Dr. Carl Trueman on the Elephant Room 2 Conference and Evangelical Celebrity.
Do You Beat Your Wife?
A number of Ref21 readers have emailed and asked me to comment on the Elephant Room. To be honest, Frank Turk, over at TeamPyro, has expressed what thoughts I do have but better than I could have done so.
One thing is worthy of general comment, however: it is a classic example of the current celebrity culture in evangelicalism but perhaps not in quite the way one might expect. One thing that is so striking about the rise of celebrity in the wider world is that it has been accompanied by the rise of the myth of the polymath. Thus, a pop star who can write a song that becomes a hit also becomes a person who is consulted about things like gay rights, Third World Debt and global warming. They are no more qualified (and in some cases much less qualified) than you or I to offer such advice; but we are never asked because we have not written a pop hit or starred in a movie. We now see this phenomenon in the evangelical world: fame and a big church make you competent to speak all over the theological map.
The questions posed to Jakes indicate the problem rather dramatically. Of course, all pastors are by necessity generalists and cannot be highly proficient in all areas; and that is fine 99% of the time. But when we are talking Trinitarianism with a very skillful communicator, we need somebody who is thoroughly versed in the area and who knows how to probe below superfical pat answers. We also need a venue and a mode of discourse appropriate to the complexities of the matter.
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