Beware of Secular Sermons

As Christians, we often think of sermons as something exclusive to Sunday morning church services. We view sermons as a special type of expository exhortation, in which a pastor, standing in a pulpit and with a Bible open, delivers a spiritual instruction to a congregation. But this limited view prevents us from recognizing the countless other types of “secular sermons” that are being preached to us daily through our screens, advertisements, and entertainment.

Writer and researcher Kevin Simler offers a usefully broader definition of a sermon, which he describes as “any message designed to change or reinforce what a group of people value.”¹ By this definition, sermons happen everywhere, from Super Bowl commercials to Netflix shows, from social media feeds to corporate mission statements.

What makes these secular sermons particularly influential is how they create what Simler calls “common knowledge.” This isn’t merely information that we individually absorb; it’s an understanding that we know everyone else has also absorbed.

Think about a popular TV show that portrays religious believers as backward or hypocritical. The power isn’t just in how it might influence you personally but the fact that you know millions of others watched the same portrayal. You know that they know, and they know that you know. This shared awareness creates a powerful network effect that amplifies the message far beyond its initial impact.

Or consider when a major athletic brand releases a campaign featuring everyday people overcoming obstacles through perseverance and determination. The power of the message stems not just from inspiring you personally to purchase their products (though that is a main goal) but from your knowledge that millions of others also absorbed the same aspirational message. This shared understanding creates an unspoken social consensus that personal willpower and “just doing it” are the primary solutions to life’s challenges. The campaign functions as a secular sermon precisely because everyone knows everyone else has heard it, reinforcing individualistic values in ways that private, targeted advertising never could.

The moment we recognize this broader definition of sermons, we begin to see that our culture is filled with competing pulpits, each vying for influence over our values, priorities, and beliefs. A pastor may speak for an hour on Sunday, but secular voices are preaching to us for the remaining 167 hours of the week.

Here are seven secular sermons you might have encountered this week without even realizing it.

1. The Instagram Lifestyle Gospel

Scroll through Instagram for just five minutes and you’ll hear the persistent sermon that fulfillment comes through aesthetic perfection and curated experiences. The meticulously staged “day in my life” montages and sunset beach meditation posts preach a doctrine of self-actualization through consumption and experience-collecting. This secular sermon quietly challenges the Christian understanding that true joy comes from a never-ending relationship with God (Ps. 16:11) rather than endlessly collecting picture-perfect moments (Matt. 6:19–21).

2. The Corporate Brand Purpose Statement

Companies increasingly position themselves as moral authorities with purpose-driven messaging. Whether it’s a coffee chain promising community or an outdoor retailer preaching environmental stewardship, these brands are delivering sermons about what matters most in life. While the wording varies from one corporation to the next, the underlying message remains the same: ethical consumption is the primary way to effect change in the world.

3. The Algorithm’s Personalization Homily

Every time you open Netflix, Spotify, or your news feed, the recommendation algorithms deliver a sermon tailored specifically to you. The message it’s sending is that your preferences are sovereign and your individual taste should be your primary guide. This personalization subtly undermines the Christian notion of submitting to truth outside ourselves and joining a community with shared values rather than one based on “egocasting.”²

A pastor may speak for an hour on Sunday, but secular voices are preaching to us for the remaining 167 hours of the week.

4. The Celebrity Interview Confession

Late-night talk shows and podcast interviews with celebrities regularly feature intimate personal revelations framed as courageous acts of authenticity. These confessional moments preach that sharing one’s struggles publicly is the path to healing and that growth requires vulnerability but not accountability. This secular liturgy subtly replaces the biblical model of confession within community (James 5:16), transforming repentance into mere public disclosure.

5. The Superhero Film’s Redemptive Violence

The latest blockbuster likely contained an implicit sermon about how the world is ultimately saved through the right application of force by a morally righteous individual or group. This narrative of redemptive violence stands in stark contrast to the Christian story of a Savior who conquers through self-sacrifice and who commands love of enemies (Matt. 5:44).

