Getting Fed Up with Evangelicalism

I felt like walking around after eating too much for lunch and soon discovered I was fed up in a more significant way as well.

I walked into the Family Christian Bookstore. And the first thing I saw was Joel Osteen’s smiling face on a book cover.

It amazes me that there are enough stupid people to sell that many books of his and to pack his church. I watched him speak for about two minutes the other night. And that was all I could endure. He has got to be one of the most phony, affected speakers I’ve ever seen. And I used to be involved in politics so that’s saying something. How in heck do people not see right through him?

And right beside him was a new Joyce Meyer book with her face dominating the cover as always. Why the compulsion to have her face front and center on almost every book? It reminds me of the movie Groundhog Day. (I especially found it amusing that she did that for her title, Approval Addiction.)

If I didn’t know evangelicals better, I’d think they were stupid. How can they be so gullible as to give charlatans like that such *ahem* good livings?

And here’s an evangelical-leaning book store chain enabling them.

Right there in that store, I realized I, who once considered himself evangelical, had become thoroughly fed up with evangelicalism.

And I haven’t even mentioned evangelical coddling of the emergent church movement and its lack of orthodoxy ala Brian McLaren.

No, my disenchantment with evangelicalism does NOT mean I’m going liberal. Long time readers know that. But I’ve changed as a Christian. I now consider myself orthodox, not evangelical. And I’ve known that for a while.

But I didn’t realize just how disgusted I’m getting with evangelicalism until my short visit to Family Christian.

Yes, yes. I know. There are many excellent faithful evangelicals about. Global South Anglicans especially come to mind. And there is the army of missionaries evangelicals send out.

But, at least here in American evangelical culture, the good guys are getting drowned out by banal, heterodox, phony pandering, aided, abetted, and rewarded by the gullible and by Family Christian Stores.