The Gospel Coalition has Fallen | Ben Shapiro, The Daily Wire

The Gospel Coalition’s Drift From Biblical Teaching

The Gospel Coalition used to be one of the most trustworthy sources of solid Biblical teaching, and in many ways, it's still an excellent resource. However, the Gospel Coalition today is not what it used to be, for numerous reasons.

And I know as a white pastor, I have blind spots, so I am part of the problem.

White pastors, I need to chat with you.

Now, my citation of this is not an endorsement of the Gospel Coalition. I have grave concerns with the Gospel Coalition and the direction they have been going for a number of years. They're fully woke and fully embrace social justice, and now they're exegeting movies.

So this is not an endorsement of the Gospel Coalition. I have grave concerns here.

The Kyle Rittenhouse Article and the Charge of Slander

One very recent high-profile cultural event highlights the unfortunate shift within the Gospel Coalition. When Kyle Rittenhouse became a national news story, K. Edward Copeland, a council member of the Gospel Coalition, wrote an article titled, Why I Hate August.

In this article, Copeland compared Rittenhouse to the white supremacist who committed the mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, calling them both mass shooters. Notice that the article now says armed shooters.

We'll come back to that later. Of course, it should have been clear even then that placing Rittenhouse in the same category as the Charleston church shooter was not only inaccurate, but also slanderous.

The details of the Rittenhouse incident were completely different from the details of the Charleston shooter incident. When the Rittenhouse trial completed and Rittenhouse was found not guilty of all charges, it was clear that Rittenhouse had acted in self-defense and was innocent of.

Wrongdoing. As to the fifth count of the information gauge rose courts, we the jury find the defendant Kyle H. Rittenhouse not guilty. Jury, are these your unanimous verdicts?

Is there anyone who does not agree with the verdicts as read?

However, Copeland's article, Why I Hate August, remained up, still categorizing Rittenhouse along with the Charleston church shooter as a mass shooter, which again is both inaccurate and slanderous. More and more Christians began asking why the article remained up and unaltered.

The article was both very dishonest and propagated misinformation. Most of you are probably already familiar with the Daily Wire, which, in contrast to the Gospel Coalition, is not at all a Christian organization, although it employs a good number of Christians.

Even the Daily Wire took notice of the Gospel Coalition seemingly ignoring calls by Christians to address the dishonesty within Copeland's article. The Daily Wire published an article titled,. Calls Mount for Evangelical Publication to Retract Article Likening Kyle Rittenhouse to Mass Shooter.

Needless to say, when a non-Christian organization is calling out a supposedly solid Christian organization, like the Gospel Coalition, there is a big problem. Finally, under growing pressure, the Gospel Coalition responded to the criticism.

It updated the words mass shooters to armed shooters and added an editor's note, which said,. Subsequent information has revealed that Jacob Blake was armed with a knife. Also, an earlier version of this article referred to Kyle Rittenhouse as a mass shooter.

I regret these editorial oversights. Colin Hanson, Editor-in-Chief, The Gospel Coalition. There are numerous problems with the Gospel Coalition's response. First, Rittenhouse remains in the same category as the Charleston church shooter in the article, which is extremely misleading.

Second, changing the words to be armed shooters doesn't really help at all, since all shooters are, by definition, armed. And third, classifying the article's dishonesty as mere editorial oversight is itself dishonest.

The article was slanderous and the author needed to repent and apologize for its dishonesty. But, of course, how could the Gospel Coalition, once a shining beacon of biblical Christian truth, act like this?

How could a non-Christian organization, like the Daily Wire, oftentimes be a stronger defender of truth than the Gospel Coalition? Vodie Bockham explains the answer in his best-selling book, Fault Lines.

He writes,. In the ensuing four years, the ideologies outlined in this book took root in leading evangelical circles. They also took root in local churches. As that happened, pastors and church leaders, who had worked feverishly to establish relationships across ethnic lines, who had promoted, mentored, and discipled black leaders, and who had celebrated diversity in their churches and ministries, began to see the fault lines.

Suddenly, these pastors and leaders had a choice to make. Addressing these fault lines would result in catastrophic losses and severed cherished relationships, not to mention putting them at risk of being called racist.

Letting them lie often resulted in disputes in the church, as questions about how black Christians can, in good conscience, associate with neo-Marxist ideologies, policies, and candidates. And, of course, abortion arose.

Diversity, Racial Justice, and the Pressure to Fund the Movement

In other words, organizations and churches, like the Gospel Coalition, prioritized diversity, which led to the entrance of people like K. Edward Copeland.

And Jamar Tisby. At the church level, you should have a racial justice statement specifically focused on race. It should be part of your new members class. When you sign up for this congregation, you're signing up to be part of racial justice.

And if that's not for you, then this church is not for you. This wave of protests and uprisings is going to end. It always does. This level of activity is not sustainable for most people. I'm looking for two things.

Number one, I'm looking for the remnants of people who are catalyzed for a lifetime because of this moment. It is a turning point in their life, and they're going to become lifelong racial justice advocates.

It's going to be across the racial and ethnic spectrum. We're looking at our Asian brothers and sisters, Latin American folks, even white folks coming into this movement. And it's never going to be a majority of people, but it doesn't take a majority of people to cause major change.

And so I'm looking for that remnant who's going to stick around after this wave. The second thing I'm looking for, if you're not going to be the one who completely sort of shifts your disposition and takes on racial justice as your life's work, okay, but give us money.

Like, write the check. Ongoing financial support to fuel this movement.

Why Racial Tensions Exposed the Gospel Coalition’s Weakness

And when racial tensions escalated with events like the death of George Floyd, organizations and churches, like the Gospel Coalition, were too tied to leaders like Copeland and Tisbee to speak out against their non-biblical ideologies.