SOURCE NOTE. The public controversy is documented by a circulated excerpt from a sermon and by the published materials of Zach Helton and Glendale Baptist Church. As of this publication review, we have not located a complete, unedited recording of the sermon. Accordingly, this article does not treat secondary paraphrases as a full transcript.

Jesus and the New Testament writers warned that departure from the faith and false teaching would not be anomalies. In His Olivet Discourse, Jesus warned that many would turn away, false prophets would arise, and deception and lawlessness would increase (Matthew 24:10–13). Paul wrote that “in later times some will abandon the faith” (1 Timothy 4:1), that people would turn away from sound doctrine toward teachers suited to their own desires (2 Timothy 4:3–4), and that a rebellion or falling away would precede the day of the Lord (2 Thessalonians 2:3). Jude urged believers to contend for “the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (Jude 3).

Those passages do not give Christians permission to label every controversy the final fulfillment of end-times prophecy. They do require the church to recognize the pattern of apostasy when revealed truth is displaced, redefined, or subordinated to another authority.

A recent controversy at Glendale Baptist Church in Nashville may be one contemporary example of that broader pattern.

But the most important story is not really about an ancient Canaanite goddess named Asherah.

Asherah is the symptom. The deeper issue is apostasy. And beneath apostasy lies an even more fundamental question: Who determines what is true—God or us?

Here, “apostasy” means departure from the faith once delivered to the church (Jude 3). It is not a claim to know the final spiritual state of any individual. Scripture calls Christians to test public teaching while leaving final judgment of hearts to God.

According to Glendale Baptist Church's official staff page, Zach Helton joined Kelly Moreland Jones as pastor on May 1, 2026. In late August, a sermon excerpt began circulating publicly in which Helton discusses Asherah as a feminine divine presence associated with ancient Israelite worship and critically reevaluates Josiah's suppression of Asherah worship. Because the available excerpt is partial, this article limits its characterization of the sermon to what the excerpt and Helton's and Glendale's own published materials support.

The wider theological context is not hidden. Helton's official Glendale biography says he is deeply shaped by “the teachings of Jesus, Buddhist practice, mysticism, and perennial wisdom over any particular religious expression.” That statement does not tell us everything Helton believes, but it is relevant when a sermon blends biblical history with a reconstruction of a pagan divine feminine.

The immediate question is provocative: Did the God of the Bible once have a wife?

The answer requires more care than either sensational dismissal or sensational affirmation. In Ugaritic texts from the ancient Northwest Semitic world, the goddess Athirat—commonly associated with Asherah in biblical scholarship—appears as the consort of El, the chief deity of the Canaanite pantheon. Judith Hadley's Cambridge study surveys the textual, biblical, and archaeological evidence. But the fact that the Canaanite religion paired Athirat with El does not, by itself, establish that Yahweh, the God of Israel, had a wife.

Especially important are inscriptions discovered at Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai, generally dated to the early Iron Age. Several blessing formulas have been published with the expression “Yahweh … and his asherah.” Jeremy Smoak and William Schniedewind's 2019 study emphasizes both the importance of the inscriptions and the difficulty of interpreting them. Richard S. Hess's 2025 study reexamines the spelling, grammar, and identification of Asherah in light of newer evidence.

The wording remains disputed. Some scholars understand the term as a reference to the goddess herself; others have argued for a cultic object, shrine, symbol, or another referent. Smoak and Schniedewind note that the blessing verbs are singular, making Yahweh the giver of the blessing regardless of how Asherah is understood. Hess argues that the final letters may not represent the possessive “his” at all. Other scholars continue to defend a divine-consort reading.

The historically responsible conclusion is narrower than the viral claim: some Israelites, or Israelite-associated scribes, used Asherah-related language in conjunction with Yahweh. The inscriptions do not establish that the true God revealed Himself as having a wife and that later biblical writers simply erased her.

This distinction is crucial. Archaeology can reveal what ancient Israelites believed and practiced. It cannot, by itself, determine whether God approved those beliefs and practices.

