Tag: gospel coalition

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TGC Senior Editor Suggests Watching Perverse TV Shows Gives Him ‘More passion than ever to spread the gospel’

The Gospel Coalition continues to demonstrate why it should be regarded exclusively with contempt and scorn, exemplified by Senior Editor Brett McCracken’s continued promotion and justification of watching pornographic TV shows and films and the hypocritical and theologically bankrupt advice he gives about them.

You’ll recall McCracken’s Top 20 list of favorite shows in 2021 featured several that were rated ‘R” for language, violence, and frequently for scenes of sex and nudity, that his 2022 best movies list is full of graphic sex and nudity, and that mercifully, his best films of 2023′ only featured a bit of sex and nudity

In a new piece for the ERLC, How to Evaluate Pop Culture in a Sex-Saturated World, McCracken seeks to offer “Christian wisdom for interacting with arts and culture” while answering the question, “How can I maintain my Christian witness and keep my soul nourished with truth, even as I engage with a pop culture landscape that’s often full of untruths and spiritually toxic material?”

Explaining that “It is vital we think wisely about how to interact with and evaluate media that advances perspectives on sex and gender at odds with biblical truth,” he offers that some “HBO shows may have extreme explicit content that make them obviously off limits for discerning Christian viewers” and that “Wise Christians should not hesitate to abstain from pop culture of this sort—even when it’s “critically acclaimed” or popular with masses of our friends, colleagues, or critics we respect.”

By “obviously off limits,” he apparently is NOT talking about one of the HBO shows he included on his list of favorite TV shows that he published at the Gospel Coalition. This six-episode show is rated TV-M and contains tons of filthy language, sex jokes, sex scenes, copious amounts of male nudity, and some female nudity as well. 

In fact, it contains (warning, graphic description ahead)  a graphic sex scene featuring two fully nude men, where one has his face in the back-end of the other, doing very homosexual things to his anus with his mouth. 

According to McCracken, who shamelessly shared this on TGC, these shows are apparently “on-limits” to “discerning Christian viewers.”

He concludes with the ridiculous insistence that the perverse content he consumes leaves him with “more passion than ever to spread the gospel,” which is a wild take given that a substantial number of the shows he recommends (much less watches and doesn’t publicly tell Christian Twitter about) are best watched alone in the dark at 1 A.M with spouse asleep, accountability partner’s phone number muted, and a box of tissue and bottle of lotion at hand. 

My ability to resist the secular onslaught regarding sex and gender has depended on the fact that I know and love God’s Word….I am utterly compelled by God’s vision for sex and gender and thoroughly convinced that it is truer, more beautiful, and better for the world than what Hollywood pitches. Therefore, when I watch a film or show that advances a skewed vision of sex or depicts some aspect of gender confusion, I am not captivated by it; I grieve it. I pray for the lost souls these pop culture narratives reflect and are shaping. And I leave with more passion than ever to spread the gospel that is better than the false sexual gospels of our age.”

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News

TGC Senior Editor Releases Best Movies of 2021- and They’re Rated ‘R’ For Sex & Nudity

Brett McCracken, the Senior Editor and Director of Communications at The Gospel Coalition released his best and favorite films of 2021 list. While there were some benign films that were relatively clean, his top 20 featured a whole bunch that were rated ‘R”, for language, violence, and frequently for scenes of sex and nudity. He openly acknowledges this, but only notes that they should be viewed with ‘caution’ and ‘discernment’:

These are the movies that, in my estimation, were the most excellent, memorable, thoughtful, theologically interesting, and redemptive releases of the year. As always, viewers should use discretion in terms of content. Though I chose only movies that are in some way edifying—depicting goodness, truth, or beauty in ways Christian viewers can celebrate—several films on my list are rated R or TV-MA and should be viewed with caution and discernment.

Here’s a few of his top 20:

As far as that last one, The Green Knight, one which the TGC head honcho describes as “the most excellent, memorable, thoughtful, theologically interesting, and redemptive releases of the year” we won’t even publish the descriptions of what it contains, as it is so coarse and graphic, but it contains several sex scenes, male and female nudity, including multiple women showing full-frontal.