6. The Health and Wellness Scripture

From supplement companies to fitness influencers, the wellness industry preaches a gospel of salvation through physical optimization. These sermons promote the idea that with enough discipline and the right products, we can achieve bodily transcendence and avoid suffering. Their not-so-subtle message is a direct challenge to the Christian understanding of various aspects of our physical life, such as mortality, respect for the elderly, and hope in a bodily resurrection (1 Cor. 15:42–44).

7. The Political Talk Show Liturgy

Whether left-leaning or right-leaning, political commentators deliver powerful sermons about who belongs in the moral community and who stands outside it. These secular liturgies form our understanding of neighbor-love more effectively than many Sunday sermons. Many ignore the commands of Jesus, such as the call to love even our enemies, and even attempt to reframe anti-Christian positions as biblical requirements.

Recognizing the Sermons Around Us

What makes these secular sermons so effective is that they rarely announce themselves as moral or spiritual instruction. Instead, they slip past our defenses through entertainment, convenience, or utility. As the late media critic Neil Postman warned, these messages can profoundly shape our theological plausibility structures—what we consider reasonable to believe about God, ourselves, and the world.

But we are not helpless to respond to these messages.

The first and most necessary step in countering their influence is simply recognizing them for what they are. When we understand that we’re being preached to through our screens, products, and entertainment, we can begin to critically engage with these messages rather than passively absorbing them.

Paul encouraged believers to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). In our media-saturated age, this means actively identifying and interrogating the secular sermons bombarding us daily. What values are being preached through your favorite shows? What vision of the good life is your social media feed subtly endorsing? What doctrines about human nature are embedded in the news you consume?

By naming these messages and examining them in light of Scripture, we reclaim our spiritual discernment. We’re called not just to avoid being “conformed to this world” but to be “transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2). This renewal happens when we recognize competing gospels, actively counter them with biblical truth, and surround ourselves with fellow believers who help us see the water we’re swimming in.

The secular pulpits may be louder and more numerous, but they are not more powerful than the timeless truth of God’s word. As we become attuned to the sermons around us, we can respond with wisdom rather than being unwitting disciples of the culture’s ever-changing gospels.

Notes:

1. https://meltingasphalt.com/here-be-sermons/
2. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-age-of-egocasting

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by Joe Carter (MDiv, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) is a senior writer for the Gospel Coalition, the author of The Life and Faith Field Guide for Parents, the editor of the NIV Spiritual Habits Bible, and coauthor of How to Argue Like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History’s Greatest Communicator. 

Joe is a contributing author to Scrolling Ourselves to Death: Reclaiming Life in a Digital Age, edited by Brett McCracken and Ivan Mesa. He also serves as an associate pastor at McLean Bible Church in Arlington, Virginia.

 

Bugs Bunny at 85: Bugs Reflected the Culture, Politics of the Times

I know, I know. We have been in the midst of a blizzard of important domestic and world events this
summer, from the final week of the Supreme Court’s term with a slew of important decisions to the fight over the “Big, Beautiful Bill” to the war in the Middle East and the Russian/Ukrainian conflict. We also just celebrated the 249th birthday of the United States.   

But in the midst of all this, we should not forget the 85th birthday of that beloved all-American trickster and practical joker, Bugs Bunny. A look back at the original cartoon series shows just how much that rabbit reflected the culture, the politics, and the patriotism of the times and how some of his antics wouldn’t play well for the woke generation of today.  

On July 27, 1940, the wisecracking, mouthy bunny with a Brooklyn accent got his official start in the Looney Tunes classic “A Wild Hare,” in which he bamboozles and confuses the most unsuccessful and hapless hunter in American history, Elmer Fudd, for the first of many times.  

For the past 85 years, in addition to Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny has been trouncing, defeating, and outtalking a host of surly but memorable characters, including Yosemite Sam, the roughest, toughest hombre east of the Pecos; Porky “Th-Th-Th-That’s all, folks” Pig; and Daffy Duck. Elmer Fudd never managed to catch that wascally wabbit, and the same goes for Daffy Duck, who was never able to outsmart Bugs or get the better of him.  

