The Mainstream Evangelical

Who was Jesus?

What was his message?

Is it possible to remove the religious, political and other man-made layers that have

been added to the story of Jesus?

Is it possible to cut through all the clutter and noise and get to the core of Jesus’ ministry

and message?

We are certainly going to do our best.

Whether you’re a Christian, an atheist, agnostic, or follower of a faith other than

Christianity, or maybe your just curious about who Jesus was and what he had to say,

then this podcast is for you.

There is no proselyting or advocacy of any particular Christian denomination or faith

group. You don’t have to join anything or give your money. This is simply an attempt to

get back to the message of Jesus and nothing else.

We will primarily be using a chronological harmony of the four gospels. Occasionally we

may use other parts of the bible for context or for additional material that refers to

Jesus.

This podcast series is not a popular survey of the four gospels.

It’s about what Jesus taught, the example Jesus lived and the practical application that

has for our lives.

Although this first episode will give some background information about Jesus and the

Gospels, we’ll be primarily concentrating on the text and its meaning.

Jesus didn’t come to found the Christian religion. He came to introduce us to the

kingdom of God and die for our sins so all people could have access to eternal life.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.  Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.

In this episode, we interview Michael Moore of The Honest Youth Pastor. We talk about Michael's background, how he got started with his account, the controversy regarding Andy Stanley platforming two openly gay men at the Unconditional Conference, and user-friendly versus traditional church services.

This is an excerpt from the audio version of my book, Redemptive Deconstruction: A Critical Examination of Evangelical Christianity That Doesn't Lead to Atheism or Progressive Extremism. In this podcast, we examine part one of my chapter on The Church and Politics. In it, we discuss whether America is a Christian nation.

This is an excerpt from the audio version of my book, Redemptive Deconstruction: A Critical Examination of Evangelical Christianity That Doesn't Lead to Atheism or Progressive Extremism. In this podcast, we examine part two of my chapter on The Church and Politics. In it, we discuss whether Jesus and the Apostles were Political.

This is an excerpt from the audio version of my book, Redemptive Deconstruction: A Critical Examination of Evangelical Christianity That Doesn't Lead to Atheism or Progressive Extremism. In this podcast, we examine part one of my chapter on The Church and Politics. In it, we look at a brief history of the American political system, the influential groups in politics, political extremism, and how to reevaluate our approach to American politics.

There is no one size fits all answer to this question. There are varying degrees of Christian Nationalism. In this episode, we discuss patriotism, nationalism, fascism, and white nationalism and how they relate to Christian Nationalism. 

In this episode, we discuss how deconstruction is defined, its history, and its modern application in regard to faith.

In this episode we discuss knowing God for ourselves outside a church framework, that we don't have to be conservative to be a Christian, not adopting a viewpoint that violates scripture, not trading conservative extremism for progressive extremism, understanding that not all problems have a political solution, making sure we don't harm the reputation of Jesus with our political views and making sure the salvation of the lost remains our priority.

In this episode, we explain the vision of The Mainstream Evangelical and discuss different types of Deconstruction.

In this episode, we talk about human trafficking, how to recognize it, and what you can do about it. We also look at cancel culture and its ramifications on society, including the LGBTQ community's attempt to get Dr. Crenshaw fired and the shutting down of debate on important issues on the right and the left. And then we examine ways Evangelicals can impact culture in a positive way.

In this podcast, I talk to Tim Whitaker of The New Evangelicals about progressive and traditional theology. We address everything from original sin, the deity of Jesus, and what salvation really means to inerrancy and bible prophecy. This is another podcast you don't want to miss.

In this episode, we document the history of inerrancy in the church from the testimony of the church's leaders throughout its over two thousand year history. Progressives will tell that inerrancy is a new concept, that it wasn't taught in the church until after the enlightenment. This is a common claim by progressives about a wide array of issues. They attempt to rewrite history by claiming that traditional modern Christian theology is a new belief system contrary to church history. Nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to inerrancy. In this podcast, we document the testimony of people like Martin Luther, Augustin, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Charles Spurgeon, and many others indeed taught that the scripture is without error and therefore inerrant. 