It makes you wonder why McCracken would watch this scene, which we’ve been able to pinpoint arrives in the first 10 minutes of the film, and instead of turning it off, after seeing this graphic nudity, chooses instead to keep on watching, knowing that this sort of content may very well appear later in the film, but is what- amused and entertained at how theologically thoughtful this is?

Why not turn it off? This is the SENIOR EDITOR OF THE GOSPEL COALITION WE’RE TALKING ABOUT!!!

And people wonder why we say this organization is not to be trusted.

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Cursed Headlines Evangelical Stuff Featured

The Gospel Coalition Argues For Vaccine Passports To Attend Church

The Gospel Coalition (TGC) continues to stake out the worst possible position on the ongoing ecclesial drama surrounding the novel coronavirus, releasing an article advocating for churches to institute vaccine passports and relegating those ‘others’ who do not want to get vaccinated or who cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons to “online church” in the name of ‘loving one’s neighbor.’

This is hardly surprising, as TGC has been notoriously simpy when it comes to these matters, alternating between being completely silent about the infringement of religious liberty, and gaslighting their audience by claiming the government has not engaged in hostilities or persecution of the church during the last 18 months. Heck, if anything the state has been a perfect gentleman the entire time.

TGC Canada Again Argues that Their Churches Aren’t Being Persecuted,
TGC Author: Believing in ‘Big-Government Overreach’ Is a Denial of ‘Objective Reality’,
TGC Author: Christians Have Endured No ‘Hostility’ or ‘Ill-treatment’ From Govt During Pandemic

In a new post by Meagan Best, who is the Director of the Ethicentre Centre, she dedicates large portions of the article to advocating for the safety and efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccine before turning her attention to vaccine passports. Here, she holds two propositions to be true: 1) “restrictions imposed by the state on an individual’s liberty are justified only to prevent harm to others” and 2) “unvaccinated individuals present a risk to society.”

She ‘refutes’ the notion that Hebrews 10:24–25: “…not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing… is applicable our current pandemic situation, arguing that it cannot be used as a prooftext for the insistence of gathering together:

The kind of “meeting together” that the verse encourages as a vehicle for mutual encouragement does not necessarily require large, weekly, extended, indoor gatherings. There are other ways in which we can fulfil the purpose of the exhortation in this verse.

She acknowledges that some people may not want to get the vaccine on account of a conscience issue, but that when it comes to church:

The conscience of those who remain unpersuaded by those arguments should be respected, but respecting a person’s conscience does not automatically confer on them a right to act in a way that endangers the health and safety of others.

Best concludes that because the unvaccinated don’t have a right to endanger other believers who have loved their neighbors by being double-dosed, they need to be prevented from gathering with their brothers in sisters in Christ, with these vaccine passports the way to go:

Given our responsibility to love our neighbors and prioritize the interests of the most vulnerable, there are good and persuasive reasons for us to support and implement a system in which proof of vaccination (or medical exemption) is a standard requirement for attendance at large indoor gatherings such as church services…

…But this should not mean that we exclude those who have not been vaccinated from the fellowship of the church or from the circle of our ministry. If a regime of vaccine passports is to be with us for some time into the future, then our energy should be expended not on fighting against it but on finding safe, inclusive and responsible ways to gather and minister within such a context. One obvious option would be to advocate for a system that permitted those who remain unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated to produce evidence of being COVID-negative as a condition for church attendance. Another would be to continue and expand the range of online opportunities for Christian fellowship and online communication….

…It should be entirely possible for us to practise both our call to minister the gospel to all people and our responsibility to love our neighbours and care for the vulnerable, without requiring one of these commitments to trump the other.

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News

TGC Canada Again Argues that Their Churches Aren’t Being Persecuted

A Gospel Coalition council member and contributor has doubled down on his claim that Canadian Churches have not been persecuted, nor have they endured ill-treatment at all during the pandemic, suggesting that those claiming otherwise need to stop yapping about it, lest they “destabilize” the rest of the body.

This isn’t the first time that author Pastor Paul Carter has had a go at this. Months ago, he published an article insisting that while there was “probably” some “overreach,” by and large, Christians have endured no “hostility and ill-treatment because of our religious beliefs,” as he concluded: “I’m not sure how any reasonable person could argue that [there was].”

