Spencer on Christian Bookstores

Michael Spencer says:

"Evangelical Christianity has evolved into something that I no longer recognize and Christian bookstores are in the forefront of the descent into madness. As a self-identified reformed Christian, I've always known that my relationship with my local Christian retailer was strained, but recent developments have sealed the rift. Whatever is going on in the churches that produce and consume the wares of today's Christian booksellers is wandering a long way from Biblical Christianity.

Today's Christian bookstore is generally devoted to all kinds of junk, relics, trinkets and totems called gifts, but there are still a lot of books. The largest section is usually Christian fiction, the home of hundreds of mediocre and embarrassing forays into bad theology and none-too-subtle preachiness. Next is the personal issues industry, containing Christian excursions into weight loss, finding a mate, raising perfect kids, becoming wealthy and interpreting dreams and voices. Then a generous amount of display space goes to what can only be called 'end of the world fever'. Is there an answer as to why American Christians gulp down hundreds of bizarre, contradictory, mind-numbingly idiotic tomes speculating on the end-of-the-world? I'm up for the discussion if you are.

And then there are lots - and I mean warehouses full - of books that are just insubstantial. No doctrine, all devotion. No depth. Pablum. Cotton Candy. Bubble gum. Idiocy. Every tv and radio preacher has a shelf. Heretics and wackos are welcome. People who would have been burned at the stake in other generations happily sell their latest concoctions as if they were Aquinas. Acres of devotional guides whose pages might as well be blank. Christian celebrities and recording artists are now authors, as if they had anything to say worth hearing. Chicken Soup for the Soul. How to this and How to that. Harry Potter versus the Bible. Guides to finding demons in everything and everyone. This is a carnival that would send Luther screaming from the room.

[...snip...]

I am abandoning Christian bookstores because they have become extensions of the pagan culture in which we live. They market the worst of evangelicalism and pour poison and placebos down the minds of Christians who believe that Christian bookstores are trustworthy. I am swearing them off in protest, but I am swearing them off for the good of my own soul. Thankfully, the internet allows me the opportunity to buy books and music without traveling through this idolatrous wasteland."

Alien Christian Hairstyles

Were the hairstyles of these Christian women designed by aliens from another galaxy?

Church Sign

What Is An Evangelical?

The answer is: "Anyone who perpetually defines what an evangelical is".

(Thanks to Ched Spellman, who quoted Matthew Lee Anderson, who quoted Matthew Milliner)

Christian Confidence Tricksters

Evangelist Patricia King marvels over her friend Joshua Mills as God covers him with sparkle dust and oil miraculously pours from his palms.

Believe this and you really will believe anything...

John Stott (1921-2011)

John Stott Memorial Page

Justin Taylor on John Stott

Over the years, Stott made many statements that were both memorable and quoteable. Here is just one of them: "To search for Scripture's contemporary message without first wrestling with its original meaning is to attempt a forbidden short cut".

Manasseh Jordan

Anyone who has looked at this blog will know that I regard "Third Wave" Christianity as at best highly problematic and at worst seriously abominable. Anyway, pay no attention to my prejudices; have a look at this YouTube video of the up-and-coming evangelist Manasseh Jordan. Reportedly, Jordan was a protege of Benny Hinn...

Are you impressed by Prophet Jordan? Or (like me) do you regard him as bad news indeed?

Over to you.

Hot Under the Collar

Michael Patton suggests that if you want to get evangelical Christians hot under the collar, simply raise one or more of the following issues:

1. Women in ministry.

2. Creation/Evolution issues.

3. Calvinism/Arminianism stuff.

4. How should we "do church"?

Can you think of any issues which are MORE controversial than these?

More Verbiage from Camping

On Monday 23 May, the New York Times reports, Harold Camping gave what he said was his last interview ("we don't have to talk about this anymore"). He seems to have suggested that Saturday 21 May had indeed been a momentous day, but of an invisible and spiritual kind rather than a day on which Christ appeared visibly and spectacularly. Camping insisted that the end would still happen on Friday 21 October 2011.

Camping disclaimed responsibility for the disillusionments and future actions of his followers ("I am not the authority"), and said that his company would NOT return the money that his followers had donated in advance of his predictions about 21 May. He pointed out that he never asked people to leave their jobs and donate their life savings. (!)

He offered a brief apology, and said: "I pray all the time for wisdom". He added (in the truest words that he has ever spoken during the past quarter century): "I am not a genius".

The author of this blog is now heartily tired of Mr Camping and will say no more about him (though on Saturday 22 October we will observe briefly that Camping has once again been exposed as a false prophet).

Not a Happy Camper

Harold Camping, looking glum and disillusioned, spoke to the press on Sunday 22 May and said he was "looking for answers". So are we all, Harold, so are we all.

