Christian Leadership failures- a response to Ed Shaw
by David Virtue, Virtueonline:
NEWS ITEM: An article by Ed Shaw titled Christian leadership failures: what’s the cause? Argues that contemporary evangelicals are Pharisees and hypocrites when it comes to sex and sexuality. We set up extra-biblical rules that do nothing but create an atmosphere of fear. He also accuses Evangelicals of being biblical illiterates, Christ-unlikeness, concluding with purposeful sexuality in which he argues that there are recent distortions of the Bible’s position on sexuality which prompted him to write a book, Purposeful Sexuality. A short Christian Introduction. Shaw is also di-rector of www.living.out which claims to help people, churches and society talk about faith and sexuality. A reading of this website members of this movement take varying views about the details of the theology, might lead one to the impression that it is a Trojan horse for eventually accepting homosexuality by evangelicals.
Melvin Tinker responds:
Whilst recognising that it is not possible to say all that one might want to say in a brief article, Ed Shaw’s diatribe against evangelical leadership (Evangelicals Now May 2021) is to be found wanting at several points.
First of all, Ed engages in an ad hominem attack involving sweeping generalisations accusing evangelical leaders for being Pharisees and hypocrites, bib-lically illiterate and unChrist-like; serious charges without adducing one shred of evi-dence to back them up. Of course, examples will invariably be found in a movement so large, international and varied, but the impression Ed gives is that these are fea-tures of evangelical leadership en masse. Because of the lack of specific
examples what Ed presents is tantamount to generalised character assassination which is singularly unhelpful.
Secondly, in portraying evangelical leaders as hypocrites (bearing in mind that we all wear masks from time to time and so it is a charge easily felt) it softens up evangeli-cals to be weary of engaging in any criticism of others who do not even attempt to follow the Bible’s teaching on matters of sex and sexuality for fear of being labelled a Pharisee. It is similar to the attempt to silence opposition with which we have be-come so familiar with the application of any dreaded ‘phobe’ label designed to ‘keep heads down and mouths’ shut. This will certainly be the desired effect of those pro-gressives within the church, like the gay Bishop of Grantham, with whom Ed says he has so much in common in the recent Living in Love and Faith video.
Thirdly, much of what Ed says is, in my experience, simply not true.
Please right-click links to open in a new window.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