Well, he’s back. In a lengthy essay on the Gospel Coalition, he draws a comparison between the persecution in 1 Peter and what Canadian Christians have endured (being hit particularly hard by ruthless government leaders enforcing asinine lockdowns), saying that Peter’s goal was to “stabilize” the Christians there and give them a “realistic appraisal of their difficulties.”

Carter incorporates Pliny the Younger’s letter to Trajan that sought advice on how he should deal with the Christians in their midst, showing that so long as Christians didn’t get too uppity, Trajan was content to enact a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that ensured a sense of normalcy around their coexistence. “Christianity was discouraged but not destroyed, Christian people were marginalized, but not martyred and converts from paganism understood that becoming a Christian would be costly but generally not fatal.”

He argues that up until the time that Christianity was legalized by Constantine, Christians were really only formally persecuted for 2 years. In the other 260 years, things weren’t that bad. Carter explains that “this lesson ought to underscore the importance of being realistic about the challenges and difficulties that we are facing.”

Drawing comparisons to Canadian churches, he says that the churches have had a difficult time, but they categorically have not been persecuted. He points to his own situation in Ontario, which involves him having to get up at 4:00 am and have multiple services, and confesses, “I have a hard time thinking of that as persecution,” whereas something like “4-5 in basements and root cellars, whispering hymns in the dark, knowing full well that if they get caught they will be executed or sent to internment camps” is real persecution.

And here is the crux of his argument:

What we’re experiencing here in Ontario, and throughout most of the Provinces in Canada, is inconvenient and exhausting – but it doesn’t feel to me like persecution and I don’t think it would be helpful for our people if I called it that. I think this letter from the Apostle Peter cautions me about making too much of the difficulties that I’m facing.

That is because he is complying with the government, and the question at hand is what happens if he stops being so cooperative and starts to disobey them?

That’s the fundamental flaw with his argument.

He’s looking at churches that stopped meeting altogether, forbidden by the government to meet in any capacity and forced to do online services, or other churches forced to adhere to nonsensical and arbitrary capacity restrictions.

He’s looking at churches that won’t sing anymore because the government has forbidden them to do so, saying it’s too unsafe.

He’s looking at churches that insist that all members wear masks at all times and social distance, forbidden from having fellowship.

He’s looking at churches that have altogether ceased taking communion, on the orders of the government, removing themselves from the elements for fear of getting fined.

He’s looking at churches across the provinces and is saying “as long as you do all these things, you won’t get persecuted, and it’ll just be hardships and inconvenience.”

In this way, he is 100% correct.

Compliance with the government rules that dictate how and what a Christian church service must look like, and what the congregants can and can’t do will be exhausting but it won’t result in persecution.

But what of the churches that will not comply? What of the churches that insist that Christ is Lord of the church, not the Government, and that they will all gather on the Lord’s day as one body to worship as the Scriptures say?

You know their names by now. James Coates and GraceLife Church, arrested and jailed for a month. That church was barricaded and forcibly shut down, and is now having services in hiding.

Tim Stephens and Fairview Baptist Church, arrested and put in jail. Fined thousands of dollars. Church locked up and forcibly shut down, and they have been doing some services in hiding.

Jacob Reaume and Trinity Bible Chapel. Facing fines of over fifty million dollars – some of which cannot be appealed and must be paid. Church locked up and forcibly shut down, all the while being continually harassed by law enforcement and who has members fearful they could lose their jobs if they are known to be associated with the congregation.

That is persecution.

It isn’t on the same level as North Korea or Syria, but it doesn’t have to be. It is undeniable that it does exist in a milder form and has emerged whenever a congregation gets “out of line” according to the powers that be.

But if you’re a church that doesn’t get out of line – handing your service over to Caesar in order to avoid his judgmental and intolerant eye, you’ll be standing in disobedience to the scriptures and to the word of God, but like Paul’s church, you’ll be just fine.

