1/ This summer, after many years, we moved back to the south shore of Montreal. This afternoon, I decided to drive down memory lane to revisit the two churches where I pastored 20 yrs ago. Some of my students don’t believe I once was an evangelical pastor. I’m glad it’s all over! 2/ Out of curiosity, I might one day attend one of their Sunday morning meeting, incognito of course. Things probably haven’t changed. In the Pentecostal church there’s probably still a lot of emotional singing and preaching, and the Baptists still likely focus on Sunday school.

1/ Read @C_Stroop’s insightful take on the issue “fake Christians”. People should note that anyone slightly familiar with the history and literature of Early Christianities will realize that there is no such thing as normative Christianity in terms of beliefs and practices.

https://twitter.com/C_Stroop/status/1034443274336043008

2/ This is why we should be speaking of “Christianities” and not “Christianity”. Even the New Testament authors display the various beliefs and practices of Jesus followers in their writings, as well as the conflicts that existed among believers in Jesus at that time.

1/ Well for some evangelicals, gifting is far more important than character. My recent threads on sexual abuse cover-ups confirmed this fact. Someone recently shared with me the story of a twisted sexual misconduct cover-up in a French-speaking evangelical church here in Quebec.

https://twitter.com/edstetzer/status/1030077226216239104

2/ A couple of years ago, the lead pastor of an evangelical congregation instructed his entire leadership staff to cover-up the moral failings of another pastor. There were repeated cases of sexual misconduct, targeting vulnerable women in this church over the years.

#ChurchToo

1/ The RCC is a highly structured religious organization; priests are supposed to be accountable to some kind of authority. Despite all of this, it did not prevent the massive cover-up of sexual abuse cases that has been going on for several years! Now, what about evangelicals? 2/ There are many evangelical churches that are non-denominational; this means that they are managed independently, without the oversight of leaders OUTSIDE the church. Some pastors are therefore not accountable to anyone; they often go unchallenged in their own congregations.

1/ Be it in the Catholic Church, the Jehovah's Witnesses or in the Evangelical movement, these church leaders don't treat cases of sexual abuse & misconduct as a crime but as a "sin". For them, "sin" needs to be dealt with internally, not in public. Abusers are thus protected.

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1029435435007844352

2/ I was interviewed on the reasons behind sexual abuse cover-ups in the JWs last March on @CTVW5. Their prescription for "sin" is to adopt a "biblical worldview"; this prevents and discourages victims of abuse to alert the authorities.

#SexualAbuse

1/ I was recently asked by James Scaminaci III (@4GWDOTDOTDOT) to comment on this interesting report by Francesca Tripodi, “Searching for Alternate Facts: Analyzing Scriptural Inference in Conservative News Practices”. Here are some of my thoughts.

datasociety.net/output/searchi… 2/ Tripodi argues that conservatives apply “practices learned in Bible study… to media interpretation.” (p.6) In other words, conservatives engage in “the same type of close reading that they were taught in Bible study to mainstream media.” (p.3)

1/ Reading Diamond’s _Spiritual Warfare. The Politics of the Christian Right_ brings back memories of my Pentecostal days. We were strongly incited to engage in “Speaking in tongues”. It was the social practice that made us feel like part of the group.

#ChristianAltFact 2/ As Diamond points out, “Speaking in tongues” (glossolalia) is clearly a learned behavior. At the time, I believed in the idea that the outward sign of being “baptized in the Holy Spirit” was the ability of “Speaking in tongues”; so everyone wanted “the fullness of the Spirit”.

1/ Then it's best for this kind of preaching to die. Which Bible is the "inspired, inerrant word of God"? The Bible as we know it today was collated from thousands of manuscripts (mss). Just for the New Testament, there are 25,000+ mss in various languages.
#ChristianAtlFacts 2/ There are 8,000+ Greek mss of parts of the N.T. alone, and literally thousands of variants (differences) between all the N.T. mss that we've found; the estimate is that there are more variants between the mss of the N.T. than there are words in the N.T.
#ChristianAltFacts