Monday, January 16, 2006
How Come...
...this story was in the NYTimes? It's an expose of Cerflo Dollar and the prosperity gospel, and rightly cites how such takes particular advantage of the poor.
But here is what really got my goat
So here is my question, Why is the leading magazine of Protestantism and evangelicalism so unwilling to name names in a situation like this? Look I understand that decent rules of debate demand condemnation of ideas, not people, but I am not talking about condemnation here, I am talking about correction. We can't write "Cerflo Dollar will burn in perditions flames for the prosperity gospel," but we can write "Brother Dollar is wrong, he needs correction, and we need to reach out to him and his congregants to help them to understand the error that they are engaged in."
Will such build enmity? Perhaps, but all we can do is guard against carrying that enmity ourselves, and answer it when it comes from other parties with love. The sad fact of the matter is not every person will respond to ideas, sometimes it has to get personal. We need to learn how to be lovingly corrective and personal.
Related Tags: prosperity gospel, Cerflo Dollar, Christianity Today, gospel, Christianity, correction, rebuke
Inside the envelope is 10 percent of the weekly pay Mr. Anderson takes home as an electrician's apprentice - he earns about $30,000 a year - and a little more for the church's building fund.Now, of course, being the NYTimes, they side swipe at religion in general and tithing as a practice, but in large part the article is balanced in its treatment of the prosperity gospel movement apart from mainstream Christianity.
The Andersons, who live in the Bronx, are struggling financially. A few weeks ago, the couple, who have two young children, had no money to buy groceries. But they believe what their pastor, the Rev. Cerflo A. Dollar Jr., said on this recent Saturday night about the offering time: "It's opportunity for prosperity."
But here is what really got my goat
"There's no question that almost every Christian leader - reformed, Pentecostal, however you want to call it - sees it as a blight on the face of Christianity," said Timothy C. Morgan, deputy managing editor at Christianity Today, an evangelical magazine. "Yet it's so seductive."I went to the CT site and first did a search for "Cerflo Dollar" and it came up goose eggs. A search on "prosperity gospel" did turn up a lot of stuff.
So here is my question, Why is the leading magazine of Protestantism and evangelicalism so unwilling to name names in a situation like this? Look I understand that decent rules of debate demand condemnation of ideas, not people, but I am not talking about condemnation here, I am talking about correction. We can't write "Cerflo Dollar will burn in perditions flames for the prosperity gospel," but we can write "Brother Dollar is wrong, he needs correction, and we need to reach out to him and his congregants to help them to understand the error that they are engaged in."
Will such build enmity? Perhaps, but all we can do is guard against carrying that enmity ourselves, and answer it when it comes from other parties with love. The sad fact of the matter is not every person will respond to ideas, sometimes it has to get personal. We need to learn how to be lovingly corrective and personal.
Related Tags: prosperity gospel, Cerflo Dollar, Christianity Today, gospel, Christianity, correction, rebuke