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Church Cursed Headlines Featured

The Gospel Coalition Promotes Book on The ‘Theology of Periods.’ Yes, Those Kinds of Periods

Gospel Coalition writer Emily Cobb has written a review of the book A Brief Theology of Periods (Yes, really): An Adventure for the Curious into Bodies, Womanhood, Time, Pain and Purpose—and How to Have a Better Time of the Month By Rachel Jones, recommending that Christians everywhere get this book in order to understand the theological implications of what it means to have Christian women undergoing a menstrual cycle, and how that affects their relationship to Christ.

Published by the Good Book Company, which is generally regarded as a conservative publisher who carries such authors as Tim Keller, Matt Chandler, John Piper, Alistair Begg and Sinclaire Ferguson, Cobb quotes Jones then explains:

…for roughly 50% of the population, for a large section of our lives, periods are a regular reality. 400-500 times in your lifetime—and for 60 days of the year—you’re on your period (p.10).

What a staggering statistic. A women’s period shapes her choices, her emotions, her energy-levels, and in our churches—generally filled with more women than men—it means that, on any given Sunday, many are experiencing their period, or the lead up or aftermath of it.

Cobb assures her readers that “God isn’t afraid to talk about blood,” and this book is so valuable because Jones “urges her female (and male!) readers to see a woman’s monthly period as a testament to the gospel. When we feel unclean, it isn’t really because we are having our period and shedding blood; it is because our spiritual condition in and of itself is unclean.”

I do need to remember it; because it’s only when we’ve appreciated the depth of the problem—when we’ve felt appropriate shame not at menstruation but at our unclean spiritual condition—that we’re ready to hear afresh the words of peace offered by our Saviour. (p.65-66)

Noting that a proper understanding of one’s period is a way to properly understand the gospel, Cobb concludes by saying this is a must-read for both men and women because:

…a woman’s period doesn’t just affect her. It affects men she comes in contact with too, and I believe a book like this can help men become educated on a Biblical view of this topic just as it is for women. May we start seeing wonderful resources like this as a way to equip us as saints in gospel-living. When we lift the veil on these topics, we allow God to shine his wisdom on parts of our lives we often keep hidden.

We await for her some young enterprising man to write the sequel, The Theology of Seminal Emissions: What the Shooting of Sperm has to Say About our Faith, Fears, and Being Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, which would use 90% of the same argumentation and bible verses to justify its existence, so that the church may be doubly and richly blessed by this exceptionally necessary works.

Just….whyyyyyyyyyy?

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Church Evangelical Stuff Featured In-person Church Unrighteous Compliance

TGC Author: Believing in ‘Big-Government Overreach’ Is a Denial of ‘Objective Reality’

A Gospel Coalition is at it again. Mere months ago a Gospel Coalition writer condemned the consumption of all news that isn’t intensely local, suggesting that doing otherwise is Gnosticism, gives a God-complex, has no value, and makes one hate their neighbor. They said “anti-masking is not a “conscience issue,” but instead is sinful “civil disobedience” and suggested boomers are sinfully being “radicalized into conspiracies” by Ben Shapiro and Fox News.

This time, in an article by Brett McCracken, he posits that the “biggest emerging fissure in Western culture is not necessarily between political left and right” but rather between those who are “fiercely committed to reality” and those who “elevate the narrative above reality.”

He goes on to lists some examples of some beliefs that do not have a “good faith commitment to reality” but rather are committed to an untrue narrative, noting that “no level of scientific consensus or statistics will cause them to rethink or at least complicate their narrative.”

  1. “Nanny state” big-government overreach
  2. Corrupt Big Pharma
  3. Encroachments on personal liberty
  4. Vaccines as government control

None of these things are happening, he argues. None of those things occurred in the last 15 months.

That’s all just a narrative and conspiracy theories, and by believing they have happened or will happen, these men and women are not living in the real world, but rather are merely “allowing their entrenched narratives and biases” to “take precedence over objective reality.”

Where are the people who live in light of the facts about reality more than their feelings about it? Where are those whose understanding of the world is shaped more by evidence and logic than by narratives and anger? Where these people exist, they’re the true radicals…”

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Church Evangelical Stuff Featured Social Justice Wars

TGC Writer: Jesus was a ‘Downwardly Mobile Migrant’ who Faced ‘Daunting Pressures of Exclusion and Insecurity’

An article appearing on The Gospel Coalition describes God’s incarnate son as a “downwardly mobile migrant” and “middle eastern refugee” who faced “daunting pressures of exclusion and insecurity.”

