In Reply to: Re: Ummm.... posted by PB on March 08, 2007 at 19:26:18:
It's somewhat impossible for me not to pay attention to positions taken by U.S. evangelical preachers as they have had an enormous impact on national politics in recent years.
Plus, I like to watch televanglists do their thing, and I've found Hagee to be a particularly riveting speaker, even if I don't agree with 90% of what he has to say. Before Hagee, I watched ("followed") Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker, Ernest Angley, Jimmy Swaggert, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson. More recently I pay attention to Joyce Meyer, Marilyn Hickey, and Joel Osteen. Then there's also the up-and-coming homeboy, Rod Parsley, who has ambitions of playing in Falwell's league. The list goes on and on...from those, like Parsley, Hagee, & Parsley who have overt political agendas to those who put on a pentecostal show of smoke and mirrors (Benny Hinn & Ernest Angley). The ones with political agendas are generally very big on interpreting Biblical prophesy, and they all draw directly from the Millerite tradition.
Evangelical Christianity is part of my heritage, and to the extent that I wasn't taken in by Berg, I owe it to having been exposed to the real deal as well as the hucksters. There's a famous novel by Sinclair Lewis written in 1927 (also a Hollywood film in the 1960s) called "Elmer Gantry." My mother asked me to read this book when I was in the COG, but I didn't get around to reading it until after I left TF. You might take a look at the wiki entry on this novel to get a feel for why it provides important insights into the cultural power and pitfalls of evangelical Christianity in the U.S.
Another influence on my interest in the corrupting power of evangelical preachers of the pentecostal tradition is the story of Marjoe Gortner, whose documentary "Marjoe" was big news in the early 1970s--exactly when I was involved with the COG. His documentary won an academy award in 1972, and I was able to see it at a critical period when I was transitioning out of TF. You might find the wiki entry on him interesting, too, for the parallels to Berg's story.
Perhaps if people understood more about U.S. evangelical Christianity--the good and bad--it would be easier to see just where Berg's teachings align and diverge from the various traditions. TF's leadership would really like Berg's movement to be legitimized as an evangelical & pentecostal Christian group, but I can say this with some confidence--that level of acceptance from someone like Hagee would only be possible over his dead body. The guy is real strict "old school" and would publically anathemize Berg in a heartbeat if he was ever informed that anyone perceived even a hint of similarity between his teachings and Berg's.