The Bible never portrays ancient Israel as consistently faithful. Much of the Old Testament recounts a covenant people repeatedly absorbing the religious practices of the surrounding nations. Israel served the Baals and the Asherahs (Judges 3:7). Manasseh placed an Asherah image in the temple itself (2 Kings 21:3–7). Other passages describe recurring high-place worship, foreign gods, and religious syncretism.

Finding archaeological evidence of those practices does not embarrass the biblical account. It confirms the kind of religious syncretism the Bible already says occurred.

The question is not simply, Did some Israelites worship Asherah? The biblical narrative says they did. The more important question is: What did God think about it?

Israel was commanded to tear down pagan altars and cut down Asherah-related cult objects (Deuteronomy 7:5; 12:3). Israel was forbidden to erect an Asherah beside the altar of the LORD (Deuteronomy 16:21). Gideon was commanded to destroy his father's Baal altar and Asherah (Judges 6:25–26). The prophets and historical books repeatedly treat Asherah worship as part of Israel's covenant unfaithfulness.

The biblical writers do not present Asherah worship as a forgotten dimension of authentic worship that later reformers unjustly suppressed. They present it as idolatry.

Josiah inherited a Judah saturated with religious compromise. During repairs to the temple, the Book of the Law was rediscovered. When its words were read to him, Josiah tore his clothes because he recognized how far the nation had departed from God's commands (2 Kings 22:8–13).

Notice what happened next.

Josiah did not put God's Word on trial. He placed Judah under the judgment of God's Word.

His reforms were sweeping. He removed objects associated with Baal and Asherah from the temple, destroyed the Asherah, removed pagan priests, demolished high places and shrines, and purged practices that had accumulated during generations of compromise (2 Kings 23:4–20).

Then the inspired narrator gives Josiah extraordinary commendation: “Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the LORD as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses” (2 Kings 23:25, NIV).

If Josiah was wrong to destroy Asherah worship—if he was suppressing a legitimate aspect of God—then the contemporary interpreter is not merely disagreeing with a conservative Christian reading of archaeology. He is reversing the moral judgment of the biblical text itself.

This is where the Glendale controversy becomes larger than one sermon. Glendale's own “What We Believe” page says the congregation “batter[s]” its beliefs by testing them against life experience, newly discovered facts, and the thoughts of others. It also says the congregation is held together not by commonly held beliefs but by shared commitments.

Another official Glendale page describing Baptist identity calls the congregation “staunchly anti-creedal” and states that there is no requirement to adhere to a creed or statement of faith to participate fully. It describes the Bible as providing guidance and foundational understandings while emphasizing each believer's freedom to interpret it within the community.

That does not mean Glendale believes nothing. It clearly has moral and theological commitments. Nor is anti-creedal Baptist language, by itself, evidence of apostasy; many Baptists have historically opposed imposed creeds while still affirming Scripture as binding authority. The decisive question is different: What stands as the final norm when Scripture, experience, contemporary moral intuition, and other spiritual traditions appear to conflict?

Helton's own published writing makes that question especially relevant. In “Jesus in the Rainbow Bread,” published by the Alliance of Baptists, he writes that “what a belief or practice does is far more important than what it is.” He also describes a community that had moved away from penal-atonement symbolism. Taken together with Glendale's published approach to doctrine and Helton's stated formation by multiple spiritual traditions, the Asherah sermon looks less like an isolated historical curiosity and more like a revealing case study in theological authority.

Christianity certainly cares about what beliefs do. Jesus taught that good trees bear good fruit (Matthew 7:17–20). But Christianity also insists that beliefs can be true or false regardless of whether their consequences are emotionally satisfying, socially useful, or spiritually resonant.

Christ either rose from the dead, or He did not. Jesus is either Lord, or He is not. God either condemned Israel's idolatry, or He did not.

Truth cannot ultimately be reduced to usefulness.

Standing before Jesus, Pontius Pilate asked, “What is truth?” (John 18:38).

Jesus had already declared, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6), and He prayed to the Father, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17).