The post, written by Jenny Yang, serves to link legal and illegal migrants and immigrantsto the experience Jesus had when his parents fled to Egypt.

If the name ‘Jenny Yang’ sounds familiar to you, it should. She’s the senior vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief and has been platformed by Russell Moore and the ERLC many times before, being a frequent conference speaker.

She’s the same woman who said at an immigration conference that “Human relationships are more important than theology” and that almost every major Biblical figure was a refugee.

In her post she writes:

God’s incarnate Son was both a downwardly mobile migrant––he left the realms of heaven and pitched his tent among men (John 1:14)––and a refugee fleeing a genocidal edict (Matt. 2:13). He intimately knows what it feels like to be a stranger in a foreign land. He identifies so much with strangers that when we welcome them, we are welcoming him (Matt. 25:31–46).

and

Every Christian is led by a Middle Eastern refugee who faced the daunting pressures of exclusion and insecurity and yet carried forth his duty to obey his Father and love his people. Jesus’s birth gives us hope that despite the challenging circumstances we face personally or societally, we can always find healing––and a home––in him.

Yang says that when she reads her bible, she sees a “theology of migration from Genesis to Revelation.” She concludes in her article:

Sorrow and joy are intermingled markers along a refugee’s journey, but the Christmas story is a reminder that our challenging circumstances don’t have the final word. Jesus does.”

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Breaking Church Coronavirus Religion Shutdown

These Pastors and Churches Took Millions in PPP Loans

An application for the Paycheck Protection Program with a reminder note stuck to it.

(Evangelical Dark Web) Joel Osteen landed in hot water when the Houston Chronicle broke the story that Lakewood Church had indeed accepted Payroll Payment Protection loans under the Small Business Administration’s allocation for non-profit organizations to benefit from this lockdown relief program, which he previously denied. But Joel Osteen was far from the only pastor and Lakewood Church was far from the only church to have received these forgivable loans. In fact, Lakewood Church’s $4.4 million haul was not even the largest.

Methodology

The Evangelical Dark Web analyzed the data released by the Small Business Administration of all organizations that were approved of loan amounts greater than $150,000. We searched and selected several prominent Evangelical organizations found to have been granted a loan. Catholic Dioceses and mainline denominations are excluded from these findings. It is possible that some of the churches under non-denominational are affiliated organizationally or ideologically with established denominations. The exact loans amounts were not disclosed in the SBA metadata. The selected examples are not exhaustive, but they are meant to contain the largest churches and America’s most influential pastors, particularly those who are in and represent Big Eva, and teachers and churches that readers have requested more research on. These results contain churches, seminaries, faith-based media outlets, and ministries. Blatant heretical movements are labeled but this categorization is not universally applied to organizations theologically aligned to these movements for the brevity of research.

Results

The organizations synonymous with Big Eva such as The Gospel Coalition, 9Marks, and programs under the Cooperative Program of the Southern Baptist Convention all have forgivable loans. Tim Keller’s The Gospel Coalition received up to $1 million while his church, Redeemer Presbyterian Church of New York City, received up to $5 million. Mark Dever’s 9Marks and his church, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, received up to $350,000. The SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, helmed by Russell Moore, received up to $1 million. Five of the six Southern Baptist Seminaries (SBTS being the outlier) received loans ranging from $1 million to $5 million…

To continue reading, click here

Editors note. This article was an exclusive written and published by the Evangelical Dark Web. Check out their content.

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Church Coronavirus Featured

The Gospel Coalition: If You Don’t Take the Vaccine you Can’t Effectively Share the Gospel

A new article by The Gospel Coalition (TGC) has taken a precipitous step closer towards the eventual and inevitable narrative that taking the COVID-19 vaccine is a “gospel issue” by arguing that Christians can’t effectively witness or share the gospel if they don’t take it, due to the negative impact it will have on their witness.

