham trials. The government went after his family, too. And in February 2024, officials announced the “convict’s” death in an Arctic prison, allegedly from “combined diseases” and “an irregular heartbeat.”

Navalny’s true “crime” was hating corruption, exposing corruption and marshaling a lot of regular people to help him try to stop the corruption. He knew that when powerful leaders routinely lie, cover up and enrich themselves to the point of vulgarity, all at the expense of the powerless people they should be helping, you have to fight it — even if it costs you your life. As Navalny put it: “When corruption is the very foundation of a regime, those who battle it are extremists.”

What does this have to do with the American evangelical church?

Well, yesterday, G3 Ministries — an evangelical ministry emphasizing “the gospel, grace and the glory of God in Jesus Christ” and drawing thousands to its annual G3 Conference — announced that its president, pastor Josh Buice, suddenly had resigned. His church had discovered that for the past three years, he’d been operating “at least four anonymous social media accounts, two anonymous email addresses and two Substack platforms,” and he used them “to publicly and anonymously slander numerous Christian leaders,” including G3 Conference speakers and even fellow elders at the church he pastored, Pray’s Mill Baptist Church.

What’s more, Buice had been confronted about his stealth online life for two years, and lied that he was not behind the accounts. Finally, he admitted that he was behind the accounts, but only after “much pleading” and the presentation of “irrefutable evidence.” But the G3 statement offered assurance that “Josh has acknowledged his sin, expressed sorrow and asked for forgiveness.” He also deleted his actual “Josh Buice” X account, which you might think would be the appropriate venue to offer said apology, drip with genuine sorrow and request forgiveness from his thousands of now-disillusioned ministry customers. But no. Nothing says repentance like beating a hasty retreat from accountability.

Here’s the worst part of the statement: “While Josh has acknowledged with the elders that he is presently disqualified from serving as an elder, we do not believe at this time that his sin is necessarily disqualifying. Accordingly, his content will remain accessible via the G3 website and G3+.”

Really? How disgusting. The guy set up a bunch of fake online accounts to attack his own elders and conference speakers, lied about it for years, only admitted it after being cornered and forced into the truth, deleted his real account to avoid accountability where it’s warranted, and G3 doesn’t believe his sin is “necessarily disqualifying?” The message seems to be: Please don’t let Josh’s reprehensible actions stop you from taking in his content even now at G3, so you can still learn how to best give glory to God in your church, pastors! This would be hilarious if it weren’t so offensive.

Then, get this. A number of G3 leaders and those in its orbit posted their reactions to this statement on their (still-intact) X accounts, I assume because Josh’s wasn’t available. Guess what the constant theme was? That this terrible breach of ethics and demonstration of totally ungodly character from Josh is horrible and outrageous and totally corrupt? That such behavior from the head of G3 is a blight not just on the ministry, but on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ? Of course not! It was a “lament” fest. “I’m so sad,” they moaned. “I’m heartbroken.” “This is a sad day.” “I’m grieving.”

Give me a break.

I realize not every Christian is like me, and I’m sure that “sad” is among the emotions that some G3 supporters genuinely feel, but I’ve reported on enough evangelical scandals through the years as a religion reporter and Christian radio host to spot likely coordinated PR when I see it.

I’m sure these G3 guys aren’t happy about what Josh did, but are we really supposed to believe they’re in some kind of offline quasi-mourning state, weeping or stuck in the fetal position because Josh was an entrenched deceiver who covered up his actions for years? Intentionally or not, for the G3 men to put forward only a chorus of being “sad” and “grieving” has the effect of manipulation. It is verbiage that is meant to invoke pathos for Josh and G3. You are only to be depressed and gloomy about all this, Christian. Let the wahs! commence. Oh, do lament with us! the men implore the customers. Why is that?

Well, isn’t it obvious that by framing the scandal merely as “sad,” its customers will be swayed to suppress the more natural and understandable emotion of righteous anger at Josh’s corruption and, by extension, further confirm that there’s a despicable pattern of corruption among high-level shepherds in the evangelical church? To fail to direct people’s emotions certainly might not bode well for the now-Josh-free (oh, except for his ongoing content presence!) G3 Ministries. But rest assured. As its statement notes, “As we look to the ministry’s future, we will prioritize the publication of helpful biblical content that strengthens the church and avoids the dangerous celebrity culture that has unfortunately come to characterize so much of modern evangelicalism.”

Yes, we certainly need all these unknown, totally-non-celebrity G3 men — who will keep on offering you Josh’s instructive Christian content via the G3 portals, even after he deceived everyone for years and these guys knew about it, with some even revealing the details in direct online messages — to lecture us on the evils of celebrity culture in the church.

One organization defines corruption as “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.” Doesn’t that describe Josh Buice? He was a deceiver. He had all these fake accounts, and even as he wouldn’t say anything publicly as himself on certain issues, he was using fake accounts to follow and thumbs-up interact with and even direct-message people like me to air his thoughts on issues that sometimes directly contradicted what he said under his real name, if the outed true identities of these accounts are to be believed.

