Pastor Marcus Rogers has never taken the easy way out.
Although he has been hit by the cancel culture on social media multiple times, the senior pastor at Firehouse Church in Chicago refuses to bow down to the god of complacency—which he says many Christians have done the past few years, all in the name of staying politically correct.
He refuses to compromise the truth of the gospel and the Word of God. He’s not afraid of what man can do to Him, and he will always be true to the Lord and His calling.
“There is always this pressure to be politically correct,” Rogers told John Matarazzo in a recent interview with Charisma News. “If you look at the prophets in the Bible, they were unpopular and their message was unpopular. The Bible even says that when the prophet Samuel was coming, the children of Israel shook. They were worried.
“We don’t really have that. We’ve got a million prophets in America apparently. You’ve got a million YouTube channels where people are prophetic, but we’re not talking abut things that will create controversy. I think that’s the danger. The voices of the prophets have been really silenced because guess what? YouTube will kick you off, Instagram will kick you off. There is a thought process that is being pushed. And if you buck against that, hey, they’re going to cancel you. So, a lot of people are like, ‘ah well, I’m just going to go with the flow.’
“And that’s what has made us so complacent. We need voices that will cry loud, spare not. Romans 8:22 says that “we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now,” right? Waiting for the sons of God to manifest. There is a hunger out there and that’s why there is so much information, so many voices and opinions. It really is schizophrenic and all kinds of craziness.”
In his book “God and Cancel Culture,” Charisma Media CEO Stephen Strang wrote about how Pastor Greg Fairrington and Destiny Christian Church stood up to the cancel culture and held services during the COVID pandemic despite the mandate not to by the state of California.
He wrote of how Pastor Rob McCoy did the same thing in Thousand Oaks, California, as well as Pastor Samuel Rodriguez in Sacramento. But they weren’t the norm, and many did not stand with these bold pastors.
Strang asked why more churches didn’t join them, if pastors were too “timid.”
“Timid’ is a good word,” Fairrington said. “Some people would say ‘cowardly,’ but I’ve never used that word. People were afraid of misinformation about the virus, afraid of the government and what would happen … I would get phone calls, like Nicodemus meeting Jesus, where nobody really would want to identify with me. … [They were afraid] they would lose their church or get sued or whatever. So timid is a kind word.”
As for Rogers, he’s never been “timid” or “afraid.” He has always stuck by Scriptures like Psalm 118:6, which reads, “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can people do to me?”
Despite the fact that he has 967,000 followers on Facebook, he isn’t worried about getting canceled. He knows the Lord has his back.
“I’ve been banned on Facebook several times,” Rogers says. “There was a point where they banned me for 30-day periods. It’s like, they started off with a one-day ban, then they bumped it up to a three-day ban and then they bumped it up to seven days. And now, every time I get banned on Facebook, it’s for 30 days.
“When the election rolled around [in 2020], I can’t even tell you how many 30-day periods I got banned. This is something I talked about recently. You know the verse that talks about oh, foolish Galatians. I posted oh foolish Galatians, but really said, ‘oh foolish Americans.’ I kept all of this stuff and thought about suing Facebook because they said it was hate speech. Using that Bible verse was hate speech.
“But I posted it. I’ve been doing this for so long that people just said, ‘Oh that’s Marcus.’ But they had me shadow banned for two years. You know how everybody’s paying for verification …. They won’t even let me pay. They won’t let me get verified. There are so many fake profiles.”
But, Rogers says, it’s not the people at Facebook, Instagram or YouTube that is in charge. It’s God. When Instagram recently removed the shadow ban from Rogers’ account, his number of followers jumped from 183,000 to 207,000 in a matter of two months.
“So, I really think it’s the grace of God,” Rogers says. “If God wants to give you a platform, and He wants to give you a voice, they can’t silence you. The Bible says we wrestle not against flesh and blood. We have to realize there is a spirit behind that. So, cry loud, spare not, that’s what I live by. If you take my YouTube, if you take my Instagram, if they take my Facebook, I started in the street. I’ll just take it back with a mic and an amp. … You know, we just can’t sit back and be complacent.” {eoa}
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Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.
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