TGC writer Pastor Paul Carter sets up the story by writing off the notion of the vaccine as being in some way the mark of the beast, says that Christian should consult their family doctor about whether or not they should take it, and then writes:

“More obviously related to the question of whether or not to get the vaccine would be the many biblical injunctions to love our neighbor as ourselves. The Apostle Paul said, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10 ESV).

What about loving one’s neighbor?

As Christians, we should strive not to be known as the people whose refusal to take a vaccine (should our family doctors recommend that we do so) delayed our progress as a society against this virus. If our family doctor advises us to take the vaccine there is no compelling biblical reason for us not to and a great number of obvious biblical principles suggesting that we should…

The Scriptures to which we are bound to commend an awareness of what is respected and valued by our friends and neighbors. The Apostle Paul in Romans 12 said: ‘take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.’  (Romans 12:17 NRSV)

So if our neighbors value the efficacy and importance of the vaccine, our refusal to show it equal deference and inject it into our bodies right away shows a lack of love on our part, which they will remember next time it comes time to witness.

There will be a world to reach on the other side of this pandemic. There will be friends, neighbors, and loved ones to evangelize who are all watching us now as we navigate this last stage of COVID-19. If they see us caring more about our liberties than their safety, we may have a harder time having Gospel conversations with them going forward. If they see us getting our information from conspiracy news sites on the internet they may be less interested in attending Bible Study with us once this pandemic has finally passed.

While the decision to take a vaccine, or not, is primarily a medical decision, how you handle that decision and how you communicate that decision will have a missiological impact in the days, weeks, and months that lie ahead.


In short, don’t be that guy who refused to take the vaccine out of conscience or conviction. You don’t have a good reason not to, doing so will make you look crazy, and no one wants to hear about the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord from a crazy person.

One wonders if the same concern applies to refusing to wear a mask or insisting on going to church when the whole state is trying to shut you down? Probably, I would have to think.

You’re so close, TGC, to saying it’s a gospel issue. You’re almost there. You can do it. We’re rooting for you. Just one article more…

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Conspiracy Evangelical Stuff Featured

Gospel Coalition Writer Calls out Todd Friel for Bashing TGC, Calls him to Repent for Being ‘Divisive’

Justin Taylor, one of The Gospel Coalition’s (TGC) long time writers and members has come out swinging against the venerable Todd Friel, accusing him of bearing false witness, being divisive, and declaring he ought to marked and avoided.

The substance of this tweet betrays a guilty conscience, however. Todd Friel will certainly name names but has generally resisted painting whole organizations in the way that has been charged. Therefore we ask: where is the evidence that Friel has done this?

The more likely thing is that Friel has come out against organizations that have caved to Marxism (Gramscian Marxism is an obscure, rarely used term. Taylor is being petty for using it.) and then TGC read themselves into the comments and have out swinging, without having the courage to tag Friel in the post.

In this way, TGC is being “divisive” with their accusations. If they say they are not, then put up or shut up. Show us the quotes and screenshots of what Friel has done to warrant the label from such a prominent organization.

Of course, even if Friel did say this, there are more than enough witnesses to satisfy the biblical charge of the notion that these organizations are doing these very things, guilty conscience or not.

In fact, our entire website here at Protestia, and formerly at Pulpit and Pen have shown this to be true. Go to pulpitandpen.org and type “the gospel coalition” into the search bar and you’ll see at least a hundred eager and ready witnesses eager to testify to Todd’s claims.

Yet TGC has a near-pathological aversion to engaging their critics, frequently posting without allowing people to comment on their content and rarely if ever deigning to respond to tweets asking clarifying comments or questions about content they post. The fact that they have responded to a critic is a miracle indeed.

Rather, the authors have a nasty habit of saying something shocking, like calling Kyle Rittenhouse a mass shooter and comparing him to Dylan Roof, and then never answering any followup questions to those who want to know more or get clarity on what he means and why he would say this. Or how about all the TGC authors trying to convince evangelicals it’s ok to vote for pro-abortion candidates like Tim Keller has done recently and repeatedly?

If Taylor and his fellow Gospel Coalitionites want to do more than play the #BigEva version of “the knockout game,” that would be great.