Religion beat became a test of faith

World’s blog posted this story a few days ago. I meant to write about it then, but I forgot.

It’s long, so if you don’t want to read the whole thing, I understand. The gist is, he was at one time a “serious Christian”, but his faith was snuffed out by the deplorable behavior of other Christians. He writes the most about the sex scandals in the Catholic church and “prosperity gospel” preached by TBN and seemingly sanctioned by other influential evangelical leaders.

The first chunk of the article is his “testimonial”. I’ll quote it at some length.

In 1989, a friend took me to Mariners Church, then in Newport Beach, after saying: “You need God. That’s what’s missing in your life.” At the time, I was 28 and my first son was less than a year old. I had managed to nearly ruin my marriage (the second one) and didn’t think I’d do much better as a father. I was profoundly lost.

The mega-church’s pastor, Kenton Beshore, had a knack for making Scripture accessible and relevant. For someone who hadn’t studied the Bible much, these talks fed a hunger in my soul. The secrets to living well had been there all along — in “Life’s Instruction Manual,” as some Christians nicknamed the Bible.

Some friends in a Bible study class encouraged me to attend a men’s religious weekend in the San Bernardino Mountains. The three-day retreats are designed to grind down your defenses and leave you emotionally raw — an easier state in which to connect with God. After 36 hours of prayer, singing, Bible study, intimate sharing and little sleep, I felt filled with the Holy Spirit.

At the climactic service Sunday, Mike Barris, a pastor-to-be, delivered an old-fashioned altar call. He said we needed to let Jesus into our hearts.

With my eyes closed in prayer, I saw my heart slowly opening in two and then being infused with a warm, glowing light. A tingle spread across my chest. This, I thought, was what it was to be born again.

The pastor asked those who wanted to accept Jesus to raise their hands. My hand pretty much levitated on its own. My new friends in Christ, many of whom I had first met Friday, gave me hugs and slaps on the back.

Do you notice anything missing? Nobody on Worldmagblog said anything about it until about 23 or 24 comments in, and then the discussion rolled on without acknowledging it. That’s much scarier than the article itself, because it means that even many relatively thoughtful Christians view this conversion story, in which by all appearences shallow emotional manipulation plays a nearly infinitely larger role than Christian doctrinal distinctives, as business as usual.

Another reason it’s scary is that I don’t interpret this story as forming a substantial part of his criticism. He talks about his past religious experience with a sort of wistful ambivalence. The main reason he shares it is to establish his credibility, to prove to his readers that he was neck-deep in evangelicalism. The tacit assumption is that this is characteristic of evangelicalism, and everyone knows it.