Friday, October 18, 2013

In which I hasten to add

Frank Turk was (for the first time in a while) pretty close to 100% right in an article. Dr Michael Brown asks a question:
A question for all my cessationist friends: You constantly ask why I don't rebuke charismatic abuses (actually, I do), but I have not heard you rebuke the horrific writings of Martin Luther (against the Jews and others). Why not? What he wrote was far worse than a prosperity gospel.
First of all, "far worse" is a judgment call which I don't necessarily grant. Yes, it's horrible to say what Luther said when he was old and crotchety about the Jews. The Word of Faith heresy leads scads of people straight to Hell, more than there were Jews in the world at Luther's time.

Anyway, what is at issue for me is not so much that we don't hear very many denunciations coming from, say, the leadership of the Assemblies of God or Michael Brown's own organisation or Charisma Magazine of the many horrible things that Word of Faith-ers do and say. That's bad enough.

What concerns me most is that when they are directly asked about it, they still hem and haw. Look at the way Dr Brown acted a few days ago. Read my Twitter feed from recent days. I've asked probably a dozen charismatic Tweeters who were interacting on #strangefire feed to denounce Creflo Dollar and TD Jakes. Only one did so.


I'm happy to set myself apart from the actions of many, many charismatics in this arena.

Rhology, do you denounce the horrific writings of Martin Luther against the Jews and others?

Yes.

That was easy. Your turn.

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