Between The Evangelical Circus And Deconstruction

 By Dr. R. Scott Clark - Posted at The Heidelblog:

This has been a strange week in Lake Wobegon. No sooner had the news emerged that an evangelical megachurch, James River Church (Springfield, MO) hired a male stripper/sword swallower—who, according to Julie Roys, “moonlights as a pole-dancing striptease artist at gay nightclubs”—to appear at their men’s conference, than the event was publicly rebuked by, believe it or not, Mark Driscoll for displaying the spirit of Jezebel.1 Then, Driscoll himself capitalized on the event by using it to sell one of his books. As they say on late-night television, but wait, there’s more. The same week, we saw Driscoll’s mentor and prototype, Doug Wilson, being interviewed by Tucker Carlson to promote his version of Christian Nationalism.

All this is enough to make one’s head spin. Mark Driscoll is a disgraced pastor who founded and then figuratively blew up the Mars Hill empire headquartered in Seattle.2 The story was dramatic enough to warrant an entire podcast series.3 He now leads a congregation in Scottsdale.

Wilson has been a center of controversy for decades.4 From his unabashed advocacy of the benefits of American (chattel) slavery, to his direct involvement in three different cases of plagiarism, to his impenitent use of vulgarity (particularly about women), to his advocacy of the Federal Vision error (denounced by most of the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council churches), to his mishandling of gravely serious pastoral issues (e.g., statutory rape and child sexual abuse), Wilson has hardly been a model of pastoral wisdom, orthodoxy, or probity.5 Wilson and Driscoll have taken their turns driving the proverbial church-growth bus.6

Continue here.