Readers of the International Business Times speculated what Camping will say when he releases a more detailed statement in a day or two. Will Camping admit that he was wrong about the date of the Rapture? Or will he claim that the Rapture did happen but in some sort of invisible way? Or will he say that God decided to delay the Rapture for a while to show his mercy to sinners? Or will he claim a calculation error and set a new date for the Rapture?

Foolish and Ignorant

For many months now, Harold Camping has been predicting that the Rapture will take place on Saturday 21 May 2011. Some of his followers are travelling around warning others, and a few have even quit their jobs.

Today is 10 May 2011, Harold. According to you, the Rapture is only ELEVEN days away. Are you getting bit nervous? Your sincere but gullible followers have given you their support, their money and their prayer.

What are they going to say to you when you stand exposed as a foolish, ignorant clown on Sunday 22 May 2011? More to the point, what are YOU going to say to THEM?

When God Goes Dark

"When God Goes Dark" - another honest and thought-provoking post from Michael Patton's "Parchment and Pen" blog.

Satan's Prosperity Gospel

What Does the Bible Say?

John Wesley is Disappointed

In 1756, John Wesley delivered an address to a gathering of clergy. During the address, he encouraged the ministers to cultivate the following: a disposition to glorify God and to save souls, a knowledge of Scripture, a good understanding, a clear apprehension, a sound judgment, a capacity of reasoning with some closeness, and an understanding of logic, mathematics, metaphysics, natural theology, and the ideas of important figures in the history of philosophy.

If Wesley were around today, he would surely be disillusioned at many of the conservative Christians he encountered:

"Hi Mr Wesley! Good to meet you. Remember, if it feels right in your heart, it's true! Have a nice day now. That long hair of yours is very cool."

"Hi John! Jesus appeared to me in my kitchen the other day, and he gave me some useful guidelines. He said my sermons should be more entertaining and less theological, and he gave me some tips for fundraising. If you use plastic buckets rather than wooden plates, you collect more money at each service! Way to go. Anyway, it will help us to pay for the walnut panelling and the new music center in my study. Must run; I have an interview on Godtube this afternoon with Howard-Browne: 'Five Ways to a Better and More Prosperous You'. Keep smiling, John."

Liberal Christianity

I would never model my own beliefs on the theology of H. Richard Niebuhr, but he was absolutely spot on in his summing up of liberal Christianity:

"A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross".

Here is a picture of a liberal Christian. The name of this friendly individual is John Shelby Spong (he is a retired Episcopal Bishop). In the interests of communicating his liberal "Christianity" effectively to the modern world, Spong rejects the following elements of the Christian tradition: theism, the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, the biblical miracles, the objective character of the atonement, the resurrection of Christ, and intercessory prayer.

Perhaps we can call Spong's religious package "homeopathic Christianity", because the Christian content has been so diluted that you wonder whether the watery medicine is worth anything at all...

Two Reviews by DeYoung

Kevin DeYoung is senior pastor at University Reformed Church in East Lansing, Michigan. He has a blog at the Gospel Coalition.

I don't always agree with DeYoung, but he writes clearly and honestly and he is an excellent reviewer of books. Here are two of his book reviews (they are Acrobat/PDF documents):

Review of Rob Bell's Love Wins: a Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.

Review of Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith.

Spurgeon and the Baptists

In the late nineteenth century, the celebrated pastor and preacher C.H. Spurgeon (1834-1892) was involved in the so-called Down Grade Controversy, in which he and a few like-minded Christians protested against the erosion of evangelical orthodoxy among British Baptists. Spurgeon opposed the leaders of the Baptist Union, and eventually he felt obliged to withdraw from the Union (in October 1887). A few months later, the Union passed a vote of censure against Spurgeon.

Some might see the whole controversy as water under the bridge, something not worth studying or even discussing. But similar things are happening today within Christian evangelicalism and on its borders.

During the controversy, Spurgeon summed up the views of his opponents as follows:

1. Denial of the verbal inspiration (that is, inerrancy) of Scripture.

2. Denial of eternal punishment and the affirmation of universalism.

3. Denial of the Trinity, mainly in terms of the rejection of the personality of the Holy Spirit.

4. A tendency to undermine the deity of Christ and original sin.

5. Denial that Christ's atonement has a substitutionary and propitiatory character.

6. Denial of the historicity of the Genesis creation account in favor of evolution.

7. The unhealthy influence of Higher Criticism on Biblical scholarship, particularly as it relates to the Old Testament.

Many of these issues are still actively debated today.

Here (in the form of an Acrobat/PDF document) is an interesting account of the Down Grade Controversy by Dennis M. Swanson.

