The Power to declare other Christians dead: Humility? Is that what some people call it?
The August issue of Premier Christianity has published an article by a Christian leader called R T Kendall. Kendall was one time minister of Westminster Chapel in London. To cut a long story short he is a charismatic fundamentalist who, according to Wiki, has been associated with the notorious Paul Cain and the Kansas City prophets. He has also endorsed the bizarre Toronto Blessing.
It is a rule of thumb of mine that for every fundamentalist you will find at least one (probably a lot more than one!) anti-fundamentalist and this is no less true of Kendall. The straight laced reformation identifying evangelicals, themselves very committed "obey to the letter" fundamentalists, would likely consider Kendall, with his gnostic version of Christianity, a dangerous heretic. The people of London's Metropolitan Tabernacle probably fall into this category. Moreover, the group I have called the "Reformo-Charistmatics" would also want to disown Kendall's antics. See here for an example of a reference to Kendall from the point of view of the London Tabernacle:
Fundamentalists place a huge stake in the divine authority of their opinions; this is usually a consequence of what they will claim to be the "plain reading" of scripture; that is, how they interpret its meaning. Upon this reading they will attempt to load the epistemic responsibility of their beliefs, telling us those beliefs are based not on their opinions (which in fact they are) but on the say so of the Almighty Himself, i.e. "the Authority of God's Word", as if there is some non-contentious agreed reading of scripture which means its interpretation is as uncontentious as the translation of Morse code. But as I have said before, scripture is like a recipe; to get the cake right we also need a competent cook and the right ingredients. The generation of meaning from scripture is organically joined to the reader and his environment. The reader is epistemically proactive, responsible, accountable and cannot off-load his opinions onto the Almighty.
But fundamentalists whose epistemic arrogance means they know they've got it all right have boxed themselves into a corner. If fundamentalists think they've got God's very word taped then they are committed to declaring those who criticize their version of fundamentalism as at best of an inferior and unclean spirituality or at worst blaspheming heretics. The fundamentalist's world is one of black and white, so, when it comes to evaluating a fundamentalist guru like Kendall it helps to remember that one fundamentalist's esteemed prophet is another fundamentalists emissary from hell. If you disagree with a fundie their epistemic arrogance means that they just can't accept that this can be done with a clear conscience; after all, from their perspective disobeying their word is to disobey the writ of the Almighty God. This is one reason why I do not recommend getting involved with fundies; unless you are prepared to eat out of their doctrinaire hand the relationship with them is soured from day one.
So, we can see why fundamentalists like Kendall fights fire with fire and he can give as good as he gets from fellow fundamentalists like the Metropolitan tabernacle. But Kendall, in his eyes, has something extra that these "reformation" Christians don't have; namely, as a gnosto-charismatic he believes he has a spiritual anointing, absent among the "reformists", an anointing which gives his words a super-charged authority that the "reformist" can't, and, to give them credit, wouldn't make claim to. In fact Kendall fell out with his predecessor at Westminster Chapel, namely the formidable Martin Lloyd Jones, the lionized doyen of the traditional non-charismatic fundamentalists who think of themselves as the one and only true torch bearers of the reformation and charismatic Christians as dangerously deceived..
So,
there is the list of Pastors. Dr Masters makes some interesting comments about
the history of the church, especially from the Second World War onwards. Many
‘stalwarts’ who returned after the war found the church very different – Dr
Scroggie being quite Arminian and strong on Keswick ‘holiness’ teaching. Many
of these believers left and went to other places where there was sound
expository preaching. One such place was Westminster Chapel, under the ministry
of Dr D Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Indeed, a young Tabernacle deacon, named Henry C
Todd, crossed the river to sit under Dr Lloyd-Jones, and later became his
church secretary. At the end of his life, in the 1970s, Henry Todd returned to
the Tabernacle as the pendulum swung the other way again. The sad decline of
Westminster Chapel into the charismatic extremes of today was begun even then.
