Falling From Grace: Once Idolized as a Christian Icon, Kirk Cameron is Now Blasted as a Heretic

Baptist News Global: Heads Spin as Kirk Cameron Gives Up Eternal Consciouos Torment 

Kirk Cameron, the actor who became famous for his role as the incorrigible Mike Seaver in the television series Growing Pains, and who then, because of his fame, salvaged his career after a highly publicized conversion to Christianity from self-proclaimed aetheism by acting in a series of Christian-produced movies, and peddling his faith testimony among the conservative Evangelicals who were willing to pay for it, has suddenly found himself outside the good graces of the Evangelical leadership who once embraced and used his fame for their purposes.  It might be obvious that I tend to be skeptical of these kinds of "conversion" experiences, especially when they become the primary occupation and marketing strategy of the convert.  

Ultimately, while trying to avoid being judgmental, I generally avoid buying their books, videos and productions.  The legitimacy of my faith does not depend on celebrity endorsement of it.  There's already plenty of profit to be made in the packaging and selling of everything religious, especially among Evangelical conservatives who make idols out of their leaders.  

In spite of their approach to "evangelizing" the "lost," and a period of growth back in the post-World War 2 era which they used to claim legitimacy, while mainline Protestants were beginning to experience decline, conservative Evangelicals are now experiencing a tailspin of membership and attendance decline that now rivals the losses mainline denominations experienced a couple of decades back.  And what's happened to Kirk Cameron is a good illustration of just why this disastrous decline is happening. 

No Soul Freedom Allowed

While caustically critical of ecclesiastical connections and doctrine determined by church clergy councils, claiming to offer their members the abilty to interpret and apply the principles of the Bible according to their own spiritual discernment, there is a hard line of established dogma, based on a singular, literalist interpretation of the Bible that leaves zero room for dissent or personal application.  Much of it is contradictory to any reasonable, historical and contextual interpretation of the Bible, especially the revelation of the gospel directly given by Jesus, whom they claim was the Son of God.  

If that's the case, then wouldn't the revelation he preached be exactly the words that God initiated, and therefore the interpretive filter for everything everyone else ever wrote that made it into the canon?  And yet, the gospel is not considered in most Evangelical doctrine or practice.  They define "gospel" as any single verse picked out of a verse by verse rendering of the text, and what it says when it stands alone.  So they wind up denying the core principles that are essential to Christian faith and practice. 

So even when a celebrity who has become an idol among the faithful deviates from the accepted dogma, they become the enemy, the apostate, the fallen.  And so, in the flash of an eye, another celebrity idolized by the conservative Evangelical community because of his fame and because he was one of them is no longer one of them.  He dared to think for himself, stop parrotting the party line and draw his own conclusion about a Biblical interpretation.  And those who have prided themselves on believing in the Bible's inerrancy, and in this principle of soul freedom, something they condemn mainline Protestants for not believing, have taken this privilege and freedom away from one of their own.  

And they aren't able to see how that makes them hypocrites.  

Conservative Evangelicalism is an Absolute Mess of Confrontation and Condemnation Over Petty, Minute Doctrinal Arguments

If Jesus Christ did return, he would not recognize Evangelicalism as anything having to do with the gospel he preached and taught.  There are so many litmus tests of orthodoxy, and finely tuned "distinctives" which are used to brand those who are outside of the carefully constructed theological and doctrinal fortresses built by ego-driven megachurch pastors and televangelists as heretics, that most of their followers can't answer simple questions about what their church believes.  

Part of the problem is based on the use of an ancient text, written in a completely different era of human history, referencing contexts that have long since disappeared and are not recoverable, to establish evidence for supporting these theological and doctrinal systems.  Simply declaring the text of the sixty-six books of the Protestant Bible as "inerrant and infallible in their original autographs," or declaring the King James Translation as "the preserved word of God in English" does not produce an accurate interpretation of words which require extensive knowledge of the history and culture in which they were written.  In fact, the literalistic approach of Evangelicals precludes any genuine understanding of the meaning of the text, because the contexts are completely ignored in favor of the way a translator has rendered the text.  

That's why there is such incongruity between the theology, doctrine and practice of Evangelical churches, and the message conveyed in those words recorded by three apostles and one gentile physician that have survived as being the very words of Jesus the Christ. The biggest problem with declaring the Bible inerrant, and then interpreting it literally is that opens the door to literally hundreds of contradictions in interpretation in which all of the sides can be equally supported by scriptural evidence.  They appear because there is no context present to provide an interpretation that fits the words which were used.   

Kirk Cameron endeared himself to the conservative, Evangelical branch of American Christianity by blending his fading fame as the star of a popular television series with a dramatic conversion experience and an embrace of Evangelicalism.  There are those who see him as just one more person who retrieved some of their fading relevance and fame by hitching their wagon to Evangelicals who helped him recover part of his former income stream.  I won't make that judgement, but his fame and his image was certainly used, willingly, to promote the Evangelical perspective of Christianity.  

And for all of what he did, getting blasted because he has openly embraced a particular doctrinal point that isn't shared by the majority, and has once again used his fame and reputation to promote it, is just one more example of how far away from authentic Christianity Evangelicals have moved.  He's not the only one.  Rejecting heretics, ruining careers and chasing after dollars is a hallmark of American Evangelicalism.  And it provides a lot of insight as to why they are completely and totally deceived when it comes to Trump.  They are used to the distortion of facts and to avoiding reality by creating an alternate universe.  That allows them to put any interpretation they want on something, and deceive themselves into thinking its true, because "there's a verse" that supports it.