   Inerrancy doesn't seem like something that most Christians would bring up at a dinner party, but it's one of the foundational principles of Christianity. This is not a subject that most Christians dive into let alone are aware of. It’s usually taught in seminary for ministerial training. Denial of inerrancy is a fundamental principle of Progressive or liberal theology. In progressive circles, you will find many concepts that are made up out of thin air to justify their problematic beliefs. They tend to obfuscate rather than confront traditional views because if they challenge these solid, well-documented views of traditional Christianity head-on, their shallow theology falls apart fairly quickly.

   One of the accusations of the traditional view of inerrancy is that it is “bible idolatry.” The inference is that people are more concerned with their doctrine than understanding the true meaning of love and compassion behind what Jesus taught. These are not mutually exclusive principles. Adherence to inerrancy does not negate compassion or love for one's neighbor. What they really want is the ability to cherry-pick the scripture in order to justify a sinful lifestyle that doesn’t line up with scripture. The only way they can do that is to find a way to invalidate what the scripture clearly says. Their primary method of doing this is to challenge the traditional view of inerrancy.

   We are using the Chicago Statements on Biblical Inerrancy. These statements are based on the conclusions drawn by an international gathering of over 300 Evangelical scholars. These statements are merely a reaffirmation of the principle of inerrancy that has guided the church throughout history. They include such theological greats as Norman Geisler and R. C. Sproul. Any Evangelical who studied theology in seminary has read their books. Many of these scholars are Baptists who teach a reformed theology. This is not my faith group as some of them can be overly legalist at times, but their underlying theology is solid.

I will be quoting the statements from the Chicago Statements on Biblical Inerrancy and commenting on each one. There are a total of 19 separate statements divided into 6 separate categories.

The categories consist of:

The Word of God and Authority
The Word of God and Revelation
The Word of God and Inspiration
The Word of God and Inerrancy
The Word of God and Truth
The Word of God and the Individual

Each of these sections has 2 to 4 points adding up to 19 separate affirmations and denials. These statements represent a framework that people can adopt or reject all or some. I find most of it to be reasonable, but not 100%, so they are presented here for your consideration.

In this episode, we are going to give a detailed examination of all the scriptures that talk about homosexuality. People of faith within the LGBTQ community claim that these scriptures have been deliberately misrepresented by the church. Mainstream and conservative Christians claim that the LGBTQ community is misrepresenting these scriptures to further their political agenda regarding rights for LGBTQ people. We will also talk about the politicization of this issue among Evangelicals and how we interpret the bible. Our goal is to get to the truth of the matter and let people decide for themselves what they want to do with it. 

In this episode, we explain the difference between religious conversion and kingdom salvation. Jesus didn't come to create the Christian religion, he came to establish the Kingdom of God. We aren't called to convert people to a mindless religion based on guilt, legalism, or greed. Jesus came to open the door to a relationship with God. In this episode, we help people understand that relationship but without the man-made garbage associated with salvation.

Where or if you go to church is one of the most important decisions you will ever make. In this episode, we give people specific criteria to gauge how healthy a church is. We use both theological and psychological traits to determine whether a church is healthy, dead, unhealthy, a mainstream cult, or a dangerous cult. Whether you're looking for a church or you're attending a church where something just doesn't seem right, this teaching will help you pinpoint exactly what issues, if any, exist.

This is the second episode in our series about whether or not Jesus and the Apostles were political. In this episode, we look at how Paul, Peter, and the rest of the Apostles dealt with potential political situations and how we are to interact with secular governments as Christians. 

The goal of this podcast series is not to take a side, advocate a position, start fights, or create controversy, but rather to think about our influence in the world as Christians. We need to reevaluate our approach to political involvement and social issues. We need to ask ourselves, what does the bible say about politics? What did Jesus and the Apostles teach us and what was their example? I want to challenge you to take a hard look at what the bible says about how we should approach political issues. This episode looks at whether Jesus was political.

This our first podcast under our new name, "The Mainstream Evangelical." We promote a balanced, mainstream view of Evangelical Christianity that rejects extremist ideology on both the far right and the far left. Today, we're are going to lay down ten foundational principles for what it means to be a Mainstream Evangelical. 

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.

The Gospel takes the four stories of the life of Jesus Christ and presents them as one chronological timeline narrative. It’s based on the collective events found in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The relevant portions of the gospels are then inserted into each event.  They are presented as audio narration with cinematic background music.