(See the Rev Iain Murray’s comments upon RT Kendall’s ministry here). [The link at the end there is now orphaned - ed]
Fundamentalists place a huge stake in the divine authority of their opinions; this is usually a consequence of what they will claim to be the "plain reading" of scripture; that is, how they interpret its meaning. Upon this reading they will attempt to load the epistemic responsibility of their beliefs, telling us those beliefs are based not on their opinions (which in fact they are) but on the say so of the Almighty Himself, i.e. "the Authority of God's Word", as if there is some non-contentious agreed reading of scripture which means its interpretation is as uncontentious as the translation of Morse code. But as I have said before, scripture is like a recipe; to get the cake right we also need a competent cook and the right ingredients. The generation of meaning from scripture is organically joined to the reader and his environment. The reader is epistemically proactive, responsible, accountable and cannot off-load his opinions onto the Almighty.
But fundamentalists whose epistemic arrogance means they know they've got it all right have boxed themselves into a corner. If fundamentalists think they've got God's very word taped then they are committed to declaring those who criticize their version of fundamentalism as at best of an inferior and unclean spirituality or at worst blaspheming heretics. The fundamentalist's world is one of black and white, so, when it comes to evaluating a fundamentalist guru like Kendall it helps to remember that one fundamentalist's esteemed prophet is another fundamentalists emissary from hell. If you disagree with a fundie their epistemic arrogance means that they just can't accept that this can be done with a clear conscience; after all, from their perspective disobeying their word is to disobey the writ of the Almighty God. This is one reason why I do not recommend getting involved with fundies; unless you are prepared to eat out of their doctrinaire hand the relationship with them is soured from day one.
So, we can see why fundamentalists like Kendall fights fire with fire and he can give as good as he gets from fellow fundamentalists like the Metropolitan tabernacle. But Kendall, in his eyes, has something extra that these "reformation" Christians don't have; namely, as a gnosto-charismatic he believes he has a spiritual anointing, absent among the "reformists", an anointing which gives his words a super-charged authority that the "reformist" can't, and, to give them credit, wouldn't make claim to. In fact Kendall fell out with his predecessor at Westminster Chapel, namely the formidable Martin Lloyd Jones, the lionized doyen of the traditional non-charismatic fundamentalists who think of themselves as the one and only true torch bearers of the reformation and charismatic Christians as dangerously deceived..
But let me get back to the article. In this article Kendall brings to bear the authority of his guru status (among some Christians!) in order to condemn another a set of Christians. But he doesn't tell us who those Christians are or what they've done wrong. Kendall only vaguely identifies them by voicing his concern for the drift of British evangelical Christianity and claims they are crossing over a line he never dreamed they would cross. Now, Kendall can't be referring to the buttoned up "reformed" evangelicals of, say, the Metropolitan Tabernacle variety since they have been around a lot longer than Kendall and his Toronto blessing culture. My guess is that he perhaps is referring to the general reflective and self critical drift in the evangelical church which, ironically, may well be a reaction against the kind of authoritarian and polarized excesses of Christian fundamentalists such as we see in both the likes of Kendall and his doppelgangers in "reformed" Christian communities. Many moderate and reasonable evangelicals have had enough; in fact, they may see in fundamentalists an ugly reflection of what they themselves might look like to outsiders. This may even be the sort of process moderate evangelical William Dembski has been through.
Polarization among evangelicals has been going on for a long time now. In fact I remember a telling incident when I was at the faithfully evangelical Surrey Chapel, Norwich in the late eighties, during the days of its then minister David Middleton. David Middleton and Surrey Chapel were and still are traditionally evangelical and yet during a meeting I remember David Middleton complaining about the polarization he was observing between the fanatically "reformed" Christians and the fanatically charismatic wings of the church.That wasn't the days of the internet, but I think Middleton was the recipient of a large post bag which, along with his many ministerial connections, put him in a strategic position to assess the way things were going. ***
With the coming of the mid 1990s Toronto Blessing which came on top of the authoritarianism of 1970s restorationism, things got worse. In consequence many evangelicals began to feel they had had seen enough and didn't want to be identified with the kind of ugly fundamentalism that Kendall and his doppelgangers stands for. The upshot of this was a more reasonable smooth edged nonabrasive evangelicalism. Very recent evidence that moderate evangelicals are rebelling (on both side of the Atlantic) is perhaps seen in the William Dembski story. But I suspect that it is not just the outbreak of reasonableness and a liberal leaning tolerance among evangelicals that troubles a hardened fundamentalist like Kendall. My guess is that what most offends him is that some evangelicals have started to accept homosexual relations - but then this acceptance is also found among the emerging church movement which isn't just a British phenomenon. So, I have to admit that I'm not quite sure what fuels the fire of Kendall's fundamentalist ire.
