Participants in the year-long program in which I serve, The Falls Church Anglican Fellows, assist the church through leadership of youth small groups. This past weekend, I was blessed with the opportunity to serve at the youth program’s yearly retreat, “Breakaway.”
At Breakaway, I witnessed firsthand the pain inflicted on younger generations by secular identity ideologies as well as the hope and relief found in authentic biblical identity.
A three hour bus ride away from suburban Washington in Rockbridge, Virginia, Breakaway is by far the largest, most anticipated, and most loved event by students and youth ministry leaders alike. It offers students the chance to unplug for a weekend, to “break-away” from their daily routines, and to focus on the Gospel and their community. The retreat spanned from Friday the 14th through Monday the 17th giving the students two full days and two travel days. Six churches from the Anglican and Presbyterian traditions participated.
Retreat speaker Skyler Flowers drew from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. Flowers, a contributor to The Gospel Coalition and Rooted Ministry, serves as a youth pastor in Oxford, Mississippi. Themed “I Am,” his talks specifically focused on identity.
Speculation from behind a screen on how relativism, progressive ideology, and social media harm high school students is one thing. It is entirely different witnessing the reactions of students, hearing their testimonies and their perspectives on identity.
Current high school students are within the generation most feeling the effect of progressive identity ideologies and social media standards. When we discuss how these ideologies affect the future of our country, we are talking about the high school students at Breakaway.
In his talks, Flowers focused on Jesus’ counter cultural ideas. Flowers stressed that it should strike us that Jesus says “Blessed are the poor… those who mourn… those who are persecuted.” Moreover, the reward promised is not wealth, status, power, or worldly goods. He preached that we are created as images of God, an image that is not of this world, for higher purposes. He preached that we are beloved sons and daughters of the Creator of the world. Most importantly, he preached that none of these blessings or unconditional love were earned by our own works. They are found in Christ.
The latter had a profound effect upon student participants. On the Monday that we departed, campers had a brief opportunity to share their stories.
One high school senior spoke of intrusive thoughts and struggles overcome through an overpowering acceptance and love from his church community. Another student mentioned incomparable peace found in accepting her place as God’s beloved rather than constantly striving to impress or satisfy others. Additionally, one student even stated that he “hates” God, although he said he enjoyed his weekend of Christian community and did not feel the same hatred when hearing about God’s love and biblical identity.
In efforts to replace God, we argue that status can bring us happiness, that wealth can solve all of our problems, or that our lives would be fulfilled if we and everyone around us would accept our new self-identified sexual orientation or gender identity. Relationships, anxiety, loneliness, and achievement were all matters of concern raised by the high school students.
Politicians, academics, and think tanks fight over identity to the point that, today, they can seem trite and ineffective. But we must not forget that the battle is not merely over ideology, opinion, or partisan squabble. The struggle is not only in older generations.
Ideas about identity affect children’s lives. Many secular visions contest to define the good life, whether goodness itself even exists, and our purpose as humans. These differing visions of goodness and humanity affect the high school students attending Breakaway.
If Christians are to instill hope and peace amidst a prevailing culture hungry to establish absolute, indiscriminate autonomy, we must continue to speak up about where our true source of identity is found. After all, the many philosophical ideologies of identity attempt to offer the completeness that can only be found in the image of God.
Most importantly, rather than mere rebuttal to secular identity, we must preach the hope, goodness, and love that flows from God’s good created order.
Comment by ELC on February 20, 2025 at 8:10 am
As a Christian on the LGBT spectrum, I see some kernels of wisdom in this article while other sections of it miss the point. When we preach the teachings of Jesus and show abundant love with others that reflects those teachings, we can succeed in positively influencing those who see themselves as sexual minorities. That may result in them deciding to change their lifestyle through celibacy, but their sexual desires are unlikely to change.
At the same time, when the article brings up secular influences as a determiner in how we see ourselves, that argument goes both ways–while youth can be influenced to a degree in identifying a certain way, secular influences (namely the current culture war) influence straight folks in the pews in how they mostly avoid any contact with members of the gay community–and where is Christ’s love in that??
Comment by Gary Bebop on February 20, 2025 at 11:44 am
Rapprochement with the darkness is a dangerous thing. Many of us are too weak in our emotional and spiritual composition to cope with the spectrum of allurement. Of course there are exceptions. But don’t become fools who think the darkness is harmless. For some of us, repentance must be a humble, daily act of contrition.
Comment by Dan on February 20, 2025 at 4:05 pm
Our true identity is found in Christ alone. We cannot be hyphenated Christians without being double minded. Providing these students with a strong identity in Christ will enable them to both withstand the culture and reach out to it to spread the Gospel to all. We also need to enable them to show love, compassion and mercy to all while counseling them that love does not mean endorsement, but it does mean being in relationship with others different from ourselves while maintaining a Christian identity and witness.
I am struck by the fact that progressives these days, either in politics or Christianity, seem to lack the joy that comes with the assurance of salvation. They always have some bete noire they are railing against and are quick to demonize those who have a different view than theirs. It must be an exhausting and depressing existence. I pray that these youth will be able show such as these that there is a better way.
Comment by Loren J Golden on February 21, 2025 at 1:19 am
“As a Christian on the LGBT spectrum…”
Which defines you, ELC? Christ or the LGBT spectrum? They cannot both define you, for they are at enmity with one another: Christ celebrates and glorifies the Father and calls us in His name (through the Apostle Paul) to “crucify the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5.24), whereas the “LGBT spectrum” celebrates and glorifies the flesh with its passions and desires. And as the Lord Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted wot the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” (Mt. 6.24, Lk. 16.13) Or in our context, you cannot serve God and the LGBT ideology.
