Yesterday, Evangelical Dark Web reported on Steve Lawson being listed and quickly scrubbed from the Contending for the Faith Conference. The Contending Conference is a Black, female-led conference, making it an interesting locale for Steve Lawson to attempt a comeback. But as is the nature of developing stories, this situation remains fluid. Even right before recording a video on the subject, the story dramatically changed. Now there’s an update.
We can confirm that the conference organizers advertised Lawson’s participation without his knowledge or consent.
They invited him to be a speaker, but before hearing that he intended to decline, there was an internal misunderstanding that led them to assume he would agree.
As soon as he found out about it, he informed them of his declining the offer, and they promptly removed him from the line-up.
Evangelical Dark Web noted three possibilities with this story.
There are three possibilities as to what happened. The first is that Steve Lawson was to speak as one of two White guys at a predominantly Black conference but upon public backlash, dropped out. This would be entirely within the Big Eva paradigm.
Another possibility is that this was a glitch in making the website. Whether ripping off a template that had real data in it or AI vibe coding a website for the conference, Steve Lawson was copied onto the 2026 conference. This option exonerates Lawson of wrongdoing and presents the Contending Conference as incompetent.
However, there is a lot of incompetence to accept this narrative. The Contending Conference would have had to change its template in 2026, several years into its operation, to something completely new. But this website has been live since, at the latest, the beginning of July. Lawson was prominently featured as a speaker, making this a hard error to ignore.
The most conspiratorial possibility is that the Contending Conference used Steve Lawson to drum up publicity and controversy and sell tickets. This is unbecoming of supposed pastors, but content over everything is a business model.
It would appear that the innocent explanation that many assumed, a website error, was not the case. It seems unlikely that a conference would suddenly change templates with live data and not edit it out prior to release. And instead the most conspiratorial explanation was most correct. This conference wanted
But the fact that Lawson was invited to be one of two White dudes at this conference dispels the innocent explanation. The Contending Conference wanted to be the place that launched Steve Lawson’s comeback as a way to sell tickets.
But somewhere along the way, Steve Lawson was invited and was not explicit enough about his refusal.
If we want to put the conspiratorial hat back on, this raises the question as to how Steve Lawson was accessible to be invited. Moreover, one could ask whether Lawson’s reply was vague enough to let the waters be tested with plausible deniability. However, this conference had Lawson listed without a clear acceptance. This prematurity was likely outside of Lawson’s control. And in the end, this looks like a publicity stunt.
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