However, what I would like to focus on here is how Kendall tries to deal with these "erring" Christians. Does Kendall use passages from the Bible where God's people have erred (like we all do at one time or another) such as seen in the stories of Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah, St Peter or perhaps even David's catastrophic sin? No, not at all! That is far too measured for a fire breathing fundamentalist! So, like all good fundies Kendall's instinct is to go nuclear straight away and engage in the grossest possible condemnation that actually makes even Ken Ham look quite mild. Kendall likens these despised Christians to one of the most reviled figures in the Bible, a figure who failed to make it to the annals of faith, namely King Saul, a man who usurped the priesthood, massacred eighty five priests (1 Samuel 22:18), consulted with a medium and was intent on murdering the Biblical hero, David. (Actually Saul was probably suffering from some form of mental illness and his written history may have been influenced by a very disgruntled priesthood!). Perhaps rather peeved that some of the evangelicals he's condemning still seem to be pulling the Christian crowds Kendall uses a another form of excommunication which I've seen among Christian gnostics; he simply implies these speakers to be spirituality dead. Viz:
Any layman or church leader can be at the height of their popularity and usefulness, and yet be yesterday's man or woman....today's man or woman can be dead and still 'speak' like Charles Spurgeon, Martyn Lloyd Jones or John Stott.
This means that there is no chance these speakers, in the eyes of Kendall, can justify themselves with a good ministry - to the likes of a gnostic like Kendall they are declared beyond the pale by his self-styled authoritarian spiritual "discernment", so there is no hope of redemption for their ministries via content - Kendall declares them be far worse than just erring; they are, he implies , spiritually dead. Content is nothing to Kendall, but only sublime anointing - that is, his opinion of what constitutes sublime anointing.
The followers of gnostic gurus like Kendall have been known to defend such gurus against criticism with a quote from scripture: "Touch not God's anointed". It is used as a spiritual threat to stop accountability and criticism in its tracks. Often in mind here is the passage surrounding 1 Samuel 24:6. This is ironic because that passage is about David's unwillingness to kill Saul when he had the opportunity to do so*. You will note then, that Kendall himself is clearly not inhibited about "touching" what he thinks of as the "Sauls" of our day! However, I've got to give credit to the old traditional reformation identifying evangelicals (such as we find at the Tabernacle) - they wouldn't dream of using such intimidating language in order to defend their leaders!
Disclaimer. Although at the world view level the same evidences can admit more than one solution, I don't accept that this can be true, without gross rational violations taking place, when it comes to basic science such as the spherical Earth, and its position in space and time. In the case of flat Earthism, geocentrism and young Earthism etc. the fanciful world view is filtering down to the basic science level and corrupting it.
Footnotes:
* 1 Samuel 24:6 is actually not referring to criticism of Saul, but of doing him physical violence. David, although highly critical of Saul, withheld his hand from killing him.
** By "gnostic" I'm not referring to the particular manifestations of gnosticism such as the early Gnostics or the Cathars of the late middle ages, but a more general concept cluster which constitute a dualistic world view. This view partitions the world using a set of dichotomies; Viz: God vs. natural forces, supernatural vs. natural, heart vs. head, intuition vs analysis, revelation vs. reason, spirit vs. matter etc. Althougth there are some elements of a gnostic perpective in much evangelical Christianity, above all gnostic Christians tend to place a premium on mythos over logos. This is seen in the prestige value of inner light revelations of the divine and deeply intuitive encounters with God. Those Christians who don't share this world view are likely to be considered spiritually inferior. See here
*** 7/9/19: I have recently come across an old copy of the Surrey Chapel Magazine, Angle, issue 64. It has excerpts from a talk given by David Middleton at the church meeting of September 1989. It may well be the very same meeting I mention above; for Middleton's talk was about "Keeping the Spirit of Unity by Pressing on Together". I don't think the Angle article is a verbatim text, but it does report Middleton as saying this:
Unity is rare these days with such a spirit of angry division and discontent abroad......So many evangelical Christians are incredibly naive, gullible and infantile.....many evangelical Christians are so incredibly shallow. There's plenty of emotion , but it is so superficial. Let's not be like that either - but press on to deeper depths of experience and love.
