New York Times on Christian News, World, and This Blog

Mark Oppenheimer in the New York Times writes about World Magazine’s news reporting on Mark Driscoll. I appreciate Oppenheimer’s mention of this blog as well. Of course, there are other outlets which provided coverage of the Mars Hill story (e.g., Wenatchee the Hatchet, Religion News Service, CT, CP, etc.). With some help, I am working on a timeline which should bring together the events and important stories of the past year.
The article was online last night and is in today’s print edition.
The World folks present a compelling rationale, to me at least, for Christians in journalism and for me as a blogger. I like writing about a variety of topics and in this case the subject matter has had broad public interest.
 

One Day, Two Views of Mars Hill Church

Yesterday, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and World magazine posted articles about Mars Hill Church. To me, the articles do not seem to be about the same church.

The Seattle PI piece addressed the newest development among former Mars Hill Church members and leaders: the Facebook group which alerts the public that many ex-Mars Hill members are not and have not been anonymous in their complaints about the church. Mark Driscoll claimed in a speech to the church just over a week ago that leaders at the church could not reconcile with ex-members because they were anonymous. The Facebook group now has over 260 member and features many very visible ex-members and their stories.

The World article painted a much nicer picture of the church, failing to include voices of ex-members or evidence to counter the favorable comments of Mars Hill Public Relation deacon, Justin Dean, or the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability which apparently is not going to require adherence to the organization’s guidelines. Surprising to me was the lack of challenge from World to this explanation of Mars Hill Global from the church:

However, it is difficult to determine where the money went, though it is now clear some of the money went not to international efforts but to domestic church plants, including some in the Seattle area. When WORLD asked via email for an itemized accounting of those funds, Dean wrote, “Since donations given by the Mars Hill Global family were never intended to be designated solely for international efforts, we don’t provide an itemized accounting of those funds.”

“Some of the money”? The church has already admitted that the preponderance of donations when to domestic church plants. Justin Dean’s statement is a dodge of World’s question which went unchallenged. There is plenty of evidence that Mars Hill created a Global Fund in 2012. Members and pastors of the church alike were under the impression those donations were being solicited for international missions. In spite of all the evidence that after 2012 the Global Fund was pitched as a ministry of Mars Hill Church to support international missions (not a group of non-members), Mars Hill spun the situation with no challenge from World. There was no mention of the fact that Mars Hill has issued two takedown orders to You Tube to keep video evidence about Mars Hill Global out of the public view.

At last, the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability speaks. However, even this group ignores the clear evidence. Worse yet, apparently ECFA will not require the church to reveal how much they spent on international missions and how much was spent on domestic efforts.

Finally, I have no problem with the interviews of current pastors at Mars Hill, but to then give ex-pastor Dave Kraft only a brief blurb at the end was not nearly enough to report on the level of distress and conflict there is currently among former members (Mars Hill in exile). Usually World is more balanced and demonstrates a better ability to investigate the crux of a matter. I hope World will revisit this issue and report on the extraordinary distress that is taking place daily among those who want to see reform at the Seattle megachurch.

World Publishes Our Response to David Barton

World continues the focus on the Barton Controversy with our rebuttal to Barton’s response to our book.
We focus on Barton’s contention that we make mountains out of molehills in our critique. In fact, the details matter as we demonstrate.
We also make it clear that Barton isn’t living by his own standards. He takes historians to task for using secondary sources, but he does the same thing. His sources are often unknown as with the Louis L’Amour story presented on Glenn Beck’s Show as an historical fact.
In this article, we also launch a feature on the Getting Jefferson Right website called Ask a Professor. Have a question about American history facts? Our panel of historians will attempt to help out.

Response to World's Coverage of the David Barton Controversy

I am getting good feedback on the excerpt of Getting Jefferson Right at World Magazine. There are many questions that are floating around among evangelicals about this matter and for good reason. Michael Coulter and I are now working on a response to Mr. Barton’s rebuttal to GJR. For now, I posted a comment at World on both articles. Here it is:
 
“I want to thank World for hosting this exchange of views. Michael Coulter and I have read Mr. Barton’s rebuttal and plan a response to it which World has agreed to publish. Mr. Barton’s response sounds convincing, especially when one has not read our book, but there are numerous concerns which we will address. For instance, it is unfortunate that Mr. Barton does not address completely his or our position on Jefferson and slavery. In The Jefferson Lies (pg. 92), Mr. Barton omitted the section of the 1782 law on manumission which allowed owners to emancipate their slaves while the owners were alive. He simply omitted it from his presentation of the 1782 law leaving the impression that owners could only free their slaves via a will at death. We have asked Mr. Barton why he chose to omit that section with no reply.
Regarding our position in Getting Jefferson Right, we do not claim that Jefferson could have freed his many slaves at any time during his life. We identify a 24 year window (1782-1806) when Virginia law was relaxed and allowed for emancipation of slaves by owners. We acknowledge that freeing slaves was more difficult (although still possible) after 1806. Please note that Jefferson did not make his statement about the laws not allowing emancipation until 1814. Furthermore, Mr. Barton, in this current World article, acknowledges that security bonding was required only for “certain emancipated slaves” (page 3). This is an important clarification, but it is not news to us; we document these requirements in our book.  Adult slaves under age 45 and older than 18 (women) or 21 (men) could be freed with a deed of manumission without financial guarantee from the master. Jefferson owned many such human beings.
In our book, we do not say that Jefferson could have freed all of his slaves, but we document that he could have done more to put into practice the words, “all men are created equal” than he did.
There are other instances of the kind I have described and we will address them in our response.”