There have been some unsettling stories of high-profile Christian leaders turning their backs on the faith over the past few months.
Harris’ ‘Goodbye’
Joshua Harris, best-selling author and successor to C.J. Mahaney at Covenant Life Church in America, issued a statement on Instagram in July 2019 revealing that he was no longer a Christian. He had already distanced himself from his highly influential book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, and was separated from his wife of 20 years. His social media post declared: ‘I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus. The popular phrase for this is “deconstruction,” the biblical phrase is “falling away”. By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian.’
Sampson’s ‘So long’
A second Christian ‘celebrity’ to announce their falling away via Instagram was Hillsong worship leader and songwriter, Marty Sampson. His post (later removed) gave a little more detail as to why he could no longer believe, asking: ‘Why is the Bible full of contradictions? No one talks about it. How can God be love yet send 4 billion people to a place, all ’coz they don’t believe? No one talks about it … I am not in any more. I want genuine truth. Not the “I Just Believe It” kind of truth.’
Comedy, free speech and warnings from the past
Hannah Arendt was a Jewish philosopher who grew up in Nazi Germany. Eventually she had to flee to France and, …