Bill Hybels, Paige Patterson and conservatives

HighwayMan

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https://www.willowcreek.org/en/june-30-statement

The "lions of conservatism" defending Christian conservative thought for decades across platforms across continents, and one after another these guys turn out to be nothing but perverts, sexual predators or at least harassers.

Paige Patterson etc, I mean you can barely go a week without one.

Yet, every single time, the explanation is "oh we shouldn't be surprised, all men make mistakes, this doesn't mean our interpretation of the Bible is wrong." Sweep it under the carpet, and act like you can still dictate to people sexual ethics, or who gets saved or not saved.

But is there a limit? How many more conservative 'titans' who have built empires upon defending conservative thought need to exposed as nothing but adulterous, lying perverts before you start to wonder....'hang on...are we really the authority on Scripture that we claim that we are?'

Or is this just a cycle that will never be broken?

I just thank God that more young Christian people today seem to be moving away from this chamber of darkness. I really hope mainstream denominations start changing and the "unorthodox" becomes orthodox.
 

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Hybels is part of the emergent church movement that is defined by what they are against rather than what they are for. All that they really stand for is the deconstruction of biblical Christianity based on the premise that it can't be good because "look at how these people act". In a word, it's lawlessness.
 
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hedrick

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Hybels is culturally evangelical but not theologically.

But there's a deeper issue. Conservative Christianity (and also culturally evangelical Christianity) seems more dependent upon big names than other branches. For statements like the Chicago Statement you get a bunch of big names signing on that everyone recognizes. But if you get a group of mainline leaders almost no one will recognize their names. Catholics have bishops, but even there, there's not the star power of conservative stars, and most of them aren't known outside their own area.

I think this may be unhealthy both for the evangelical churches and for the leaders themselves. But it may also be part of their appeal. There's a kind of "show biz" flavor to a lot of evangelicalism.
 
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Albion

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https://www.willowcreek.org/en/june-30-statement

The "lions of conservatism" defending Christian conservative thought for decades across platforms across continents, and one after another these guys turn out to be nothing but perverts, sexual predators or at least harassers.

I guess that their fans might have thought of them as the "lions of conservatism" etc., but no other conservative Christians joined in. Most of them saw this whole movement, from the beginning, as something to stay away from.
 
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