Christianity therefore begins with something fundamentally different from endlessly revisable spirituality: truth exists; truth is grounded in God; truth is revealed in Christ; and God's revelation stands in judgment over us.

That does not mean our interpretations are infallible. Christians can misunderstand Scripture. Archaeology, history, language, and responsible scholarship can expose weaknesses in an interpretation and require us to reconsider it.

But there is an enormous difference between saying, “Perhaps I have misunderstood what God has revealed,” and saying, “God's revealed judgment is morally defective and must be corrected by what we now understand.”

Scripture repeatedly preserves the distinction between Creator and creature. Isaiah compares humanity questioning its Maker to clay disputing with the potter (Isaiah 45:9). Paul similarly asks, “But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God?” (Romans 9:20).

Romans 1 describes humanity's rebellion as exchanging “the truth about God for a lie” and worshiping created things rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25).

Isaiah 45:9 • Romans 9:20

We do not have the authority to rewrite God's character because contemporary society prefers a different God. We do not have the authority to redefine sin because obedience has become culturally costly. We do not have the authority to call idolatry spiritually enlightened because archaeology demonstrates that God's people once practiced it.

Our responsibility is to understand His revelation faithfully—not to revise His revelation until it agrees with us.

Glendale's own description of its Baptist identity says the principle that unites the congregation is its understanding of the love of God. The problem is not that a church values love. Christians must. Jesus said love for God and neighbor summarizes the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 22:37–40).

But Scripture never pits love against truth. Paul says love “rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6).

Christian love therefore cannot require us to declare good what God calls evil, nor evil what God calls good. If our definition of love requires us to overturn God's revealed moral judgments, it is not Scripture that must change. Our definition of love must.

Experience matters. Compassion matters. Listening matters. Justice matters. But none of them possesses authority above the Creator who defines what love, justice, and goodness actually are.

This is where the New Testament's warnings about apostasy become relevant.

Apostasy does not always begin when someone stands in a pulpit and announces, “I reject Christianity.” It can happen more subtly. Christian vocabulary remains—Jesus, grace, baptism, resurrection, love—but the meanings attached to those words can change because the authority defining them has changed.

Paul warned the Corinthians about accepting “another Jesus” and “a different gospel” (2 Corinthians 11:4). He told the Galatians that even an angel from heaven had no authority to proclaim a gospel contrary to the one already received (Galatians 1:8–9).

The messenger does not judge the gospel. The gospel judges the messenger.

The same principle applies to archaeology, experience, culture, political ideology, and spiritual experience. None has the authority to overturn what God has revealed.

Whether Glendale Baptist Church represents one instance of the final end-times apostasy cannot be proved from one sermon, and this article does not claim that. But when a church's published framework makes doctrine revisable through experience and other perspectives, when its pastor openly describes formation by multiple spiritual traditions, and when a biblical reform against idolatry is recast as a spiritual loss, Christians should recognize the kind of departure from revealed truth that Jesus and the apostles warned believers to expect and discern.

If this is apostasy, the proper Christian response is not entertainment, mockery, or triumph. The stakes are too serious. Jesus' rebukes to compromised churches in Revelation 2–3 are repeatedly joined to calls to repent. Paul told Timothy to correct error with patience and careful instruction (2 Timothy 4:2). The goal is not to win a controversy but to see people return to truth.

That means praying for Zach Helton and Glendale Baptist Church—not because we presume to know anyone's final fate, but because Scripture treats false teaching and departure from the faith as matters with eternal consequences. It also means praying for ourselves. No church is protected from drift merely because it can identify drift somewhere else.

That is why the controversy at Glendale matters. The deepest issue is not whether some ancient Israelites worshiped Asherah. The biblical record itself says they did. It is not even ultimately whether one pastor believes Josiah's reforms should be reevaluated.

The deeper question is what happens when the church stops allowing God's revelation to judge our beliefs and begins allowing our experiences, desires, and contemporary moral assumptions to judge God's revelation.

·        Pray before criticizing. If a church is moving away from revealed truth, our first response should not be delight at finding another example of apostasy. Christ calls compromised churches to repent. We should desire restoration, not destruction.

