Now, the man who built a church of an estimated 10,000 people isn’t even attending an organized church. Instead, he surfs the waves near Hollywood and has teamed up with the goddess of pop theology, Oprah Winfrey.Exchanging his evangelical bona fides for the blessing of Oprah may yet prove to be his most unforgivable sin, at least in some circles. Which is not to say that Bell cares very much what anyone says these days.“I never spent a minute wondering whether I’m in or out.”Does he still consider himself an evangelical?“If we mean Jesus’ message of God’s revolutionary love for every person, and we can surrender and give our life to acts to loving kindness, then man, sign me up,” said Bell, 44.
It’s hard to imagine the architects of the Emergent movement approving such a vanilla, say-nothing summary of evangelical faith. You don’t have to believe in Calvinism or substitutionary atonement to think that Christianity might say more than “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” In fact, Bell seems to put forth a creed that would comport more comfortably with the voices inside the so-called “Prosperity Gospel” wing of Pentecostalism–which, of course, ends up making sense, since that’s exactly the kind of preaching that Oprah Winfrey seems partial to.
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