It’s hard to find a man who’s been more consistently wrong on important issues pertinent to evangelicalism than Ed Stetzer. Stetzer was an avid defender and compatriot of Mark Driscoll, before he was publicly disgraced and Mars Hill church collapsed like a pile of sand. Stetzer was a defender and compatriot of the Emergent Church, before it was swept into the dustbin of history. Stetzer, during his time at Lifeway, chose to sell fake the Heaven Tourism book, The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, even though he was personally told it was false (when the news story broke worldwide, Stetzer lied, claiming he didn’t know). Stetzer, during his time at Lifeway, marketed books from the dregs of charismaticism, the gutter of theology and the ghetto of evangelical culture. It is hard to find a word-faith prophetess or fallen pastor that Stetzer has not taken a smiley selfie, followed up with articles and interviews lauding the false teachers and pimping their material. In spite of being consistently wrong, finding himself to have outlasted many of the movements he’s supported, Stetzer is still a regular evangelical talking head on topics he’s woefully unqualified to speak about, waxing poetic on the problems of evangelicalism and offering solutions to fix them.
Ed Stetzer offering solutions to evangelicalism’s problems is like a prostitute selling antibiotics out of the trunk of her car. Ed Stetzer is not the solution to the problem. He is the problem. Offering solutions to problems you helped create is not philanthropic, it’s extortion. Stetzer has personally profited (richly) from nearly every fad and fashionable diversion away from the Gospel that has plagued evangelicalism in the last 15 years. You can read more about Stetzer and his slithering, sinister, evangelical simony here. Most recently, he invited Hillsong prophetess, Christine Caine, to his new gig at Wheaton. He had also invited the woman who wrote a book about “making love with God,” Anne Voskamp (read about that here).
Stetzer, who calls himself a “missiologist” (that’s essentially a made-up term that refers to someone who is infatuated with culture, has no faith in God’s sovereignty over salvation or the irresistible nature of the Spirit’s effectual call over sinners, and who – in the name of relevance and contextualization – makes a practice of becoming like the world in order to win it), has bravely taken up the mantle of Social Justice just about when everyone else was doing so. With his wetted pinky ever-extended in the wind, Stetzer determines from which way the wind is blowing and rides fads like surfer-dudes in Maui surf the waves. Stetzer, who is one of the most influential people in the Evangelical Intelligentsia, decided to lash out at critics of Critical Race Theory just as the frothing feeding-frenzy of #woke evangelicalism snorted in Cultural Marxism like a line of coke. Getting “woke” was the new fad, and Stetzer is (like with every other perverse movement) on that bandwagon come hell or high water.
Phil Johnson’s response to Stetzer’s now-deleted tweet was appropriate. Indeed, the same people who championed the Emergent Movement right before it shriveled up and died a still-born birth wrapped in the swaddling cloths of its own irrelevance, are now championing the Social Justice movement.
John MacArthur, to the exuberance of myriads, decided to speak out on the topic of Social Justice earlier this week. In that article, MacArthur points out that he’s been preaching against racism for longer than most of the latte mafia have been alive and that he preached alongside those responsible for the Civil Rights Movement (and MacArthur was on the right side of history). Reports indicate MacArthur is going to be speaking out repeatedly on this topic. The cool kids of evangelicalism are vexed that MacArthur is going to pour cold water all over their little hipster party and that the elder theologian still has enough umph to mount a resistance to their compromised commandeering of the Gospel. We wrote about that article from MacArthur here.
Being gravely displeased that one of the most influential men in Christendom in the 20th and 21st Centuries would dare give his opinion on the topic of Social Justice, Stetzer sarcastically tweeted…
Of course, Dr. MacArthur is a hero for his resistance to all of the above. It’s almost like Stetzer was listing the thoroughly repudiated and embarrassing movements he’s personally been involved in and should repent for. One wonders what universe of delusion Stetzer is living when he suggests that MacArthur’s wise admonitions regarding the charismatic, seeker, and emerging movements weren’t completely warranted, downright prophetic and, ultimately, vindicated by history.
In a checklist, Stetzer lists the things that MacArthur has been 100% provenly right to criticize. In a checklist, Stetzer lists the things that he himself has personally been wrong about.
The irony is apparently lost on him. It was not lost on Justin Peters.
