AI Is A Gateway To The Welfare State
October 6, 2026 |
Keith Giles
Protestantism loves to tell itself a heroic origin story. The brave reformers stood up to corruption, reclaimed scripture, and restored faith to the people. And sure—there’s truth in that. But what came next wasn’t reform. It was fragmentation. And not the noble kind.
Protestant Christianity didn’t fracture because people loved Jesus too much. It fractured because people loved being right, comfortable, and in control—and they baptized those preferences as conviction.
Once the monopoly cracked, Protestantism discovered a dangerous freedom: you could leave.
And if you could leave, you could also start over—with your theology, your rules, your leadership, and most importantly, your authority intact.
Every disagreement became a justification for a new denomination. Not because the gospel demanded it, but because compromise did not.
Music styles.
Women speaking.
Alcohol.
Politics.
Race.
Who gets to decide who’s “really” saved.
Each split was framed as faithfulness. None were framed as ego.
There are more than 70 Baptist denominations in the United States, depending on how you count conventions, fellowships, and associations. Same Bible. Same Jesus. Same immersion ritual. Same altar calls.
Different committees.
At some point, “doctrinal purity” stops being a serious claim and starts sounding like a branding strategy.
These weren’t dramatic theological revolutions. Many were petty, cultural, or power-driven disputes that calcified into institutions. Once money, buildings, and leadership were involved, reconciliation stopped being spiritual and started being inconvenient.
If you think this critique is exaggerated, remember that entire church traditions once treated dancing as a moral threat.
Not exploitation.
Not greed.
Not abuse.
Dancing.
The logic was simple: if something made you uncomfortable, it must offend God. The town in Footloose wasn’t satire—it was documentary. Churches split, disciplined members, and drew hard lines over cultural anxiety, then called it holiness.
This wasn’t discernment. It was fear with a Bible verse taped to it.
Most denominational splits weren’t about truth. They were about preference masquerading as obedience.
“I need a church that aligns with my convictions” often means:
“I need a church that agrees with me.”
Discomfort became persecution.
Challenge became heresy.
And leaving became the highest expression of faith.
Multiply that impulse over five centuries and you don’t get a movement shaped by Jesus—you get an ecosystem designed to protect the self.
Before anyone reaches for the comment box: yes, some divisions were necessary. Slavery. Segregation. Abuse. When institutions choose power over people, separation can be survival.
But even there, the Protestant instinct was rarely repentance. It was rebranding.
New signage instead of repair.
New denominations instead of reckoning.
The pattern never changed—only the justification did.
Here’s the uncomfortable question Protestantism never asks:
What kind of God requires this much division to feel defended?
Jesus didn’t start a denomination.
He didn’t outline governance charts.
He didn’t demand doctrinal precision before compassion.
He taught a way of being—enemy love, shared bread, downward mobility—and Protestantism responded by asking, “Okay, but who’s in charge?”
A faith that endlessly fractures over preference eventually reveals the god it serves. Not the God of transformation—but the god of self-protection.
And that god is very petty.
