Elevation Church Tries to Take Down Video Critical of Them: Loses Case
Elevation Church has lost their case to have a video critical of them removed from YouTube, according to content creator Colin Miller, who emerged as the victor in a battle between BigHeresy and the little guy.
Last month, the increasingly cultish church filed a copyright strike against Miller for this video, which has 150,000 views. In the video, Miller demonstrated how over a span of 10 sermons, not once did Furtick command people to repent or call anyone out for their sins or mention the fact that humanity has a sinful nature, and not once did he warn people about hell.
Instead, the entire time, Furtick “often made it seem like sin was something that happens to you rather than something you actually participate in. He never really saw it as a verb, he only uses it as a noun.” Miller ultimately concluded that Furtick was trafficking in a woeful unfaithfulness to the scriptures and a watered-down message of sin and repentance, and therefore was disqualified from the ministry.
In response to the video, Elevation Church went on the attack and issued a copy strike for the channel on account of him playing a 18 second clip from an infamous 2007 sermon where Furtick asserts that church is “not for believers” as part of his overall critique.
The strike was not an automated action by YouTube’s algorithms, but rather according to Miller and the information he received, was the result of direct intervention and a personal touch by an employee at Elevation church.
Miller was naturally torqued that the church took what is essentially a legal action against him, one that is being undertaken in a scripturally unjustifiable way. He describes it as an “unbiblical” and “sinful” action because it bears false witness against him, claiming that he did something unlawful when in actuality they have no proof that he did. Furthermore, it is against the law to fraudulently issue false copyright against someone, making Elevation Church doubly in the wrong.
As a result of these bullying tactics, Miller filed a counterclaim, which gave Elevation Church 10 days to respond by taking him to a federally recognized court to offer proof that he violated their claim, or else the video would be reinstated.
10 Days later, Elevation did not respond, and with no case against him, his video was back up and collecting those views.
Emerging victorious, Miller reached out to the Elevation Church employee who reported the video to see if he would apologize for his fraudulent actions, or would do anything in the way of explaining why he did what he did.
Unsurprisingly, the employee did not respond, having enough time to personally file a strike, but not worth the time or Christian integrity to be accountable for his actions or offer an explanation.
We are grateful that Miller won, and look forward to more videos in the future.
Backround: Steven Furtick is the Lead Pastor of Elevation Church, a Southern Baptist associated, 25,000-member multisite campus with 17 locations. He is known for having the term “narcegesis” named after him (narcissistic exegesis) based on his inability to exegete scripture in a way that doesn’t make every story revolve around him.
Furtick has incredibly close ties with Trinity-denying modalist TD Jakes, preaching at each other’s churches and conferences and publicly declaring themselves to be the best of buds, with Jakes mentoring Furtick for years.
He’s also known for all things filthy lucre. He wears an insanely extravagant wardrobe, routinely appearing on Preachersnsneakers for wearing shirts and shoes that can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars each, as can be seen here. Furtick is also known for his lavish house – a 16,000 square foot, $1.6 Million dollar mansion sitting on 19 acres that Furtick downplayed as “not that great of a house” when pressed about it after news broke.
Hopefully, Furtick won’t be promoting his Trinity-denying hero on tour, nor will he be going on bizarre rants about angels anytime soon.
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Thank God! Love you Colin and friends!