The Real Christian Conference Conundrum

A few weeks ago progressive Evangelical pundit, Rachel Held Evans, triggered a Twitter firestorm when she expressed her concerns over the lack of female speakers presenting at The Nines, an online Christian leadership conference. “More than 100 speakers and only four of them are women. This is not what the church looks like,” tweeted Evans.

But based on my own experiences as a young Evangelical college student who attended myriads of Christians conferences, I know that what should spark outrage across the twitterverse is not so much who is teaching at Christian conferences, but rather what is being taught.

In fact, it was while I was attending a Christian women’s conference this past autumn that I heard first-hand Rachel Held Evans espouse that the Bible does not offer women a guideline for Christian living. Evans stated:

I spent a year of my life immersed in this idea of Biblical womanhood and I never found a blueprint for how to be a woman of faith…The Bible doesn’t give us a blueprint. God doesn’t communicate to us in bullet points. Instead God uses poetry, history, letters…and mostly stories to communicate with us. And stories don’t make great blueprints, do they?

In a past op-ed published by TheBlaze, I noted that Christian conferences have for a time now been co-opted by the Evangelical Left as a type of crusade used to spew a liberal ideology, not theology. Nowhere was this more clearly evidenced than at the 2013 Catalyst conference, which invited uber-liberal pro-abortion politician Cory Booker, to speak to thousands of young impressionable Evangelicals.

Another example of misguiding teachings at Christian conferences unfolded in Denver during November 7-9^th at Simply Jesus, a “gathering” created to “foster conversation and communication about Jesus.” It was during this “gathering” that guest speaker Carl Medearis, an “expert on Muslim-Christian relations” and author of Speaking of Jesus: The Art of Not-Evangelism, intentionally glossed over the terrorist ambitions of Hezbollah to his audience chockfull of young Evangelicals. Medearis explained:

We were in Lebanon and I had been asked inexplicably to speak, like I’m speaking now, in a mosque. So I’m speaking in a Shi’ite Muslim mosque in South Lebanon controlled by a group called Hezbollah. Hezbollah, or a Shi’ite Lebanese organization we’ll say that do various things. You may have heard of them. And so, one of the things that you probably didn’t know they do is they invited me to speak in their mosque. So, that didn’t make it on Fox News.

Medearis’ statements about Hezbollah makes the Muslim terrorist group sound like Jesus-endorsing nice-guys. But Faith McDonnell, who has dedicated her career to international Christian persecution as Director of the Institute on Religion’s Religious Liberty program, clarified:

Carl Medearis likes to break down paradigms by expressing his intimate relationship with Islamic groups like Hezbollah but regardless of what Medearis thinks, the current paradigm for most Christians in the Islam-dominated world is oppression and persecution. His tongue-in-cheek portrayal of Hezbollah as a “Shi’ite Lebanese organization” could be considered disrespectful to their Israelis victims.

Right now, prominent members of the Religious Left like Jim Wallis are preparing to gather at The Justice Conference to be hosted February 21-23, 2014 in Los Angeles. In addition, many “progressive” Christians who have a major influence over your children and grandchildren are on the attendee roster.

Sponsors of this conference include Jim Wallis’ Sojourners, Fuller Theological Seminary, Relevant magazine, and more. IRD cannot afford to miss this vital opportunity to new outreach. That is why we need your help to be among the sponsors in attendance with a display table that will allow us to directly talk to and impact young Evangelicals who might otherwise never learn that there is a better way to follow Christ.

Last year, IRD’s generous supporters enabled Kristen Rudolph to attend the conference What Kristen discovered was shocking. Sitting among 4,000 other young Christians, Rudolph listened as conference speaker Sheryl WuDunn intentionally omitted abortion from her speech on global discrimination against women and girls. Rudolph noted, “Not once in her 40 minute talk did she mention sex-selective abortion as even a contributing cause to the imbalanced gender ratio.”

This year’s Justice Conference will be no different and IRD must have a strong presence.

In order for IRD send another reporting staff member, we are asking our readers to please help us raise the costs of a main conference pass, travel, lodging and display table $5,000 goal by January 1, 2014.

Reporting on what is being taught at Christian conferences is a unique characteristic of our work here at IRD. Many times we listen to wonderful followers of Jesus Christ who live and speak by the authority of Scripture. We report on their lectures. But at other times we hear lectures that sidestep moral codes laid out in Scripture or endorse lifestyles that are clearly condemned by Scripture. We report on those lectures too, because Jesus was clear on how Believers should respond to false prophets.

In Matthew 24:3-6, Christ’s disciples raised this issue when they questioned:

“Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”  Jesus answered: ‘Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, “I am the Messiah,” and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.

Therefore, please consider supporting our efforts to send an IRD staff member to the upcoming Justice Conference. We must unmask the distorted theology and political ideologies of the Evangelical Left and empower young Evangelicals to uphold a strong social witness based on the orthodox teachings of Jesus Christ.