Trouncing, defeating, and outtalking a host of surly characters? Gosh, who does that remind you of in today’s political world? 

There are even two cartoons, “Operation: Rabbit” (1952) and “To Hare is Human” (1956), in which Wile E. Coyote is up against Bugs Bunny instead of his usual opponent, the Road Runner, who is on vacation, with the same disastrous results. Wile E. Coyote actually speaks in that second cartoon, something he does not do in any other appearance, except by holding up a sign, usually about something stupid that he just did. 

Don’t you wish there really was a company like ACME, Wile E. Coyote’s go-to company for equipment? I know Amazon comes close, but it just doesn’t have the same expansive inventory as ACME of bombs, cannons, TNT, anvils, missiles, rocket sleds, and every other kind of fiendish device our fevered imaginations can imagine. 

While kids have always liked these cartoons, they were really designed by adults for adults, since they were shown in movie theaters before the feature films. The original cartoons contain many politically incorrect scenes that these days would get them instantly criticized by the “woke police,” another reason they remain so timeless.   

While Bugs Bunny was the main star, he had a host of other colleagues who appeared in other cartoons, including Pepe le Pew, Foghorn Leghorn, and Sylvester the cat, to name just a few. Besides Bugs Bunny, I have to admit that Foghorn Leghorn, the loud, blustering, overbearing rooster, is one of my other favorites characters, in large part because he resembles so many of the politicians one encounters here in the nation’s capital.   

Speaking of politicians, you shouldn’t miss “Ballot Box Bunny” (1951), where Bugs runs against Yosemite Sam for mayor of a small town. They play every trick you can imagine on each other to try to win—not too different from the tricks we see in real campaigns today—and Yosemite Sam’s campaign promises alone are worth watching. Bugs and Sam spend so much time attacking each other that, in the end, they are both beaten by a dark horse—in this case, literally a dark horse. Fortunately, neither of them is prosecuted by an overzealous U.S. Justice Department. 

While Daffy Duck may have never gotten the better of Bugs Bunny, he was the first American duck to go into space to battle aliens in 1953, long before Harrison Ford in “Star Wars,” when he fought Marvin the Martian in “Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century,” a takeoff on the “Buck Rogers” serial that premiered in movie houses in 1939. One of the cleverest of the Daffy Duck/Bugs Bunny confrontations also premiered in 1953. In “Duck Amuck,” an unidentified animator keeps changing Daffy’s shape, location, and even his voice. Of course, it turns out in the end that the animator is Bugs Bunny. 

But getting back to the woke police, there was actually criticism of Pepe le Pew as supposedly glorifying a sexual harasser and of Elmer Fudd for carrying a gun. In fact, the idiots at HBO Max decreed that Fudd had to be gun-free in their reboot of Looney Tunes in 2020. Just more proof that liberals really have no sense of humor, something the Babylon Bee proves every day. 

Bugs Bunny was a star for Warner Bros., the Hollywood studio started in 1923 by the four Warner brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack. The animators at Warner Bros. created 167 brilliant and memorable Bugs Bunny cartoons during the golden age of American animation. I don’t count more recently produced Bugs Bunny cartoons, all of which lack the comedy, wit, and cleverness of the originals. These were cartoons created by adults for adults with a mischievous sense of humor. 

While Bugs Bunny always came out on top, he was not infallible. There were actually three cartoons that were takeoffs on the Aesop fairy tale about the race between the tortoise and the hare: “Tortoise Beats Hare” (1941), “Tortoise Wins by a Hare” (1943), and “Rabbit Transit” (1947). In each one, the tortoise gets the better of Bugs Bunny, including “Rabbit Transit,” in which Bugs Bunny actually wins the race but then is arrested by the police for speeding.   

