It's quite an Orange County issue for the latest Christianity Today. Yesterday, we reported on a great profile of Roberta Ahmanson, the wife half of the wacky-cause-giving Ahamansons. Turns out there's another titan of Orange County Christianity also discussed in the January 2011 issue–the Rev. Robert H. Schuller and his bankrupt Crystal Cathedral.
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In an unsigned editorial, the evangelical-leaning magazine urged readers it is “unwise” to “hit the man while he is down,” but CT must believe in the gospel of “Do as I say, not as I do.” In the previous paragraph, it ridiculed the very existence of Schuller's church. “In an age deeply sensitive to energy conservation, a glass house of worship is a sinful extravagance,” the editorial fumed. “in a culture increasingly addicted to the self, the gospel of self-esteem is clearly part of the problem. In short, the Schuller enterprise is filing for bankruptcy on more than one front.”
Evangelicals have long had a problem with Schuller and his possibility-thinking preaching, and the editorial ends with the usual Christian truism that only Christ can save, and the faithful shouldn't put their beliefs in churches and personalities like the ones Schuller created over the past 55 years. I agree with everything CT wrote about Schuller, but what they did to Schuller wasn't Christian charity; it was an old-fashioned beat down.
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