Jen Hatmaker is Too Typical

…of Big Evangelicalism, the “affirming”, the “antiracist”…

Over the weekend, Anne Kennedy wrote an excellent post on the deeper problems of Jen Hatmaker, who is making the rounds promoting yet another memoir of her apostasy.

Jen Hatmaker and Jesus

What most struck me about Anne’s post is how typical Jen Hatmaker is, too typical. And how Hatmaker is typical almost shouts lessons and warnings for us. So I will attempt briefly to go through those that stand out without the shouting or ranting, which would be too typical for me.

Big Evangelicalism, particularly from the 80’s to 2020, tended to give too much weight to celebrities and events and being “seeker sensitive” and not enough weight to formation and discipleship. One quiet and devastating result is how many children raised in Big Evangelicalism have drifted away or ran away from the Faith. Putting bodies in the folding auditorium seats was too often put above discipling families, with predicable results.

A more public result is how many of those celebrities went apostate. Jen Hatmaker is only one. It is heartbreaking how many prominent evangelicals of 20 or 30 years ago have since rejected the Faith. They range from authors like Hatmaker and Joshua Harris, to a number of preachers, to any number of Christian music artists. (The apostasy of Jars of Clay hit me. Their music was excellent.) There’s been a long epidemic of apostasy among evangelical celebrities.

And don’t get me started on entertainment and concerts disguised as “praise and worship.” I did pledge not to rant. So I will just say those worldly mutations harmed formation as well. Traditional liturgy teaches a lot. Really it teaches the basics of the Faith, Sunday after Sunday. Instead, Sunday after Sunday, Big Evangelicalism was often teaching feelings and even errors in its “praise and worship.”

In short, Big Eva churches did not prioritize the formation and discipleship of Jen Hatmaker and of those who listen to Hatmakers with awful and predictable results.

A second area in which Jen Hatmaker is too typical is how grave error in sociopolitical issues rarely remains isolated from faith. To put it more bluntly, if a professing Christian is seriously wrong on important contemporary issues, one of two things will eventually happen: he/she will eventually repent or he/she will eventually fall away from orthodox faith. Sadly, more often it is the latter that occurs. And, as Anne Kennedy put it, we are therefore undergoing a “great and violent sifting of evangelicalism.”

But evangelicals are not the only ones so afflicted. I’ve lived long enough that I’ve seen it again and again. Back in the 80’s, abortion and Communism were reliable litmus tests. If a cleric pushed the “right to choose” or pushed Liberation Theology or pushed the foreign policy objectives of the Soviet Union, one could be sure that cleric was a heretic or headed there. More recently if a platformed Christian, like Hatmaker, pushed “antiracism” and other wokeness and affirmed alphabet immorality as just fine, then one could be sure that supposed Christian is either apostate or heading there.

Getting much into why this is so would make this a long post. But error is error and does not want to stay compartmentalized. Profession with one’s mouth that Jesus is Lord and also advocating with one’s mouth grave evil cannot and will not continue for long. And such persistent advocacy usually indicates that one’s profession of faith is not for real or is about to be cast aside. If one cannot serve God and mammon, then one certainly cannot serve God and profound public evil. Something will have to give. One or the other will become your real master.

And what often gives way is the supposed faith of such a one as Jen Hatmaker. As she put it in the recent New York Times interview, “I was still an evangelist. I was just an evangelist for different ideas.” She got that right.

Most of my readers are more discerning than to fall so. Still, we need to beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing. If a supposed Christian leader engages in wolvish advocacy of public evil, whether that be “antiracism”, LGBQTABCD, “Evangelicals for Harris” or whatever is the latest trendy evil, beware, mark, and avoid. Such a leader is leading himself and others down a road to apostasy. You do not want to walk with him.

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lead image: Devin Oktar Yalkin for the New York Times