“My daughter was murdered by gender ideology.”

Those are the words of Abigail Martinez, a devout Christian widow in California, who watched the state take her daughter away when she refused to affirm her daughter’s transgender identity. Her daughter, Yaeli, was struggling with depression and her sexuality, so a school psychologist recommended she join the school’s LGBT club (without Abigail’s knowledge or consent). When Abigail discovered what was happening, she refused to affirm her daughter’s transition, so the state removed her from her home.

Activists told Martinez to hold a funeral for her daughter and celebrate the adoption of a “son.” They told her she’d never see Yaeli again if she kept talking about God.

Not long after this, Yaeli killed herself.

When Martinez later testified before Congress, she said her daughter’s death was a murder. Gender ideology killed her.

Now, ask yourself a question. How many Christian leaders and churches have been outspoken about the dangers of gender ideology? How many pastors will boldly and unflinchingly denounce homosexuality, gay “marriage,” transgenderism, and the whole array of LGBT sins? Even though there is a growing movement of courageous pastors speaking out, the reality is, over the last 20 years or so, many of them have been silent.

I’m a pastor. Over more than 20 years in ministry, I’ve watched a theology take root in American evangelicalism that trains Christians to be silent in the face of all kinds of cultural tyranny. It’s a theology that says the church is at her best when she’s losing. It says we should not seek cultural influence because that would only corrupt us. Further, it says we should not seek political power because that’s beneath us. Our only public duty is to do evangelism, because eternal destinies are all that really matters. The culture war is just a distraction. 

I call this loser theology, and it has done great damage to the modern church. Further, it harms society by causing Christians to disengage as the greatest conscience-shaping force in our culture. 

Loser theology is promoted by prominent advocates, though that’s not what they call it. Russell Moore, one of the most influential evangelical voices of the last decade and former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm, wrote in his 2015 book that “the Bible Belt is teetering toward collapse, and I say let it fall.” He argued the church is most faithful when she exists as a “persecuted minority,” never a “moral majority.” He says Christians are better witnesses as cultural losers rather than winners. 

That may sound humble, but it isn’t. It’s simply waving the white flag of surrender to cultural powers who will eagerly destroy us if given the chance. This theology is custom-built to explain away defeat after defeat, training a generation of Christians to lose and feel good about it. Loser theology regards retreat as a virtue.

When loser theology is a dominant motif of modern evangelicalism, what do you think will happen? We don’t have to guess. The same year Moore’s book came out (2015), the Supreme Court invented a right to “gay marriage” in its Obergefell v. Hodges decision. In the six years that followed, public support for gay marriage skyrocketed to 70 percent. During that same period, LGBTQ identification among Gen Z nearly doubled.

Let that sink in. Roughly one-fifth of an entire generation of children who were seduced into sexual perversion in the immediate aftermath of Obergefell. The culture didn’t just suddenly change its mind. Rather, people changed their minds because powerful people signaled this was the new morality. 

And where was the church? She was largely silent because many Christians believed we should just focus on soul-winning rather than culture-warring. Thus, LGBT activism marched on, unopposed.

None of this happened because the culture simply changed its mind. Rather, it happened because the church had abandoned its post as the most powerful conscience-shaping institution in the world.

Obergefell has already done its damage, and it will be very difficult to get that toothpaste back in the tube. In the wake of Obergefell, Christian parents are now losing custody battles over their kids’ gender identities because their churches never gave them a theological framework for resistance, only permission to suffer and lose. And when the church loses her spine, the sheep are left without protection. 

Other battles are ongoing and have yet to be settled where Christians need to assert a strong, prophetic voice. As Islam is already taking Europe hostage, its footprint in America continues to expand. Is it too late? Will we lose this battle also? We certainly will if the church is convinced that our only job is to ignore the culture and just do evangelism. And if we lose the culture, we will be ruled by a jihadist religious system that has no scruples against wielding power to crush its enemies. That’s what Islam is. It’s a system of domination with a religious veneer. They will not simply coexist with us if we let them win.

So, should we let them win so we can be losers for Jesus? If so, how else might we choose to lose? How about family courts, school boards, and city councils? The pattern repeats across every civic institution because the best people to hold the line have been taught for two generations that line-holding is somebody else’s job.

Here’s the part that should bother you most, whether you’re a churchgoer or not. This isn’t happening because Christians are cowards. They’re not. It’s happening because many of them have been discipled to regard passivity as a form of holiness. They’ve been trained to think losing is “the way of the cross” because “Jesus calls us to be weak.” 

These statements sound pious, but they profoundly misunderstand scripture. Yes, when we are weak, he is strong, but scripture never commands us to pursue weakness as an end in itself.

I’ve sat across from men and women in my office who suppress every instinct toward leadership and strength because they’ve absorbed the idea that ambition is sin and confidence is pride. I’ve watched churches refuse to speak plainly about cultural evil because plain speech might be regarded as unkind. This is no accident. It was discipled into people, one sermon at a time.

In short, some Christians are afraid of winning because we’ve been conditioned to believe power can only be used for evil purposes, never as a force for good. That’s not true. To be sure, scripture is full of warnings about the corrupting potential of power, but Jesus also promises to give his people power, and he expects us to wield it righteously (Acts 1:8).

Further, there’s a difference between refusing to worship power and refusing to use it at all. The same Christ who died on a cross now reigns at the right hand of the Father, and scripture says every knee will bow to Him — kings and nations included. That’s not a losing vision. The men and women who built the church that shaped Western civilization understood this. They didn’t do it by convincing themselves that losing was the point.

If you’ve ever sat in a pew wondering why your church seems allergic to contesting anything, or why every act of Christian courage gets treated with more suspicion than every act of Christian retreat, that’s not your imagination, nor is it biblical faithfulness. It’s loser theology. It’s a theology of defeat that’s presented as humility. And it’s long past time we reject it and step into the arena where we belong.

Loser Theology: Why the Weak Will Not Inherit the Earth is currently available for pre-order at losertheology.com. Ships August 4.

Michael Clary is the lead pastor of Christ the King Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, co-founder of King’s Domain ministries, and author of “God’s Good Design: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Guide to Human Sexuality” (Reformation Zion, 2023). Michael graduated from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2008 with a Masters of Divinity. He is a contributing scholar for the Center for Baptist Leadership and has written articles for American Reformer, Founder’s Ministry, King’s Domain, Sola Ecclesia, and on his own Substack. He hosts the "Plain Speech Podcast" and co-hosts the "Current Reality Podcast." He and his wife, Laura, live in Cincinnati with their four children. Find him on social media here.