Towards the Final Countdown?

All evangelicals believe in the Rapture and the Second Coming, but as soon as they start explaining things in detail, significant differences start to emerge. You can get a serious headache listening to debates between the historicists and the modified preterists and the futurists and the dispensationalists. To their credit, many evangelicals do not try and predict the timing of endtime events, but the past fifty years has seen a rash of "the end is near" enthusiasts (some of the more foolish ones specify actual dates for Christ's return, but they never seem to learn from each others' mistakes). The worst offenders tend to be the premillennialists in general and the dispensationalists in particular. Here are some recent book titles for your edification:

Lindsey, The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon (1982).

Ryrie, The Final Countdown (1982).

Sumrall, I Predict 2000 A.D. (1987).

Faird, Gorbachev! Has the Real Antichrist Come? (1988).

Whisenant, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will be in 1988 (1988).

Whisenant, The Final Shout: Rapture Report 1989 (1989).

Walvoord, Armageddon, Oil, and the Middle East Crisis (1990).

Dyer, The Rise of Babylon: Sign of the End Times (1991).

Terrell, The 90s: Decade of the Apocalypse (1992).

Hunt, How Close Are We? Compelling Evidence for the Soon Return of Christ (1992).

Liardon, Final Approach: The Opportunity and Adventure of End-Times Living (1993).

Lalonde & Lalonde, Racing Toward the Mark of the Beast: Your Money, Computers, and the End of the World (1994).

Lindsey, Planet Earth 2000 A.D.: Will Mankind Survive? (1996).

Hagee, The Beginning of the End: the Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Coming Antichrist (1996).

Jeffrey, Armageddon: Appointment with Destiny (1997).

Dobson, 50 Remarkable Events Pointing to the End: Why Jesus Could Return by A.D. 2000 (1997).

Hindson, Approaching Armageddon: the World Prepares for War with God (1997).

Kirban, Countdown to Rapture (1998).

Ryrie, et al, Countdown to Armageddon: the Final Battle and Beyond (1999).

Hagee, From Daniel to Doomsday: the Countdown Has Begun (1999).

Camping, We Are Almost There! (2010).

*********

Don't you just love the former NASA engineer and Bible student Edgar Whisenant (two of his two books are listed above)? He writes a book in 1988 predicting that the Rapture will occur in 1988, and then (with a somewhat red face) he writes ANOTHER book in 1989 predicting that the Rapture will occur in 1989!

Way to go, Edgar.

Harold Camping (also mentioned in the above list) recently predicted that the Rapture will take place on 21 May 2011. Will these clowns never learn?

The trick, of course, is to choose your language carefully, with a dose of built-in vagueness and ambiguity. If I was foolish enough to write such a book, my evasive title would be Are We Moving Towards the Final Countdown?, which would give me lots of room to manoeuvre.

Trendiness is Next to Godliness

Two quotes from the website of Solomon's Porch, a holistic, missional and emergent Christian community:

(1) "You will not find statements of what our community believes on this site. Belief is a dynamic lived reality and doesn't lend itself to website statements."

Wow. Even those horrid old liberals are quite happy to tell you (often in fair detail) what they believe on their websites...

(2) "God's Spirit takes precedence over all structures and systems".

Wow. So daring, so trendy, so avant garde. So ineffably postmodern. So radically non-committal, so courageously vacuous. So tediously predictable.

The pertinent question that raises its impertinent head is: "How do we know when the actual Spirit of God is actually guiding us and when we are just imagining that he is?"

One of the main figures at Solomon's Porch is Doug Pagitt (see picture above).

Doug says about his latest book Church in the Inventive Age (2010):

"This is my latest book - it is a fast-paced, big-idea, thought-provoking invitation for churches to be full participants in a cultural age where creativity, participation and inclusion are the norm. This book is designed as a conversation starter for professional and lay church leaders who know that something important is happening in our culture that creates fresh, exciting opportunities for Christianity in our world."

Where DOES one learn to write like this? Is it a gift, or can I learn to do it too? It sounds like a politician - smooth, apparently meaningful words which somehow manage to say almost nothing.

I shouldn't be such a grouch. I am a bad person.

In his Church Re-Imagined (2005), Doug says:

"To move beyond the passive approach to faith, we've tried to create a community that's more like a potluck: people eat and they also bring something for others. Our belief is built when all of us engage our hopes, dreams, ideas and understandings with the story of God as it unfolds through history and through us."

Given Doug's unconventional view of the Bible (which he admits to happily and freely), where exactly is this "story of God" recorded and what is its content? We do need to know this, because stories of God are (sadly) two a penny in this fast-moving and increasingly confusing world.