Here's an interesting case of strange bedfellows. Hank Hanegraaff is normally harsh towards charismatics, but he came to the defense of Ron Luce and Teen Mania after a harsh MSNBC's documentary “Mind Over Mania” came out a few days ago; Bene was on that one earlier.
The problem, Hanegraaff says, is their evidence falls short of their accusations, and “many of the arguments proffered against TMM could just as easily be used to establish historic Christianity as a thought reform cult.” He says the model the Duncans used to attempt to prove their point has been “utterly discredited.”
There's probably a my-way-or-the-highway-to-Hell tone to the TMM crew, if their Acquire the Fire outings are any indication; sensitive souls might not be a good fit for such high-octane leaders. However, that's an ongoing problem in churches of any type when they have pushy leaders.
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Lou Engle is a guy who gets Bene's eye from time to time; I've only seen him mentioned once outside of Bene's blog as being part of a larger pan-evangelical outing in the Bay area a while back. That is, until he showed up in Detroit for a rally at the Lion's new stadium-
Speaking to thousands inside Ford Field, the controversial leader of a 24-hour prayer rally in Detroit called Friday evening for Jesus to rule over Detroit, Dearborn and America. Otherwise, he warned, the U.S. will fall into ruin.
"We need Jesus' face to appear all across America," Lou Engle thundered to a cheering crowd at TheCall, a movement that has drawn criticism.
Before the rally began, about 150 people protested against Engle, who is with a movement called the New Apostolic Reformation. Its leaders often rail against Muslims, gays, abortion, Catholics, African Americans and politicians who support abortion rights.
This is a rare NAR-reference in mainstream media, but I don't think they are anti-black. All the other ones are legit. Most charismatics and NAR types are fairly color-blind.
They say Dearborn is under demonic control because of its Muslim population. And they say they believe African Americans have been cursed by Satan in recent decades because they vote Democratic.
Blacks weren't doing much better when they voted Republican back before FDR and were doing worse than that when they couldn't even vote. No major correlation there; it's actually a bit in the other direction, if anything.
The correlation could be in the other direction in that they turned to the party of the have-nots after being crapped on my our culture; the "curse" (or whatever you want to chalk their condition up to) came, then the left-wing voting followed.
On Dearborn... while I wouldn't be surprised to see some extra demonic activity there, using them as a whipping boy isn't helpful in trying to turn them to Jesus.
Here's an interesting point at the end of the piece-
"We believe that God wants to raise up a new worship sound out of Detroit," said Engle, who is based in Kansas City, Mo., at the International House of Prayer.
I thought Engle was California based. IHOP got moved down a few pegs after seeing that factoid, and they weren't that high in the first place.
I hadn't paid Engle much attention until he came to Canada. I'd seen his name on the NAR apostle list, but there are a fair number of names of the NAR list.
The MSNBC documentary - I've followed Teen Mania for years, ever since I realized Canadians were paying good money to head down to Texas for the Honor Academy.
Hanegraaff didn't really say much. Maybe Luce is a passionate husband and father. And I'll give him passionate leader (Luce was heavily involved in micromanaging and being front and centre for all aspects of Teen Mania for years). Luce has two psych degrees from ORU and is a master manipulator. But Hanegraaff misrepresents Liftons work and while he gets that the MSNBC piece is about the former interns and the recovery weekend, he basically spit out Teen Manias talking points again.
He also acknowledged his differences: “While I strongly disagree with Ron on various secondary matters..."
He is defending a friend and I suspect he didn't give any of his kids 8 thousand dollars to work in the TM call centre for a year.
Here is a decent rebuttal to Hanegraaffs opinion.
http://tinyurl.com/6qa6ub7
It's good to see MSNBC stand up to Luce and publicly call him out for what he had to say about 'false pretenses etc.'
Posted by: Bene D | November 15, 2011 at 07:12 AM