Anyone who’s familiar with Christianity knows that, in the last few decades alone, the Christian church has seen an astounding number of its powerful preachers exposed as blatant hypocrites. The most famous example, of course, is Ted Haggard, former president of the National Association of Evangelicals and a fervent opponent of gay marriage, who fell spectacularly from grace after revelations of a three-year sexual relationship with a male prostitute.
But he’s not the only one. There’s Jim Bakker, a once-powerful televangelist who was found guilty of fraud for running a phony investment scheme, and Jimmy Swaggart, who exposed the sexual indiscretions of several powerful preachers and was later caught patronizing a prostitute himself. The list could further be extended to include Peter Popoff, a faith healer whose “miraculous” knowledge of audience members’ illnesses came through a covert radio receiver in his ear; Richard Roberts, who resigned as president of the college founded by his father Oral Roberts after a lawsuit alleging misuse of school funds; Randall Terry, the anti-abortion activist who was censored by his own church for adultery; the secret anti-Semite Billy Graham; the turbulent and violent life of Francis Schaeffer; recent revelations about Todd Bentley; and many, many more.
The charge of hypocrisy in the church has become so pervasive that even Christian apologist sites feel obligated to address it. In this post, I’ll address the common apologist replies and show how they unintentionally illuminate the depth of the problem, as well as discussing what it does and does not prove.
To start off, it’s quite true what most apologists say: that the existence of hypocrites within the church does not prove that Christianity’s claims about the existence of God are false. There is no logical connection between those two propositions. But all these hypocrites, I think, do undermine a different supernatural claim: the alleged ability of Christian belief to transform people’s lives in a uniquely effective and beneficial way.
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