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Why is Matt Chandler more famous and influential than Stephen C. Meyer?

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I spent some time on the weekend looking over some nice videos featuring Dr. Stephen C. Meyer. The topics were theistic evolution and the existence of God. It occurred to me that Dr. Meyer is the top defender of Christian theism today. And it made me wonder why he doesn’t have the same standing in the Christian community as charismatic pastors like Matt Chandler.

Recently, Christian scholars J. P. Moreland, Stephen C. Meyer, Christopher Shaw, Ann Gauger and Wayne Grudem got together and wrote “Theistic Evolution” – a 1008 page case against theistic evolution. This book is important to help Christians reject Darwinian evolution, which is by definition unguided. Belief in evolution discourages Christians from using evidence for intelligent design in biology and paleontology to support theism, and also to persuade others to accept theism as true.

Dr. Meyer also put together a 3-book series documenting 4 areas that challenge atheism. “Signature in the Cell” talks about how the origin of the first living system requires information, and that effect is best explained as a result of an intelligent agent. “Darwin’s Doubt” talks about how an intelligent agent is the best explanation for the massive amount of information required to create so many body plans in the very short period of time known as the Cambrian explosion. “The Return of the God Hypothesis” talks about the origin of the universe and the fine-tuning of the universe for life. So we have FOUR arguments that falsify atheism. That’s powerful, effective Christianity. And he knows how to talk to lay audiences too – he did the first two True U DVD sets for Focus on the Family, which are for college students.

But almost no one except Christian apologists know who people like Stephen C. Meyer are. Instead, the leadership of the church seems to be dominated by charismatic pastors who haven’t demonstrated the ability to use evidence persuasively when interacting with non-Christians.

I found two videos of Matt Chandler at Dalrock blog, a famous blog with over 25 million page views.

Here’s an interview that Matt Chandler did with Vice TV:

Pastor Matt Chandler… is a contributor to The Gospel Coalition (TGC), the president of the Acts 29 church planting network and a council member of the ERLC. In the video below Chandler explains to Vice TV why so many evangelicals support President Trump.

Here’s the first video:

Here’s what Matt Chandler says about Trump’s popularity with evangelicals:

I think people are frightened. I think people are frightened at the speed at which things are changing culturally. So I think they begin to grasp for something that might help. The Obama presidency, great man, some of his policies and the way he rolled out his policies really really scared evangelicals. And without any kind of real help from Pastors and ministers to help us understand, the news media just whipped us into a frenzy and made people feel desperate.

[…]But I think especially around topics like homosexuality where we are quick to say it’s a sin.

[…][P]eople were terrified by that bathroom bill… the thought that their children were going to be in a bathroom with the opposite sex, and… that made [conservatives] go “whoever the opposition is to that I’m voting for” and then they lost their soul on that…

The Washington Times reported on a court case related to bathroom bills:

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected a Christian college’s request to halt the Biden administration’s directive on gender identity in dwellings.

The College of the Ozarks, a Christian college in Missouri, had argued the government order, which claims to fight discrimination against transgender people, impinges on the rights of Christians and violates Biblical beliefs.

The dispute sets up a new legal battle over religious liberty and gender identity.

Judge Roseann Ketchmark, an Obama appointee… announced she would deny the college’s request to issue an injunction against the rule, which requires that segregated facilities such as dorms and restrooms be based on a person’s gender identity.

That’s the sort of legislation pastors mean when they lament that Christians are too concerned about “bathroom bills”.

Dalrock found another Matt Chandler speech:

Pastor Matt Chandler does an outstanding job with both in his speech to Equip Austin, an event produced by the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) in 2015.

And here’s the second video:

Matt Chandler seems to be worried that Christians are not supportive enough of gay rights and gay activism:

One of the things I’ve seen is that some people are very terrified of homosexuality. The accusation that Christians are homophobic actually is true about certain Christians I’ve been around. They are mortified of homosexuals; they are grossed out by [them]. And the gospel (really on any subject) reshapes us to a place of compassion, it reshapes us to a place of love, and it reshapes us back to an eager hope for reconciliation in all things.

Thanks to pastors like Matt Chandler, I see so many “conservative” rank-and-file Christians justifying support for abortion and gay activism by appealing to “love” and “compassion”. And charismatic pastors do nothing to counter atheism, feminism and socialism with arguments or evidence. I would prefer that the handsome, charismatic pastors write articles to defend what the Bible teaches, using evidence to persuade non-Christians. I’ve written reasoned arguments against abortion and against same-sex marriage that appealed to non-Christians with evidence. And I’ve also written in opposition to the Equality Act, which eliminates religious liberty, and in opposition to the Women’s Health Protection Act, which eliminates state-level restrictions on abortion.

