Carl Trueman offers some necessary food for thought related to a recent dustup on the Janet Mefford show. For those of you who do not know, Janet Mefford recently interviewed Mark Driscoll on her syndicated radio program and it got a bit heated. Miss Mefford took Driscoll to task over large passages in his new book that she identifies as plagiarized from Dr. Peter Jones. I don't know if it is true or not. I do know that Janet Mefford is no dummy and she was quite specific with her charges. And while I was cringing when I first listened to the program, it was later revealed that Driscoll's people requested that Miss Mefford interview him about his new book. That changed everything in my mind. However, there are some who have come to Pastor Driscoll's defense. And this, Trueman argues, raises some serious concerns about the lack of accountability among the celebrities of evangelicalism.
The Mefferd-Driscoll controversy points to another aspect of celebrity culture: celebrities are routinely allowed to behave in ways which would not be tolerated in ordinary mortals. For example, being drunk on the job and hurling abuse at an employer would make one unemployable in the real world. Not for Charlie Sheen. A conviction for rape would be enough to have you characterized as a monster in the real world who had forfeited the right to sympathetic media exposure. Not for Mike Tyson or Roman Polanski (just ask that champion of women's rights, Whoopi Goldberg). In short, normal rules do not apply to celebrities in the same way as they do to others.
The same is true in the celebritydrome of the evangelical subculture. Driscoll is a classic case in point. For example, he has claimed that God gives him explicit images of the sexual sins of other people. He has embraced prosperity teacher and denier of the Trinity, T. D. Jakes, as a brother. He has written an explicit book on sex. Most recently, he engaged in a cringe-inducing publicity stunt unworthy of a spoiled teenager. For most of us, any one of these things would have ended in church discipline and (in the Jakes' case) removal from office. Yet in all of this, the fan base and those with a vested interest in capitalizing on his success grant him free pass after free pass.
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Carl Trueman offers some necessary food for thought related to a recent dustup on the Janet Mefford show. For those of you who do not know, Janet Mefford recently interviewed Mark Driscoll on her syndicated radio program and it got a bit heated. Miss Mefford took Driscoll to task over large passages in his new book that she identifies as plagiarized from Dr. Peter Jones. I don't know if it is true or not. I do know that Janet Mefford is no dummy and she was quite specific with her charges. And while I was cringing when I first listened to the program, it was later revealed that Driscoll's people requested that Miss Mefford interview him about his new book. That changed everything in my mind. However, there are some who have come to Pastor Driscoll's defense. And this, Trueman argues, raises some serious concerns about the lack of accountability among the celebrities of evangelicalism.
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