Whenever he went on vacation, Bugs Bunny always took a wrong turn in Albuquerque. Having been to “Albukoykee,” as Bugs Bunny pronounces it, I can understand why. Those wrong turns led him to some dangerous places, including the middle of a bull ring in Mexico in “Bully for Bugs” (1953) or Nazi Germany in “Herr Meets Hare” (1945), where he confronted Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göering, and Bugs imitates Joseph Stalin.  

Speaking of Nazi Germany, Bugs did go to war like a lot of Hollywood during World War II. He became an honorary master sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps after he appeared in a Marine Corps dress blue uniform in “Super-Rabbit” (1943). Some of these wartime cartoons like “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips” (1944) have been “banned” by oversensitive cartoon channels because of the racial or ethnic stereotypes used at the time. Bugs Bunny even got drafted during the Korean War in “Forward March Hare” (1952) when he got his neighbor’s draft notice by mistake. And no, he did not abscond to Canada to avoid service. 

If you love opera, you can’t beat the Bugs Bunny versions. Turns out that the directors and animators were all big opera fans. So, we have “The Rabbit of Seville” (1950) and “What’s Opera, Doc?” (1957), where Bugs and Elmer Fudd give us their versions of great Rossini and Wagner operas. You have to be an opera fan to get the joke at the end of “The Rabbit of Seville,” which was a takeoff of Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.” At the end, Bugs drops Elmer Fudd into a huge cake that is labeled “The Marriage of Figaro,” which was Mozart’s version of “The Barber of Seville.” 

And what better way is there to learn about English or American history than watching the story of Robin Hood in “Rabbit Hood” (1945) or the American Revolution in “Bunker Hill Bunny” (1950). Or if you love the great American pastime, don’t miss “Baseball Bugs” (1946). Bugs Bunny takes on the Gas-House Gorillas in the Polo Grounds in New York City, the original home of both the Mets and the Yankees, playing all of the positions. He wins the game when he makes the ultimate play—catching a flyball at the top of the “Umpire” State Building, which he reaches by taking a cab from the baseball field to the skyscraper.  

There are many well-known lines from famous movies that have entered our culture, including from great classics like “Casablanca”: “I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here,” or “Round up the usual suspects,” and the Bugs Bunny cartoons have those, too.   

All of the voices in the original cartoons were voiced by the brilliant Mel Blanc, probably the most talented and versatile voice that ever came out of Hollywood. One of his most repeated lines as Bugs Bunny besides “What’s up, Doc?” is “Of course, you realize, this means war.” Or “He don’t know me very well.”  

And one of Bugs Bunny’s commonly uttered derisions, “What a maroon,” comes to mind fairly often as I watch a slew of liberal politicians and left-wing activists at work in Washington each day. 

So, happy birthday, Bugs Bunny. You may be 85 years old, but you will always remain young in our hearts and a hare-raiser on the screen.   

That’s all folks!  

by Hans von Spakovsky @HvonSpakovsky

Hans von Spakovsky is the manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. He is the host of Heritage’s "Case in Point" podcast.

 

Scottie Scheffler Before Winning The British Open: “This is not a fulfilling life”

To no one’s surprise, Scottie Scheffler won The Open Championship yesterday in convincing fashion. His
victory was so dominant that, according to CNN, it left his rivals “awestruck.”

But it’s what happened before the tournament in Northern Ireland began that made global headlines.

Often called the British Open, it is the oldest golf tournament in the world. Its winner is crowned “Champion Golfer of the Year,” a title dating to the first Open in 1860. I have watched it each year for many years.

This is the first year I can remember when news preceding the tournament overshadowed the tournament itself. But that’s what happened last Tuesday.

Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 golfer, has won more tournaments and majors than anyone over the last three years. Nonetheless, in what the Associated Press called “an amazing soliloquy,” he said, “This is not a fulfilling life. It’s fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it’s not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart.”

He added: “I love the challenge. I love being able to play this game for a living. It’s one of the greatest joys of my life. But does it fill the deepest wants and desires of my heart? Absolutely not.” Then he asked, “Why do I want to win The Open Championship so badly? I don’t know. Because, if I win, it’s going to be an awesome two minutes. Then we’re going to get to the next week.”

