Mark Driscoll Rocked the Charisma2018 Conference

I missed it.

The Charisma2018 conference is over but the coming out of Mark Driscoll as a charismatic leader is just beginning. Driscoll was one of the headliners at the Charisma2018 conference in Orlando FL held June 22-23.

He’s a long way from The Gospel Coalition and Acts 29. Those were just seasons on the way to a new season.

There were always signs and prophecies of this day: the demon trials, and the x-rated visions, but this season is now full with all that and a new book deal and a keynote.

Yesterday, former colleague and co-pastor at Mars Hill Church Sutton Turner provided a little insight into the last days of Mars Hill. I suspect more is coming as Sutton gets more comfortable talking about what was up back in Seattle.

 

 

20 thoughts on “Mark Driscoll Rocked the Charisma2018 Conference”

  1. Depressing. The man will not give up.
    And what does “Jesus is what it means to be Spirit-filled” mean anyway? When I was at MH, I noticed the name Jesus used almost exclusively in reference to God, as if the Father and Holy Spirit were not relevant or present.

  2. “Jesus is what it means to be Spirit-filled.”

    This…reminds me of Deepak Chopra. A lot. Meaningless non sequitur…

    1. It’s like “Journey to Destiny” or some similar meaningless slogan employed by megachurches to fundraise for their debt-driven building projects.

  3. Sounds like Turner will once again profit off the suffering caused by Mars Hill / MD.

    Sutton Turner, please donate all the profits off your new materials to a fund to bring justice to the crimes (against the laws of what is good and right, if not the laws of the land) perpetrated by Mars Hill / MD.

    1. The real problem is that a) they have no morality, character or integrity, b) they have no critical analysis, c) they have unlimited ignorance – especially about their own Bibliolatry and d) they have unlimited guillibility which has resulted in them – as a whole – simple becoming tools and spokesperson of fascism.

      Note that NONE of this is new – evangelicals were at the forefront of slavery – a la the Southern Baptist Convention, etc., etc.

    2. To be blunt, it depends on whether their transgressions involved homosexuality or not, perhaps the one unforgivable sin (in their eyes).

  4. Terribly disconcerting, especially given the recent release of Jessica Johnson’s new monograph by Duke University Press: “Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire.”

    1. Thank you for posting this. I just read the book’s introduction, which is available online. Looks like a must-read. So glad to see this research.

      1. I image the good pastor can’t be too pleased:

        https://www.dukeupress.edu/biblical-porn
        “Between 1996 and 2014,
        Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church multiplied from its base in Seattle
        into fifteen facilities spread across five states with 13,000 attendees.
        When it closed, the church was beset by scandal, with former attendees
        testifying to spiritual abuse, emotional manipulation, and financial
        exploitation. In Biblical Porn Jessica Johnson examines how Mars
        Hill’s congregants became entangled in processes of religious
        conviction. Johnson shows how they were affectively recruited into
        sexualized and militarized dynamics of power through the mobilization of
        what she calls “biblical porn”—the affective labor of communicating,
        promoting, and embodying Driscoll’s teaching on biblical masculinity,
        femininity, and sexuality, which simultaneously worked as a marketing
        strategy, social imaginary, and biopolitical instrument. Johnson
        theorizes religious conviction as a social process through which Mars
        Hill’s congregants circulated and amplified feelings of hope, joy,
        shame, and paranoia as affective value that the church capitalized on to
        grow at all costs.”

        (Which we all knew, thanks to Warren’s dedicated investigating.)

      2. I imagine the good pastor can’t be too pleased:

        https://www.dukeupress.edu/biblical-porn
        “Between 1996 and 2014,
        Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church multiplied from its base in Seattle
        into fifteen facilities spread across five states with 13,000 attendees.
        When it closed, the church was beset by scandal, with former attendees
        testifying to spiritual abuse, emotional manipulation, and financial
        exploitation. In Biblical Porn Jessica Johnson examines how Mars
        Hill’s congregants became entangled in processes of religious
        conviction. Johnson shows how they were affectively recruited into
        sexualized and militarized dynamics of power through the mobilization of
        what she calls “biblical porn”—the affective labor of communicating,
        promoting, and embodying Driscoll’s teaching on biblical masculinity,
        femininity, and sexuality, which simultaneously worked as a marketing
        strategy, social imaginary, and biopolitical instrument. Johnson
        theorizes religious conviction as a social process through which Mars
        Hill’s congregants circulated and amplified feelings of hope, joy,
        shame, and paranoia as affective value that the church capitalized on to
        grow at all costs.”

        (Which we all knew, thanks to Warren’s dedicated investigating.)

      3. Otrotierra, totally off topic here, I didn’t want to ask you this on Cranach , but do you think Veith’s followers are really that ignorant of history? Or is it some game they play?

        1. I’ve been wondering the same thing myself. Eurocentrism has been critiqued for several decades now by a multitude of scholars from multiple countries and from many academic fields—one major criticism being that Eurocentrism doesn’t merely do great damage to the “non-Western” world, but European history itself is likewise told incorrectly.

          So possibility #1: Veith and his rabid followers actually don’t know that the first Europeans in the Americas observed no separation of church & state, nor that Indigenous populations suffered up to a 90% population decline between 1492 and 1900. Or possibility #2: Veith and his zealots are aware of such historical facts but deny them because they stand in the way of their self-serving yet verifiably false claims. In either case, you’re facing intellectual and spiritual toddlers who demand wikipedia-level facts be spoon-fed to them because they imagine their ignorance is equal if not superior to your historically-grounded, factually-informed arguments.

          Jesus taught his followers to “Seek..” yet the Cranach blog is a space for practicing the mirror opposite without consequence, and they are certainly not accustomed to having their ignorance corrected. Thus, the tantrums now on display. What do you think?

          1. I think you are right with your possibility #2 . It seems impossible to not be aware of these facts at some level. The power of fundamentalism and what it can do to the human mind is truly frightening. The capacity to
            “Seek ” becomes totally eradicated. If you cannot acknowledge the horrors of the past committed by your Theology , you are a danger, not only to others, but your very own humanity. That’s the point I am trying to make with them, all Theologies have/can kill people by intent and passively. When desiring to promote and apply them today, they should always be viewed through the lens of history or in the case of Christianity, two lenses, the lens of history and the lens of what Jesus taught.

          2. I suspect there may be some of each possibility. Home schooling has been around long enough for there to be large chunks f adults who are genuinely ignorant of history, never having been exposed to it.

          3. Good point, I never considered that. Still they are adults , and seem to be able to find every kind of conspiracy theory out there that will support their cause, or defame anyone with differing views than themselves.

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