Mark Driscoll, Ergun Caner and the Scandal of Evangelical Integrity

a tale of two scandals

Last week, surprisingly, Mark Driscoll was trending on Twitter. For whatever reason, the fascination with him hasn’t disappeared. As I noted last week, the controversies with him burst out publicly at the same time as Ergun Caner was selected as president of Brewton-Parker College, despite the fact that his record as a fabulist had been well-documented by then. Despite the on-going obsession with Driscoll, without a doubt having fabricated one’s life-story and on the back of that fictional autobiography having become a sought-after speaker, seminary president and then Baptist college president is far more newsworthy and scandalous. The following was written at the out-break of these two simultaneous scandals, published by a major Christian media company and quickly suppressed as part of the hush-hush that surrounds Caner, while the frenzy around Driscoll goes on.

Truth-telling is a great cause. So great the Lord Jesus described the purpose of his coming as to tell the truth: “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth.”  (John 18:37.) So it should be a shock to us if some Christians today take truth telling lightly.

In the run up to the birthday of The Truth-Teller, the American evangelical church was hit by two controversies challenging its commitment to integrity. On November 21, 2013 radio host Janet Mefferd challenged Seattle mega-church pastor Mark Driscoll for insufficiently citing a source for some ideas in his recent book A Call for Resurgence.

She was indignant that Driscoll had said what is right but in the wrong way. Soon new charges arose that Driscoll had plagiarized two brief paragraphs from a commentary on 1 Peter in a Bible study guide. About this last charge, Driscoll’s church, Mars Hill, apologized for what they called an editorial mistake, that research notes were accidently incorporated into the text of the study guide. That revelation, then, sparked a debate, led by Christianity Today’s Andy Crouch about whether ghost-writing is tantamount to lying.

One would think that the eruption of out-rage at Driscoll is a refreshing expression of righteous indignation at failures of integrity. One would be wrong. Is having some unknown wordsmith cranking out pages that are then packaged and sold as the work of your favorite celebrity pastor deceitful and wrong? Yes. That deserves out-rage. Is incorporating a few sentences of research into what is otherwise your original work really morally depraved lying? Be serious.

Right here we find the real scandal of evangelical integrity. Judging by the volume and tone of the uproar rising from Driscol-gate, one would expect that he had been discovered to be a mass-murdering Satanic priest who even once jay-walked. For example, blogger Warren Throckmorton, professor at Grove City College, dedicated at least twelve articles to the “controversy,” (by late 2013; he subsequently added many more.) In the high-brow ecumenical journal First Things, Collin Garbarino dedicated two of his columns to it, first flunking Driscoll for plagiarism and then using Driscoll as a bad example of how to handle a “media crisis”. (Note, first the media creates the crisis and then bashes those they’ve targeted for not handling as they think best.) When what amounts to an editorial mistake in what is little more than an internal study guide sparks this kind of protest, one has to wonder: what’s up? Ah, but they insist this really is a major issue; it’s about honesty and integrity. That’s belied by many of the accusations. Throckmorton entitled one of those dozen blogs “John Piper Calls out Mark Driscoll on Ghostwriting.” Except he didn’t. John Piper hadn’t mentioned Mark Driscoll. (After two days of scolding by me, Throckmorton eventually changed the headline but didn’t apologize for the earlier misstatement.)

Collin Garbarino wrote that Driscoll “takes an aggressive tone and accuses the interviewer  [Mefferd] of having the wrong spirit.” Except he didn’t. Those are the respectable authors. The commenters under all these articles were inflamed, coming to rash, condemning verdicts about Driscoll as though there was no 9th commandment prohibiting bearing false witness. When the most strident critics, claiming they are champions of integrity, misrepresent the facts, again: what’s up?

Simultaneous with the unfolding of this media scandal, Brewton-Parker College, a Southern Baptist college in Georgia, hired Ergun Caner as president. 

Caner burst onto the evangelical scene in 2002, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, co-writing with his brother a popular book entitled Unveiling Islam. He soon became popular on the speaking circuit, claiming that he was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey, knowing American culture only through what he had seen on TV there, hating us Americans, educated in a Madrasah (a Islamic religious school) in Beirut, Lebanon, trained to be a terrorist, and coming to the USA in 1978 when he was 14, when his father immigrated with his several wives (using the “Abraham lie” to claim his plural wives were really his sisters) in order to be a Islamic missionary to Americans. It was a great story, well told. Except it wasn’t true. Even the Brewton-Parker press release acknowledges the facts, contrary to Caner’s contradictory claims, that Caner actually came to the USA when he was two years old, settling in Ohio. In photos of Caner as a student in public school, he appears as a normal American kid of the 1970s and ‘80s.

As a pastor before 9/11 he was nicknamed “Butch.” After 9/11, the story of Ergun the terrorist converted to Christianity began to take shape, gaining him the presidency of Liberty Baptist Seminary and then Brewton-Parker College.

Listen for the out-rage: crickets. Where are the Christian professors posting a dozen blog articles about this? Where are the high-brow journal articles agonizing over what this means? The silence is deafening. Indeed, for some, those who exposed Caner were the enemy. One unnamed trustee at Brewton-Parker College said, “We didn’t consider Dr. Caner in spite of the attacks; we elected him because of them.” Shining the light of truth is now attacking.

What’s up? In large swaths of conservative evangelicalism words are not used to shine truth but as weapons to achieve a goal. If you hate Mark Driscoll, then he’s plagiarizing, lying and stealing, and being publicly scolded by the likes of John Piper. Even if he isn’t. It doesn’t matter what’s true; it matters what helps pull down Driscoll. Sure, as the 2021 podcast “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hills” demonstrated, he may have needed to have been removed but the ends don’t justify the meanness.

If you need a gimmick to attract an audience, sell cds at $35 a pop, get the attention of the powers-that-be so you can get those plum jobs of college president, play on your very slight exposure to Islam. It really sells in the wake of 9/11. Caner simply used words to achieve his goal. Hence, many look at Butch Caner and yawn.

Yet, still, truth-telling is a great cause. Even if it doesn’t humiliate the celebrity pastor you dislike. Even if it doesn’t sell books or get you hired at a Baptist college. When the up-roar of pseudo-outrage fades away and entertained evangelicals learned they were duped, then they’ll realize it’s the truth that sets us free.