Middleton was good for Surrey Chapel as he help ease it out of a severe, harsh and staid reformed evangelicalism. But he was a rather private and sensitive individual and probably too stressed by the job. Sad to say after 17 years at Surrey Chapel I never really got to know the guy before he died of stomach or intestinal (?) cancer in 1998. The last and in fact the very first time I spoke to him at any length was in early 1992 when the wife and I had decided to leave Surrey Chapel.
I had already seen evidence of what he was talking about in his church meeting address. But I wonder how many others in that meeting got the same "highly germane content" alert that I got as Middleton started speaking? Middleton never found out that I was already pondering deeply on this church polarisation question. The fact was, however, that underneath it Middleton and myself were really on very different planets. But I'll hand it to him: Today's Christians could certainly learn a thing or two from him.
Polarization among evangelicals has been going on for a long time now. In fact I remember a telling incident when I was at the faithfully evangelical Surrey Chapel, Norwich in the late eighties, during the days of its then minister David Middleton. David Middleton and Surrey Chapel were and still are traditionally evangelical and yet during a meeting I remember David Middleton complaining about the polarization he was observing between the fanatically "reformed" Christians and the fanatically charismatic wings of the church.That wasn't the days of the internet, but I think Middleton was the recipient of a large post bag which, along with his many ministerial connections, put him in a strategic position to assess the way things were going. ***
With the coming of the mid 1990s Toronto Blessing which came on top of the authoritarianism of 1970s restorationism, things got worse. In consequence many evangelicals began to feel they had had seen enough and didn't want to be identified with the kind of ugly fundamentalism that Kendall and his doppelgangers stands for. The upshot of this was a more reasonable smooth edged nonabrasive evangelicalism. Very recent evidence that moderate evangelicals are rebelling (on both side of the Atlantic) is perhaps seen in the William Dembski story. But I suspect that it is not just the outbreak of reasonableness and a liberal leaning tolerance among evangelicals that troubles a hardened fundamentalist like Kendall. My guess is that what most offends him is that some evangelicals have started to accept homosexual relations - but then this acceptance is also found among the emerging church movement which isn't just a British phenomenon. So, I have to admit that I'm not quite sure what fuels the fire of Kendall's fundamentalist ire.
However, what I would like to focus on here is how Kendall tries to deal with these "erring" Christians. Does Kendall use passages from the Bible where God's people have erred (like we all do at one time or another) such as seen in the stories of Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah, St Peter or perhaps even David's catastrophic sin? No, not at all! That is far too measured for a fire breathing fundamentalist! So, like all good fundies Kendall's instinct is to go nuclear straight away and engage in the grossest possible condemnation that actually makes even Ken Ham look quite mild. Kendall likens these despised Christians to one of the most reviled figures in the Bible, a figure who failed to make it to the annals of faith, namely King Saul, a man who usurped the priesthood, massacred eighty five priests (1 Samuel 22:18), consulted with a medium and was intent on murdering the Biblical hero, David. (Actually Saul was probably suffering from some form of mental illness and his written history may have been influenced by a very disgruntled priesthood!). Perhaps rather peeved that some of the evangelicals he's condemning still seem to be pulling the Christian crowds Kendall uses a another form of excommunication which I've seen among Christian gnostics; he simply implies these speakers to be spirituality dead. Viz:
Any layman or church leader can be at the height of their popularity and usefulness, and yet be yesterday's man or woman....today's man or woman can be dead and still 'speak' like Charles Spurgeon, Martyn Lloyd Jones or John Stott.
This means that there is no chance these speakers, in the eyes of Kendall, can justify themselves with a good ministry - to the likes of a gnostic like Kendall they are declared beyond the pale by his self-styled authoritarian spiritual "discernment", so there is no hope of redemption for their ministries via content - Kendall declares them be far worse than just erring; they are, he implies , spiritually dead. Content is nothing to Kendall, but only sublime anointing - that is, his opinion of what constitutes sublime anointing.
