The Gospel Coalition is one of the largest online ministries in the United States and perhaps globally. Their influence cannot be understated and is felt in many male-headship believing Evangelicals churches, even conservative ones. Much of what The Gospel Coalition does in between writing articles, producing podcasts and hosting conferences was promoting books. Big Eva is the Evangelical Industrial Complex, a term that encompasses The Gospel Coalition among many other Christian celebrities and organizations. Therefore, a book recommendation by The Gospel Coalition carries some weight. Each year they give awards to books based on categories. For 2022, instead of rewarding some of the very successful conservative Christian books, The Gospel Coalition promoted woke books.
The most obvious example to this point would be the first time author category winner Isaac Adams and his book Talking About Race. A conservative choice in this category might have been the It’s Good To Be A Man book that did quite well to the annoyance of liberals. Alas, we will be waiting a long time for a conservative book by a non Big Eva author to be promoted by The Gospel Coalition.
However, the most egregious award went to Christopher Watkins for Critical Bible Theory. This book won the category of popular theology and current events. The subject of Critical Bible Theory has been covered here as Tim Keller’s final push in the church. Tim Keller has been wanting to create a Critical Theory with a Christian label on it for some time and has teamed up with Watkin to accomplish this task. Whereas Keller’s version appears to be a glorified Third Wayism mixed with attempts to redeem “good” elements of evil ideologies. This award is self promotion, and it does not represent the best of Christian writing this past year, of which there are quite a few notable highlights.
Having already made reference to It’s Good To Be A Man, there was also the less than impressive Christian Nationalism by Andrew Torba and Andrew Isker. And who can forget Stephen Wolfe’s The Case For Christian Nationalism which Evangelical Dark Web will be publishing a review of very soon.
The self promotions of The Gospel Coalition are a desperate circle jerk to maintain their veneer of control in what drives Evangelical conversation.
