As we’ve reported here at The Dissenter many times over the years, Andy Stanley, the liberal, LGBTQ-affirming, Scripture-twisting false pastor extraordinaire, has once again proven that theological acrobatics and doctrinal contortionism are alive and well in modern evangelicalism.
With his church’s open embrace of homosexual members and his unabashed promotion of “gay Christianity,” Stanley has established himself as the poster child for everything wrong with the seeker-sensitive Evangelical movement. Under the guise of being culturally relevant, he has tossed the Scriptures into the wind, offering instead a false gospel that is more palatable to progressives, unrepentant practicing homosexuals, and feminists, than to anyone who takes Christianity seriously.
Apart from inviting practicing homosexuals to his stage to lecture the Church on sexual ethics and other moral issues, Stanley has now made it his mission to defend Rick Warren and Saddleback Church. Last year, Saddleback Church was removed from the Southern Baptist Convention after the church had ordained three women to the pastorate against the clear teaching of Scripture.
In a recently surfaced clip, Stanley lashes out at Southern Baptists for giving Warren the boot. And what’s most hilarious about this clip isn’t that Stanley would defend Rick Warren—they are two peas in a pod. Both are rank heretics who should be marked by the Church and avoided at all costs. No. What’s most hilarious is that Stanley uses this moment to defend his own “conservative” credentials:
With all the political nonsense in the last few years that has picked up speed like crazy, and here’s what happened. The people fueling it are conservative, and I’m so theologically conservative, I’m even politically conservative, but this whole thing has been fueled by conservative, fearful, fundamentalists, don’t have time to define that, academics and pastors.
Trying to make it sound like the only reason Rick Warren ordained women to the pastorate was for “tax benefits,” he then goes on to start his diatribe against Southern Baptists and defense of Warren:
And churches, church leaders are resurrecting old barriers that we spent years tearing down, and they’re adding new barriers. Now I’ll give you a quick example. I texted him this morning, told him I was gonna talk about him in church.
One of the two people who really launched this movement way back in the late 70s is Rick Warren, purpose driven life. Before he wrote ‘The Purpose Driven Life,’ he wrote ‘The Purpose Driven Church.’ That book sold millions of copies to pastors, and it was a book about how to create a church that’s for outsiders, for unchurched people.
I mean, he inspired so many of us, right, to help get the church back on mission. He is a modern church reformer, there’s no way around it. Last year, some of you know about this, last year, his denomination kicked him out of the denomination for something immoral, no, something illegal, no, something that had to do with money, no, because he’s had some addiction, no, none of that glamorous stuff,
right? They kicked him out because he had the nerve to ordain three female staff members who were functioning as pastors. He ordained them as pastors, which is actually a legal status. It gave them a tax benefit.
They’re doing the work of all the other male pastors. He’s like, well, why in the world would we not make them pastors? They’re pastors, and they weren’t gonna go out and lead a church. They were working on his staff.
He ordained three women, and they kicked him out of the church. You don’t get any more insider-focused than that. And there’s example, after example, after example, and here’s the problem. Evangelical leaders, and I consider myself evangelical.
No! No! No! The harsh reality is that both Andy Stanley and Rick Warren are nothing but apostates—wolves in sheep’s clothing—leading their congregations straight to Hell. They peddle a false gospel, one that demands neither repentance nor genuine faith, allowing their followers to wallow in sin with no transformation of heart toward their Creator. This counterfeit gospel offers a deceitful sense of security, proclaiming “peace, peace,” where there is none. Stanley and Warren are the epitome of the blind leading the blind, and their teachings are a direct path to eternal damnation.
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