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This piece bothers me more than any other "closet liberal" critique of Piper/Keller than I've read thus far...not because it is uniquely bad, but because the author's moral credibility is so obviously compromised. https://spectator.org/woke-church-american-spectator-print-magazine/
The author of this piece did not merely have an affair and resign. He had multiple affairs with people on his organization's staff, was confronted by his board, then told donors he was resigning due to "physical exhaustion." https://www.al.com/living/2018/02/founder_of_christian_ministry.html
He disappeared from the public eye for about a year...before rebranding, relaunching a website, and (stunningly) receiving his old job back...without ever publicly apologizing for intending to deceive his donors. https://www.facebook.com/fixedpoint/photos/a.10150259552222247/10157169946102247/?type=3
Meanwhile the online secularist community has a had field day with this entire story, using it to discredit his apologetics work and celebrating it as a clear indication that all Christian apologists are philandering charlatans. https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/09/17/christian-who-lied-about-christopher-hitchens-gets-old-job-back-despite-affairs/
The point is NOT that a person who fails morally cannot be trustworthy ever again. That they can indeed is the whole point of the gospel (which, by the way, Tim Keller and John Piper have spent their lives preaching).
The point is this:
There is a clear pattern emerging, wherein allegations of a liberal takeover within conservative evangelicalism come most vociferously from people whose own ethical and pastoral credibility has been destroyed, with little or no evidence of repentance.
There is a clear pattern emerging, wherein allegations of a liberal takeover within conservative evangelicalism come most vociferously from people whose own ethical and pastoral credibility has been destroyed, with little or no evidence of repentance.
We have to take very seriously the possibility that some who are in positions of Christian influence, who are heaping baseless accusation after baseless accusation on ministers in the desperate hope that their charges of "elitism" will stick, are not actually regenerate at all.
We also have to very seriously consider the possibility that posturing oneself as a "whistleblower" of creeping heterodoxy within evangelicalism has become a viable road to platform for some who would otherwise be ignored.