Who was the real Josh, then? The man on the Josh Buice account? Or the man airing totally opposite views via anonymous avatars that he carefully constructed and hid? This is corruption. People trusted him in a powerful ministry position. He gained some money from it, I’m sure. But he abused his power, and then -- poof! –- he disappeared from the Internet.

This kind of corruption should make Christians mad. Anger is the right and natural emotion when someone in a powerful position abused your trust for private gain, and it’s all nicely tied up in a carefully constructed statement, and those who knew what was up are now telling you to be “sad.”

Worse, this is part of a huge pattern we’re seeing inside evangelicalism. A guy becomes well-known for his preaching, builds a big church or a big ministry, he gets the book deals, he gets a radio show, he gets a TV show, he rocks the conference circuit, and then he falls. He lied, he committed adultery, he plagiarized, he abused his power, he embezzled, he fondled or molested someone, whatever it was. And a lot of the time, there is no real reckoning. Only a quick PR pivot to “forgiveness and healing” from him and his enablers as he plots his comeback and the sheep are mostly kept in the dark about the details. The show must go on, folks.

The scandals are so numerous, so frequent and so often heinous that the average Christian does one of two things. He either obediently “laments” and allows himself to be told how to feel and respond to the scandal du jour by the enabling celebrity structure, or he shrugs his shoulders and gives up. Says he doesn’t care. Says his one little voice doesn’t matter, anyway. What can you do? It’s just the way things are.

But as Christians, we have to have a higher standard than that. Some of the greatest moments in the history of the church, and some of the greatest spiritual breakthroughs, came when godly men of biblical conviction refused to stand for the corruption in the church anymore and got angry. Go back and read the accounts of how King Josiah and King Hezekiah destroyed idolatry. Read the history of Martin Luther’s confrontation of corruption in the church on his route to Wittenberg’s door. Read again how the Lord Jesus confronted religious corruption in Matthew 21:12-13 and Matthew 23.

Navalny referred to this phenomenon of paralysis against corruption as “staring at the tables” — the action of lower-level Russian government officials whom he accused of going along with the political corruption and just accepting a system based on “endless lies.” He asked, in one impassioned trial speech, “Why do you put up with these lies? Why do you just stare at the table? … The only moments in our lives that count for anything are those when we do the right thing.”

I believe we are in a make-or-break era for American evangelicalism, and that the corruption of so many of our shepherds is simply a very strong sign that the entire ship is sinking. Not the invisible church, mind you; the Lord always upholds and strengthens us, and the gates of hell will never prevail against us. But anyone who’s been in evangelicalism for more than a few decades can see the corruption and decay that has developed over time and is now settling all around us. Dare we just stare at the tables, or does the Lord call us to do more than that?

From my vantage point, this is not a moment to be “sad” that yet another major ministry leader behaved corruptly. It’s a moment to get angry, because anger at corruption — especially corruption in the church — is a godly thing! We should be angry that, once again, the name of Jesus Christ has been smeared and subjected to ridicule. Angry that God’s people have been used and discarded, over and over, to help men like this become evangelical stars with almost no real accountability after their fall. Angry that there is so much corruption among the high-status ministry men who ought to be the most godly people there are, men of impeccable integrity, and yet so many are frauds and enablers.

Corruption in the church shouldn’t “sadden” you so much as anger you, because it is heinous sin. It isn’t “sadness” that God will unleash on the ungodly at the end of days, is it? It’s wrath. But, like God, our anger at sin and corruption has to be a godly anger, one that is driven by the hatred of sin but also the unshakeable desire to see the Lord glorified by the way His people live. Especially those who are our pastors and ministry leaders.

Do I have all the answers or next steps in view? Certainly not. But corruption has been on my mind, since reading Navalny’s excellent memoir (which you should read), and I can’t help but apply some of his observations on Russian corruption to where we are as a church in America. Such is the way of fallen man, except the church is supposed to be full of fallen people who are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb!

The best move, it seems to me, is to pray. Really pray. Already, the Lord has been exposing so many of these corrupt men. Pray fervently that He would continue. But more than that, pray for His forgiveness, wisdom and power to break through all of evangelicalism’s corruption and revive His church once again in a fresh move of the Holy Spirit. Pray that we would love and obey the Lord Jesus like never before and develop the godly character He would have all of us exhibit (John 15:5). Pray that our pastors and ministry leaders would be true men of God. Pray the Lord would raise up new, godly men to replace the corrupt leaders that He is bringing down.

In his final entry to his prison diary, Navalny summed up how he was handling the potential prospects of dying for his anti-corruption crusade, and his answer summed it all up: “My job is to seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.”

In any fight against corruption, doesn’t that have to be the bottom line? Please revive us again, dear Lord. We are helpless to fight the corruption without You.

“O LORD, I have heard the report of You and Your work, O LORD, do I fear. In the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy.” Hab. 3:2