‘False Teachers,’ ‘Wolves,’ and Other Modern American Evangelical Smears
Recent ad hominem attacks reveal more about those threatened by open discussion of gender, race, and power within evangelicalism
Over the holiday weekend, and with evident spare time to be spent casting others as “false teachers,” one pastor (and then a drizzle of followers) took to social media to attack scholars such as Kristin Kobes Du Mez, and then sideswipe Beth Allison Barr, Jemar Tisby, Jacob Alan Cook, Samuel Perry, and Andrew Whitehead. Turkey with a side of slander.
Such attacks reduce scholars who have dedicated their careers to careful examination of primary sources to false prophets for, in order: illuminating how rugged masculinity underlies evangelical culture and its notions of power; documenting the history of Christian patriarchy; showing ways the American church has and does perpetuate racism; how what’s been dubbed “the Christian worldview” is strikingly similar to “whiteness,” period; and between Perry and Whitehead, tracing Christian nationalism in America.