The followers of gnostic gurus like Kendall have been known to defend such gurus against criticism with a quote from scripture: "Touch not God's anointed". It is used as a spiritual threat to stop accountability and criticism in its tracks. Often in mind here is the passage surrounding 1 Samuel 24:6. This is ironic because that passage is about David's unwillingness to kill Saul when he had the opportunity to do so*. You will note then, that Kendall himself is clearly not inhibited about "touching" what he thinks of as the "Sauls" of our day! However, I've got to give credit to the old traditional reformation identifying evangelicals (such as we find at the Tabernacle) - they wouldn't dream of using such intimidating language in order to defend their leaders!
Epilogue:
Fundamentalists like Kendall are entirely genuine in their belief. True, they are not always the most easy going of personalities and they have personal traits which draw them to authoritarian epistemological claims. But they believe what they say; they aren't self seeking liars. The same is true of even types like John MacKay. In fact it is their unshakable self-belief which makes them dangerous. My opinion, however, is that they are effectively exploiting the inherent epistemic weaknesses and ambiguity of our cosmos when attempts are made at world view synthesis. And yet in the face of these weaknesses the fundamentalist personality is such that they passionately commit themselves to a world view without doubts; they do not accept the inherent uncertainties inevitable in the big picture analysis of world view synthesis. Since they are so sure of the manifest truth of their world view it leaves them with no choice but to impute bad consciences and heinous sin to those that disagree with them; as we see above.Disclaimer. Although at the world view level the same evidences can admit more than one solution, I don't accept that this can be true, without gross rational violations taking place, when it comes to basic science such as the spherical Earth, and its position in space and time. In the case of flat Earthism, geocentrism and young Earthism etc. the fanciful world view is filtering down to the basic science level and corrupting it.
Footnotes:
* 1 Samuel 24:6 is actually not referring to criticism of Saul, but of doing him physical violence. David, although highly critical of Saul, withheld his hand from killing him.
** By "gnostic" I'm not referring to the particular manifestations of gnosticism such as the early Gnostics or the Cathars of the late middle ages, but a more general concept cluster which constitute a dualistic world view. This view partitions the world using a set of dichotomies; Viz: God vs. natural forces, supernatural vs. natural, heart vs. head, intuition vs analysis, revelation vs. reason, spirit vs. matter etc. Althougth there are some elements of a gnostic perpective in much evangelical Christianity, above all gnostic Christians tend to place a premium on mythos over logos. This is seen in the prestige value of inner light revelations of the divine and deeply intuitive encounters with God. Those Christians who don't share this world view are likely to be considered spiritually inferior. See here
*** 7/9/19: I have recently come across an old copy of the Surrey Chapel Magazine, Angle, issue 64. It has excerpts from a talk given by David Middleton at the church meeting of September 1989. It may well be the very same meeting I mention above; for Middleton's talk was about "Keeping the Spirit of Unity by Pressing on Together". I don't think the Angle article is a verbatim text, but it does report Middleton as saying this:
Unity is rare these days with such a spirit of angry division and discontent abroad......So many evangelical Christians are incredibly naive, gullible and infantile.....many evangelical Christians are so incredibly shallow. There's plenty of emotion , but it is so superficial. Let's not be like that either - but press on to deeper depths of experience and love.
Middleton was good for Surrey Chapel as he help ease it out of a severe, harsh and staid reformed evangelicalism. But he was a rather private and sensitive individual and probably too stressed by the job. Sad to say after 17 years at Surrey Chapel I never really got to know the guy before he died of stomach or intestinal (?) cancer in 1998. The last and in fact the very first time I spoke to him at any length was in early 1992 when the wife and I had decided to leave Surrey Chapel.
I had already seen evidence of what he was talking about in his church meeting address. But I wonder how many others in that meeting got the same "highly germane content" alert that I got as Middleton started speaking? Middleton never found out that I was already pondering deeply on this church polarisation question. The fact was, however, that underneath it Middleton and myself were really on very different planets. But I'll hand it to him: Today's Christians could certainly learn a thing or two from him.
