James MacDonald and T. D. Jakes - the Elephant Room

There's a distinct change in volume, tone, and attitude between James MacDonald's "Humble Pie" blogpost and yesterday's "Not for the Faint of Heart" addendum.

In the earlier post, MacDonald acknowledged his own inconsistency: he knew he should not have "used strong language" to scold others for being harsh in their criticism of the Elephant Room strategy. But in yesterday's post and video, MacDonald casts off restraint and reverts to angry-sounding rhetoric.

Despite their starkly contrasting styles, both statements have one thing in common: MacDonald wishes those with concerns about what he is doing would just shut up. He says it euphemistically: "We are asking that those interested in what we are doing allow the conversations to take place before making final conclusions about their wisdom or helpfulness." But clearly, that plea applies to critics, not to MacDonald himself or to those who support his strategy.

 There are multiple layers of irony in that. MacDonald purports to be championing fearless dialogue with people he says he doesn't necessarily agree with. But there's a distinct and clearly discernible direction to the drift of the "dialogue." It is painfully obvious that MacDonald is not so keen to listen and learn when someone more conservative than he wants to share a perspective.   Keep Reading  >>>

Why I’m Disagreeing with Some of Joel Osteen’s Critics

Joel Osteen has been the center of popularity and criticism for some time now. I, myself have even thrown a couple of elbows his way for some of his statements.

In the last couple of days the Texas pastor has been somewhat exposed for his inconsistent understanding and application of theology (see Dr Mohler’s article). 

The result is a bit of commotion (conveniently coinciding with the release of his new book Every Day’s a Friday).

At the same time, I have to call a timeout. CNN featured a story on the smiling mega-church pastor today and indicated that Osteen is being criticized by many for preaching “a gospel-lite.”

This is just unfair and uncalled for. There is enough fodder from the preaching file of Joel Osteen to confirm that this is simply not true.

Osteen does not preach a gospel-lite because he doesn’t preach anything near the gospel. To call what he does anything like gospel is not fair to the gospel. When I want a soda I grab a “Diet Coke” because I still want a Coke without the calories. What he does is more like drinking Mello-Yello. It is not a Coke product. To say he is preaching a gospel-lite is simply not true. He is not preaching a Christian product.    Keep Reading...

Those Tricksy Biblicists

Several weeks ago I posted a critical review of Christian Smith’s new book The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture. Since then, Peter Leithart also posted a largely negative review. Joining the fray with a devastating rebuttal of Smith’s book is Robert Gundry’s excellent article in Books and Culture.

Not surprisingly, Christian Smith does not agree with these criticisms. His main rejoinder is that Gundry, Leithart, DeYoung have failed to deal with the main point of his book, namely, that pervasive interpretive pluralism (PIP) undermines biblicism. Responding to Leithart’s review, Smith contends that “his response essentially dodges rather than engages my book’s central argument.” Similarly, commenting on my blog, Smith argues, “Most problematically, DeYoung’s review in the end simply EVADES rather than resolves the central problem of PIP. He does not squarely address and answer the key challenge of my book, namely, that PIP shows biblicism, as a theory about scripture, to be impossible.” In the same vein he concludes: “So, what on first read appears to be a careful book review actually turns out to be scatter-shot and evasive. DeYoung is clearly quite caught up in trying to catch me in (alleged) inconsistencies, meanwhile he never actually responds to the central question of the book. Does that tell us anything?”   Keep Reading...