He often says golf doesn’t define him as a person. In fact, he said if the sport ever affected his life at home, “that’s going to be the last day that I play out here for a living.”

Scheffler’s statements regarding the ultimate value of the game he plays garnered national coverage. An article in the New York Times even called him “Nihilist Scottie.” (A “nihilist” believes life has no purpose or meaning.)

Why would someone call him that?

And why is the question relevant for you and me today?

“My identity is secure forever”

The AP article asks rhetorically, “So where does fulfillment come from if it’s not winning?” The writer then answers: “Scheffler is grounded in his faith, in a simple family life with a wife he has been with since high school, a fifteen-month-old son, three sisters, and friends that are not part of the tour community.”

I have followed Scheffler’s golf career over the years with great interest, in part because he and our sons graduated from the same high school in Dallas. But primarily because I am deeply impressed with the way his faith influences his life.

He met his caddy, Ted Scott, at a Bible study. Last December, he co-hosted an annual retreat for members of the College Golf Fellowship, a faith-based ministry. Before winning the Masters last year, he stated, “It doesn’t matter if I win this tournament or lose this tournament. My identity is secure forever.”

Scottie’s sense of self is clear: “I believe in Jesus. Ultimately, I think that’s what defines me the most.”

But such faith is not what defines achievement in our secularized culture. To deny the ultimate significance of temporal success is “nihilism” for those who measure success only in this way. A person who values his faith and family above his golf career is therefore a “nihilist.”

What does this say about our culture?

When God is your partner

In a sense, the Times writer is correct: those who make Jesus their King should be nihilists with regard to anything valued more highly than their Lord.

Jesus was clear: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24, my emphasis). As Os Guinness noted, “Either we serve God and use money, or we serve money and use God.”

Here’s the paradox: When we use temporal things to serve God, temporal things take on eternal significance and acquire a joy and purpose they could never possess otherwise.

Those who play golf for God’s glory find that they have God for a partner. He guides and encourages them as they play and shares their successes and failures as if they were his own. He endows their temporal work with the joy of the Lord and power of the Spirit.

This does not guarantee that they will become the best golfer in the world, like Scottie Scheffler. But it does mean that they will become the best versions of themselves. And every day they spend in this world plants seeds of significance in the world to come.

“Where there is nothing, there is God”

To be a “nihilist” like Scottie Scheffler, let’s make his worldview our own. He testifies, “I’ve been called to come out here, do my best to compete, and glorify God. That’s pretty much it.”

• He knows the place God has assigned him: “I’ve been called to come out here.” Like Scottie, you and I have a kingdom assignment uniquely suited to our spiritual gifts, life experience, and personal capacities.
• He knows the power by which to be effective: “Do my best to compete.” As sociologist James Davison Hunter has shown, serving with excellence is the key to cultural impact.
• He knows the purpose of his work: “and glorify God.” There is room for only one person on the throne in every human heart. We must choose each day to dethrone ourselves, submit our lives to God’s Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), and “ascribe to the Lᴏʀᴅ the glory due his name” (Psalm 29:2).

If living this way is “pretty much it,” everything else becomes nothing else.

The New York Times article calling Scheffler “Nihilist Scottie” makes my point. The writer later states:

The emptiness Scheffler feels between who he is and the game he plays does, in fact, have a place in his faith. Take a look at Ecclesiastes. Or just leave it to an Irish poet to sum things up.

As W. B. Yeats put it: “Where there is nothing, there is God.”

Scottie Scheffler would agree.

Would you?

Article From Denison Forum
In 2009, Jim Denison, PhD, and Jeff Byrd founded Denison Forum in Dallas, Texas, with three employees. Their goal was to encourage spiritual awakening while equipping believers to engage with the issues and news of the day. Jim Denison’s The Daily Article is distributed via email, social media, and podcast to hundreds of thousands of culture-changing Christians daily. Denison Forum is part of Denison Ministries, which also includes First15, Christian Parenting, and Foundations with Janet.