I admit that my training with the Navigators is right in line with this. Navigators founder Dawson Trotman was touted as a tough heroic figure. His drowning was shared like a legend. The key leaders of the campus Nagivators movement that were our guest speakers at Glen Eyrie Discipleship Training were of the same ilk. They were tough dudes. Many of them military vets. The were guys guys.
Let me tell you, if one of the young women at those training sessions argued for equality in leadership the whole leadership team would have come down all around them. They could have brought the entire fucking discipleship training to a screeching halt. Those young women could have had those old Navigators running round holding their dicks.
How sad, that many of them did not see what was happening. And how sad for me, that at the time I didn't think it was okay for a young woman to be lesbian, or for guys to be gay. Hence my complete and utter confusion and my pathetic inability to process what was happening when I learned that some of my co-leader young women were, in fact, gay. Or they were struggling as leaders. They were "having trouble" or they were "struggling" in some way. But lots of hush hush, etc.
For fuck's sake, one of our new young leaders in Sudbury ended up being convicted of child molesting.
My leader of my Lessons On Assurance bible study (BS for short) as a new believer was a Navigator staff member. He ended up being unfaithful to his wife and got divorced. Same thing happened to another long time staffer; his wife had an affair.
The failings and weakness, hell the outright humanity, of Christian leaders and workers in my Evangelical circles were like warning lights on the dashboard. But I wasn't ready to take it in. I was complicit because I was getting something helpful out of the church.
But it wasn't God.
It was an authoritarian, male-centred, comfort community.
It would be another twenty years before the scales fell away from my eyes and I was able to see things as they were. Just a bunch of useless, stupid people acting like they care for other people and acting like they love God and Jesus while in reality they were just full of shit.
Here is the podcast link:
https://lukejjanssen.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/48-kristin-du-mez.mp3
The Evangelical Christian church has become unplugged and detached from the theological basis for its existence and has replaced it with a cultural/political identity that is basically a lie and a distortion.
How can a believer in an evangelical church stay there when they realize that they are being sold out in terms of their standing as human beings?
For example, women in evangelical circles women are absolutely barred from holding ministry leadership roles. They can't take leadership roles where they would take authority. Women find it that they can't bring their whole selves to church. And they are okay with it. They swallow the kool-ade.
Boys and Girls clubs. Cadets for boys and Calvinettes for girls. The girls learned how to pick fashionable colours that match their hair, and do crafts. The boys would go out a learn survival skills. They would march into their meetings, etc. Structure, authority, expectations and gender distinctions ruled the day.
The concept of obedience is central to Evangelicalism but it is abused. There is a flawed power dynamic. The idea of submission to authority is a big deal. If you don't submit to the (men) in charge, then how can you be respecting God's authority? goes the saying.
Who gets to wield authority? Only men. The evangelical church is authoritarian and sexist.
So what then is the lifeline to faith for an honest and "woke" evangelical church-goer? How do we deal with a new awareness of our own complicity in going along with so many lies and distortions? Why would anybody be so comfortable in an obviously historically false institution?
Where are the evangelical leaders who are trying to make corrections as leaders? Where are the introspections where leaders explore their complicity?
Can evangelicalism be saved or reformed? Not likely.
"Powerful evangelical men giving each other cover. When they really need to use their leadership to call things out, they don't. The tension between the mainstream leadership and the fringe is huge."
Evangelicalism is not christianity. And yet evangelicals have been taught to defend the institution. Why the effort to save a denomination that clearly has lost its way?
One solution may be to travel to where christianity is flourishing, whether it is in the same city or another country.
"Jesus doesn't need your protection, nor does your denomination."
Why do we even need to have this special category of christian believer called Evangelical?
I say it's time for the evangelicals to walk away. Leave the fucking church empty just like the pandemic.