As the Apostle Paul elsewhere says, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” (Rom. 8.7-8) This is certainly true of those who adopt the LGBT ideology, of which the “LGBT spectrum” is part and parcel, for each of those four letters (and all the others that have been tacked on since) represents a form of sexual immorality, to which the Lord Jesus is most certainly opposed. To again quote the Apostle Paul, “Flee sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (I Cor. 6.18-20)
For those caught up in sexual sin, it is not enough for them to “change their lifestyle through celibacy.” Sexual sin is not a matter of one’s lifestyle, but of one’s heart, and as the Prophet Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17.9) All sin begins as desire in one’s own heart. As James, the brother of the Lord, wrote, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” (Jas. 1.13-15) And as the Lord Jesus Himself said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mk. 7.20-22, Mt. 15.18-20)
But what, then, are we to do with the wicked desires we find in our hearts? As the Lord (again through the Apostle Paul) tells us, we are to put them to death—to mortify them, as the King James Version puts it. “If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death (KJV: mortify) the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Rom. 8.13-15) And again, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death (KJV: mortify) therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away.” (Col. 3.2-8)
But what of all those who have tried to put their sins to death and have failed? Truly, truly, I say to you, if you rely upon your own strength to put your wicked desires to death, you will fail. You cannot do it on your own. “Their sexual desires are unlikely to change,” because they do not trust in God and do not seek His face and do not seek His transformative power on a regular, consistent basis. Or they seek His transformative power for its own sake and do not make Him their treasure. “For surely it is not angels (the Lord Jesus) helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham (that is, those who have the faith of Abraham). Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. … For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Heb. 2.16-18, 4.15-16) The power of God to transform lives for eternity belongs only to those who are found in Christ and find their identity only in Him—and not in a man-made ideology that can only lead to death and despair—and who live out that identity in their daily lives.
So then, I ask you again, which defines you, Christ or the LGBT spectrum?
Comment by Wilson R. on February 21, 2025 at 1:40 pm
When I read this column, my first thought was, “Well, who WOULDN’T agree that our primary identity should be as followers of Christ rather than the culture around us?” That’s sort of Christianity 101. Early Christians defined themselves as in the world but not of the world. And the examples students cited of societal influences that their Christian identity helped them reject–popularity, success, status, power, materialism–are ones that liberal Christians would wholeheartedly agree on.
And yet I somehow knew that this discussion would quickly pivot away from those points to the issue of sexuality and what the author calls “progressive identity ideologies” (which, I presume, is a reference to gender identity and sexual orientation, although this isn’t explicit).
Partly, I suspected this would happen because that seems to be the one issue that bloggers and commenters here care about most — which is a huge problem for anyone trying to introduce others into what a Christian life is about, because it so narrowly focuses on just one aspect of that life.
And partly it was because of the author’s unsupported assertion that current students are the ones most feeling the effect of progressive identity ideologies. That statement doesn’t align with the examples of negative cultural influences cited by the students themselves–which strongly suggests to me that these promising young people are recognizing that some of the worst cultural influences that compete for their identity involve things that “traditionalists” hardly if ever mention.
For every believer who identifies themself as “a Christian on the LGBT spectrum,” there are tens of thousands who, though they don’t stop to think of themselves this way, would register on the “materialist spectrum” or the “Christian American patriot/Christian Nationalist” spectrum. The bulk of the evangelical movement in this country has offered up its Christian identity on the altar of political power–in rebellion against everything the New Testament teaches about what it means to follow Jesus.
It’s worth remembering Paul’s message to the Philippians—all proud citizens of Rome due to their status as a Roman colony—that their true citizenship is in heaven and that they should behave in ways that show the secular world that they are a colony of heaven, not merely a colony of Rome.
The young people quoted in this article seem highly interested in that idea, which I find encouraging for the future. Hopefully they will absorb the lesson that the traditional church during my lifetime never much embraced: that the gospel is always countercultural to every human culture, because human cultures inevitably are build around power, status, and pecking orders.
Comment by Tyler Williams on February 22, 2025 at 7:09 pm
Honestly quite disgusting and sad how so many churches and religious people have been psyoped into supporting the LGBTs and their hedonistic agenda. The Christian left is much like the real left, only focuses on the universalist and humanistic values of the religion and not on everything else which goes against their ideology. All religions and belief systems in the world are against the modern left and their degeneracy, which is why they always discard things about the religion they don’t like, as it would show that their ideals are not based on any actual logic and reasoning, only pleasure and avoidance of responsibility. Hopefully we will see people waking up from this madness soon, wokeness has infected nearly everything.
Comment by Tim Ware on February 26, 2025 at 1:02 am
And here’s the problem, perfectly illustrated by the picture accompanying this article…a video screen, guitars, and a stage.
Comment by Loren J Golden on February 27, 2025 at 9:16 pm
…as if a traditional liturgy (written in the church bulletin), hymnals, a chancel choir (with paid soloists), robed pastors (processing with the choir at the beginning of the service), and a pipe organ were guarantees of a healthy, vital, faithful congregation?
To be sure, none of these things is bad in themselves, but together they also describe a great many congregations in the failing mainline Protestant denominations.