2012年2月2日木曜日

How Old Is T.d. Jakes

how old is t.d. jakes

The Role of Race, "Fetish Pastors," and Nicea « Gairney Bridge

February 1, 2012 by Tempe

For those of you who haven't been following The Elephant Room 2 controversy, this blog post may not make much sense. Suffice it to say that several months ago, a (somewhat) Reformed pastor named James MacDonald (formerly part of The Gospel Coalition, but who has since resigned), asked T.D. (Thomas Dexter) Jakes, a very popular pastor who is widely known to have taught a form of Modalistic (read: anti-Trinitarian) doctrine in the past (as well as still being a promulgator of the false teaching known as the Prosperity Gospel), to speak at a conference (see here for problems with Jakes and his teaching). This was heavily criticized, and when the event finally happened, Jakes' teachings on the Trinity were examined but given a pass, and his prosperity teaching was not even mentioned. Some are seemingly ok with this (e.g., Ed Stetzer, here), while others have been rightly critical (e.g., James White, here and here).


The Crossing: A Novel
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Serita Ann Jakes

But it gets worse. Since Jakes is an African-American, now it appears the race card is being played by some. This post from Pyromaniacs contains a video of a discussion (hosted by MacDonald) where the charge of "racism" is being "suggested" (I guess that it doesn't matter that African-American pastor Voddie Baucham, who was very critical of Jakes and his appearance at ER2, was "uninvited" to a recent conference by MacDonald):

The take-away message is this: If you're an old white guy with any hint of Reformed theology in your confessional statement and you don't think T. D. Jakes's equivocations at Elephant Room 2 were sufficient to erase decades of concern about his Oneness leanings and his relentless proclamation of a false Prosperity Gospel—then you must be a racist. … If on the other hand you are a young black man with Reformed convictions—or any black person who just has a keen interest in doctrinal and biblical accuracy—you are a sellout and a reproach to your own community. The only possible explanation is that you are guilty of "White Idolatry."


Charleston
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John Jakes

Newsflash for anyone who doesn't know: Athanasius was African. Augustine was African. They both considered doctrine (especially Trinitarian doctrine) to be pretty important. And if you watch the video, James MacDonald really looks like a middle-aged white guy. There is some biting irony if you think about it.

But this is more a problem of American culture than anything else. We live in an age of the celebrity pastor (or the "fetish pastor" as Carl Trueman dubs it). First, a bit of an historical observation:

Still, let us go back to the fourth century and see how the `middle aged white guy' critique measures up.  Well, at the Council of Nicea in 325, many of the participants were no doubt middle aged — which Paul in the Pastorals would actually seem to think is quite a good thing in a church leader.  But white?    I suspect they were ethnically more akin to modern day Turks or south eastern Europeans, not that racial categories really meant anything then.  The key category in the fourth century was that of Roman citizenship, not skin colour. More significantly, of course, had you been there yourself and looked around the council, you would have seen that many of the delegates had body parts missing – an arm here, a leg there, an occasional eye – because they were survivors of the terrible persecutions under Diocletian and Galerius.  Indeed, many had probably lost close friends and family members too.  Thus, the foundations for the creedal doctrine of the Trinity were laid by men who thought doctrine was something for which it was actually worth suffering and dying.

And finally, Dr. Trueman's comments on the celebrity pastor:

When I raised the issue [of the celebrity pastor] last year, I was widely derided as talking nonsense and many critics tried to dismiss the notion by conflating public figure with celebrity, pointing to the problems of defining the term, reducing it to trivia such as `Is signing somebody's book or being photographed with them at a conference really that wicked?' or the telepathic/Gnostic insight `The man's just envious that his church is not as big as theirs!'   Indeed, it was made very clear to me by a number of people that I was the problem, not the fetish pastors.   Yet as I stressed again and again, my concern is not ultimately about being well-known or speaking at a conference or two; it is about the big personality pastor who turns into a fetish, and who gains great and widespread  authority and influence by reason of that, without any proper accountability.   Remind anybody of anything that happened recently?

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