·        Examine our own churches. Josiah's story is dangerous if we use it only to condemn somebody else. Judah had become accustomed to its idols. Christians should ask what beliefs, politics, desires, traditions, or cultural assumptions we have allowed to compete with Scripture.

·        Know the Word. Christians who cannot distinguish between what ancient Israelites practiced and what God commanded them to practice will be vulnerable to claims that archaeology has overturned Scripture. Biblical literacy is not optional in an age of competing spiritual narratives.

·        Hold love and truth together. We should speak without cruelty, caricature, or personal hatred. But loving people cannot require abandoning truth. Paul instructed believers to speak “the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15)—not truth without love and not love without truth.

The lesson of Asherah is not that archaeology is dangerous. The lesson is that God's people have always been tempted to mix revelation with the spirit of their age.

Josiah heard God's Word and changed himself and his nation to conform to it. Apostasy reverses that order. It changes God's Word until the Word conforms to us.

And that is why the question facing the church remains the one Pilate asked: What is truth?

For the Christian, the answer has already been given: Christ is the truth. God's Word is truth. Our task is not to reinvent it—but to hear it, believe it, obey it, and remain faithful until He comes.

Primary and official sources are listed first. Secondary reporting is included only to document the public controversy and the circulated sermon excerpt.

Glendale Baptist Church — Staff & Leadership. Official page identifying Zach Helton as a pastor and stating that he joined the pastoral staff on May 1, 2026.

Glendale Baptist Church — Zach Helton. Official biography describing Helton's ministry background and the spiritual traditions that shape his work.

Glendale Baptist Church — Community of Faith / What We Believe. Official statement explaining the congregation's approach to beliefs, experience, new facts, differing viewpoints, and shared commitments.

Glendale Baptist Church — Breaking Baptist Stereotypes. Official description of the congregation's anti-creedal approach, Bible freedom, soul freedom, and understanding of love as a unifying principle.

Zachary Helton — “Jesus in the Rainbow Bread” (Alliance of Baptists). Helton's own published reflection on progressive religious practice, the function of belief, and movement away from penal-atonement symbolism.

Protestia — “Baptist Pastor Condemns King Josiah for Destroying Idols and Asherah Poles”. A polemical secondary report that embeds the circulated sermon excerpt. It is useful for documenting the clip that entered public circulation; the excerpt should not be treated as a complete sermon transcript.

Stateline Network EXTRA — “Pastor Teaching that God Once Had a Wife Named Asherah”. Secondary coverage summarizing the controversy. Included for corroboration of the public reporting, not as the basis for the article's theological conclusions.

Jeremy Smoak and William Schniedewind — “Religion at Kuntillet ʿAjrud” (Religions, 2019). Open-access study of the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions, their scribal context, the expression “Yahweh and his asherah,” and competing interpretations.

Richard S. Hess — “New Evidence for Asherata/Asherah” (Religions, 2025). Open-access reevaluation of West Semitic evidence, the spelling and identification of Asherah, and the Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom inscriptions.

Judith M. Hadley — The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah (Cambridge University Press). Scholarly study of Asherah/Athirat in Ugaritic literature, biblical texts, inscriptions, and archaeological evidence.

William G. Dever — Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Eerdmans). Influential archaeological treatment arguing for a significant role for Asherah in popular or folk Israelite religion; useful as a major scholarly position in the debate.

End-times warnings and apostasy: Matthew 24:10–13; 1 Timothy 4:1; 2 Timothy 4:2–4; 2 Thessalonians 2:3; 2 Corinthians 11:4; Galatians 1:8–9; Jude 3; Revelation 2–3.

Asherah and idolatry: Deuteronomy 7:5; 12:3; 16:21; Judges 3:7; 6:25–26; 2 Kings 21:3–7; 22:8–13; 23:4–25.

Truth, authority, and Creator/creature: Isaiah 45:9; John 14:6; 17:17; 18:38; Romans 1:25; 9:20; 1 Corinthians 13:6; Ephesians 4:15.