I’d like Christians to reject charismatic pastors and instead prefer Christian scholars who engage non-Christians with evidence. We need to defend what the Bible teaches on issues using evidence. Our job isn’t to compromise Christianity so that non-Christians accept us. Our job is to cast down speculations set up against the knowledge of God. And we do that by being ready for anyone who asks us for reasons for our hope.

13 thoughts on “Why is Matt Chandler more famous and influential than Stephen C. Meyer?”

  1. Chandler disgusts me. He says we “sold our soul” because we oppose the perverted Left who thinks you should teach little kids that they can change their gender? So he voted for a wildly pro-abortion, pro-coveting, pro-perversion, God-mocking Democrat. Apparently he had no soul to sell.

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    1. Yep. And he’s not insignificant. People have elevated him because he is the right kind of person to voice the message they think is important for the rank and file.

      I sometimes wonder if Christianity is not embraced by Christian leaders just as a means of virtue signaling to the largest number of people.

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      1. I believe a number of these leaders are about the money. Note how many church plants happen in affluent areas as opposed to working class neighborhoods.

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        1. Yes, they are running it like a business and thinking about how to open up new markets with illegal immigrants (using amnesty), BLM activists (using critical race theory) and LGBT (using moral relativism).

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      2. It is definitely virtue signalling, WK, when they have these comfortable multi-million dollar churches with latte machines and expensive “worship” bands, filled mostly with atheists improving their musical talents, I might add, and absolutely ZERO cost of discipleship.

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        1. I have a friend who was in a choir at a major mainline church, and both the choir director and most of the members were atheists. The choir director was a militant atheist.

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          1. Very common. I know a militant, but pro-life, atheist in the worship group of a very conservative Reformed church. He assures me that the pastor is well-aware of the fact that he is an atheist, but doggone it, he can really play, so that is what it important! (sarc)

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          2. In other words, they are just doing it for a job. I didn’t finish my thought, but that was where I was going with it.

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    2. You beat me to this, EM – thank you so much for your comment! I had actually cut and pasted his comment (“whoever the opposition is to that I’m voting for” and then they lost their soul on that”) in order to blast it.

      Typical world-lover: he accuses us of precisely what HE is doing.

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  3. Wintery,

    A little off topic, but I saw something this weekend I need some direction on that may also help others in using science to show the Bible accurate. The Word says all creatures initially ate plants. Is there evidence for this? And is there evidence showing the change for them to begin feeding on each other? I saw the questions only in passing and couldn’t get back to it.

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    1. Hello, I think this argument is put forward by Young-Earth creationists, who interpret Genesis to say that there was no death (plant or animal) prior to the Fall.

      I’m not Young-Earth, so I would go with an explanation like this:

      —-
      https://crossexamined.org/why-i-reject-a-young-earth-view-a-biblical-defense-of-an-old-earth/

      Quote:

      One of the most frequent theological arguments for a young-earth pertains to the common presumption that death did not exist prior to the Fall. The claim is based upon several demonstrably false assumptions. For one thing, it cannot be dogmatically specified (from a young earth standpoint) which particular class of living creatures for which suffering and death before the fall is unacceptable. The insistence that physical death is the immediate (‘on the day’) result of the fall makes God a liar and the snake the truth-teller. Thus the argument is based entirely on a fallacy.

      Further, the text of Genesis 1-3 nowhere states that there was no death prior to the Fall. Certainly, the second law of thermodynamics (things tending toward increased entropy) was in place, for they were eating plants and fruit. So, at least some kind of death and degradation preceded the Fall. We also know that God said to Eve that he would greatly increase her pains in childbearing, not give her ones which she did not have before. God’s statement, ‘in the day you eat of it you shall die’ was said only to the first human being and had no relationship at all to any of the other animals, as is indeed the context of Romans 5 which addresses this very issue. The view that all animals were herbivores and that following the fall there was an instant re-creation act, in which body chemistry and behaviour patterns were changed seems to be an enormous extrapolation and an unwarranted eisegetical reading into the text. The Tyrannosaur was a machine designed for killing. According to the young earth view, not only would its teeth and anatomical and physiological features need to be radically altered, but it would require a whole new digestive system. Then we have the fact that the names of the animals which Adam named prior to the Fall have connotations of violence. For example, the Hebrew name for lion is derived from the Hebrew root that means ‘in the sense of violence’.

      As I said previously, Adam did not die physically on the day that he ate of the tree, but lived a full life afterwards. The conclusion is thus necessitated that God was not talking about biological death or that he was not intending it to be taken literally. To quote N.T. Wright, “The result is that death, which was always part of the natural transience of the good creation, gains a second dimension, which the Bible sometimes calls ‘spiritual death’.”

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