Ed Stetzer is the former Lifeway Vice President who was warned by Justin Peters that they were selling a Heaven Tourism book whose author had recanted it, and chose to continue profiting from the book anyway. When the story of Alex Malarkey’s Open Letter to Lifeway (his now-famous repudiation of the book written about him entitled, The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven) became worldwide news, Stetzer and Lifeway claimed they didn’t know the book was fraudulent.
Stetzer inspired the greatest tweet storm in the history of evangelicalism, #the15, when he attacked yours truly in defense of John Piper seemingly referring to the Pope as a ‘brother.’ Although Ed Stetzer’s personal church plants have resulted in failure, he became famous on the Christian lecture circuit, presenting himself as an expert in church planting. A statistician and analyst, Stetzer claims to hold the keys to evangelicalism success, while he (as an executive at Lifeway) was one of the chief peddlers of theological error, false prophecy, anti-Trinitarianism, ecumenism, Word-Faith theology, prosperity gospel, omen interpretation and Heaven Tourism. He remains a popular figure in evangelicalism, and is the interim pastor of Moody Church, filling the pulpit of Erwin Lutzer.
Stetzer is also incredibly active on Twitter, and fancies himself a commentator on all political and cultural issues, sticking his wet pinky finger into the wind and determining the best way to lead us through the tempestuous seas of public opinion. Lately, he’s taken to call for gun control, which as a progressivist, makes total sense.
Stetzer was referring to Wayne LaPierre’s speech at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Committee. LaPierre’s message can be seen in the video below.
The comment Stetzer took exception with is as follows:
Some people think the NRA should just stick to its Second Amendment agenda and not talk about all of our freedoms. But real freedom requires the protection of all of our rights. And a Second Amendment isn’t worth its own words in a country where all individual freedoms are destroyed.
Using LaPierre’s statements to attack gun rights, signal his own virtue and make patently obvious but irrelevant statements from the Bible, Stetzer claimed the Bible doesn’t mention America, American birthrights, guns, or gun rights and cites Proverbs 18:2, which rebukes men for giving opinions that are unlearned.
Of course, LaPierre didn’t claim that any of these things were specifically mentioned in the Bible (and neither does anyone else I know of). We do, however, believe that certain things about life, government, and liberty can be ascertained through the Holy Scriptures and in particular, from the General Equity of Old Testament Law, which the bulk of content believers use to build a body of Christian ethics. In Stetzer’s world, we don’t need guns to defend liberty; we do, however, need the ERLC to defend the rights of Muslims to build Mosques. I assure you, guns are more efficacious in defending religious liberty than the Ethics and Religous Liberty Commission.
For why Christians should not support gun control, using arguments from the Holy Scripture to explain it, click here.
[Contributed by JD Hall]
