“According to Anyabwile, true faith doesn’t vote for GOP candidates, it contends for reparations. True faith hires pastors based on melanin and diversity standards rather than biblical qualifications. True faith contends for open borders and manipulates the civil magistrate and so on and so forth. By making these matters issues of true faith, Anyabwile makes them issues of the gospel, and by doing so he has also created a sect or faction of sorts. And this sect holds that these issues are gospel issues.”
(Ed Dingess – Reformation Charlotte) Heresy, or heretic, are not words that I generally drop lightly these days. I used to, but one thing I’ve learned over the years is to approach heresy — especially within orthodox ranks — with a tremendous amount of precision and care. After several years of following Thabiti Anyabwile and the ideology that he continues to push, I believe it is safe to say that he has crossed the line of heresy.
Definition of Heresy
The Greek word for heresy is haireseis. According to a lexical analysis data, it has a range of meaning as follows: religious sect, sect, party, school, faction, opinion, dogma, dissension, false teaching, division. Peter uses this word to describe false teachers who would arise among the churches and secretly introduce destructive heresies. (2 Peter 2:1)
The word haireseis appears 9x in the NT. 6 of those 9 times it refers to sects: the Sadducees, Pharisees, the Nazarenes (Christians), the Way (Christianity), and finally, the sect that is spoken against everywhere (Christianity). This means that 50% of the time when it refers to a religious party, it is used to refer to Christianity. It is translated factions twice. In 1 Cor. 11:19 and Gal. 5:20. In both of those instances, the sense is negative. Finally, Peter uses this word to describe teachings that false teachers would secretly bring into the churches that he classified as destructive.
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