His name was Ergun Caner, and boy, did he have a story. Caner told the packed First Baptist auditorium that he had been raised in Europe, had been involved in "Islamic Youth Jihad," and had been "trained to do that which was done on 11 September." I was sitting there with my family listening to it, and I believed him. Talk about having the right testimony at exactly the right time. A former Muslim supposedly immersed in Islamic jihad, converted to Christianity and now able to explain the Muslim world to frightened American Christians? You couldn't have ordered a better speaker from Central Casting.
There was just one teeny-tiny problem: the dramatic biography Caner was presenting to us didn't hold up. And one of the churches that gave the emerging Ergun Caner phenomenon one heck of a launch into Southern Baptist stardom? You guessed it: First Baptist Church Jacksonville.
Before and After 9/11
See the two Caner photographs in my October 29, 2013 Watchdog post
Look at those two pictures. On the left was the pre-9/11 version, known as "Butch Caner" or "E. Michael Caner." As I wrote at the time, he was an obscure preacher who had grown up in Ohio from about the age of three. I certainly don't remember seeing the George Costanza-looking version of Caner making the megachurch circuit.
Then came 9/11, and just a few weeks later Jerry Vines brought a considerably more exotic version of Caner into First Baptist Jacksonville. Now we had "Ergun Mehmet Giovanni Caner." Same guy, much better marketing. Caner stood before thousands of us talking about Islamic Youth Jihad and being trained to do what had happened on September 11. He spoke with an accent, rolled his R's and talked about having difficulty speaking English as a teenager; except Caner had been living in Ohio since he was a small child.
When I wrote about those two photographs in 2013, I described what had happened to those of us sitting in that auditorium with two words: "We were tricked. Bamboozled."
Nine Years Later, I Got the Tape
In 2010, as questions about Caner's biography began circulating on the Internet, I remembered that sermon at First Baptist Jacksonville. I knew what I had heard that morning, but there was a problem: this was November 2001. There wasn't a convenient YouTube archive where I could type "Ergun Caner FBC Jax" and pull up the video.
Believe it or not, First Baptist still had something resembling the old church tape ministry.
And this is where the story gets interesting.
I had a friend who was still a member of First Baptist Jacksonville. Through the church's own resources, that person was able to get her hands on an audio recording of Caner's November 20, 2001 sermon and get it to me.
Think about the irony of that.
One of the most important pieces of evidence in the Ergun Caner controversy didn't come from some sophisticated investigative operation. It came from an old FBC Jax audio tape that had apparently been sitting in the church's own archives for nearly nine years.
I listened to it.
And what I heard was worse than I remembered.
Caner told us he had been "raised in Europe." He said that until age 15 he had been in "Islamic Youth Jihad." Then came the whopper: "until I came to America, until I found Jesus Christ as Lord, I was trained to do that which was done on 11 September."
I posted the audio on the Watchdog.
And I have to imagine there were some people who deeply regretted that the old FBC Jax tape ministry had been so diligent about preserving sermons.
Because as far as I have ever been able to determine, that FBC Jacksonville recording was the surviving record of the sermon where Caner was making some of the most extraordinary claims about his life at the very beginning of his post-9/11 rise. I was contacted by a trustee at Liberty University about that tape, and the recordings I had archived from an Ohio Free Will Baptists website where Caner told outlandish stories of learning about American culture as a teenager in Istanbul, Turkey. Total rubbish.
Read my March 2010 Watchdog investigation of Caner's FBC Jax sermon
That recording is also why the Caner story became so personal to me. I wasn't investigating something that supposedly happened at somebody else's church. I was there, with my family. I remembered believing that we had just heard the testimony of essentially a former Islamic jihadist who had been saved by Jesus just in the nick of time before becoming one of the people we had watched flying airplanes into buildings. That was precisely why the story was so powerful in November 2001.
We Got the Testimony We Wanted
The really fascinating part is that Caner's actual testimony was already a perfectly good Christian testimony. He had been raised Muslim and converted to Christianity as a teenager. Isn't that enough?
Apparently not for the evangelical celebrity machine.
Regular Muslim kid growing up in Ohio converts to Christianity? Nice. But apparently that doesn't provide quite enough horsepower for the evangelical conference circuit. Former Islamic jihadist raised overseas, trained in terrorism, finds Jesus and arrives in your church immediately after September 11?
Books, conferences, speaking engagements, seminary positions and packed auditoriums followed. Jerry Vines and other prominent Southern Baptist leaders gave Caner tremendous credibility. And when Caner stood in the First Baptist Jacksonville pulpit, he wasn't speaking at some storefront church next to a laundromat. He was speaking to thousands from one of the most influential pulpits in Southern Baptist life.
That platform mattered. If Jerry Vines had this guy standing in the FBC Jax pulpit telling us this incredible story, surely somebody had checked him out, right?
Then the Bloggers Ruined Everything
Eventually the Caner controversy became too large to dismiss as pesky Internet bloggers tapping away in their mothers' basements, as Ergun Caner liked to say. I posted the FBC Jax recording so people could listen and judge for themselves, and by the end of 2010 I had written more than 20 articles about Caner. The Watchdog material became part of the larger investigation into the contradictions in Caner's public biography.
Liberty University eventually investigated Caner's public statements and concluded there were factual statements that were self-contradictory involving dates, names and places of residence. His appointment as seminary dean was not renewed.
But what bothered me almost as much as Caner's stories was the reaction from the evangelical establishment. Where were all the guardians of biblical truth? These were guys who could detect theological liberalism at 500 yards. Say the wrong thing about the creation story in Genesis and somebody would convene the discipline committee. Let a woman get within 25 feet of the pulpit and somebody would need smelling salts. (which reminds me of the time Ergun joked to the Ohio Free Will Baptists: "Do I believe in women behind the pulpit? You bet I do, how else do you expect them to vacuum back here if they can't get behind it?")
But when serious questions emerged about the autobiographical claims of a nationally prominent evangelical celebrity, suddenly everybody became very cautious: "Well, we don't know all the facts." Funny how that works.
And amazingly, Caner was back at the FBC Jax Pastors' Conference in January 2011. At the time I argued that putting him back on the program, surrounded again by major SBC personalities, effectively communicated that Caner was back in good standing with the evangelical preaching establishment.
Why This Was Another Swing of the Wrecking Ball
I'm not arguing that Ergun Caner caused First Baptist Jacksonville's attendance decline, and I'm certainly not claiming his 2001 sermon caused the financial problems that eventually resulted in the Main Auditorium being sold. That would be ridiculous.
Caner was a symptom. He showed what could happen when enormous evangelical platforms became fascinated with sensational testimonies, celebrity personalities and incredible stories while forgetting to ask boring little questions such as: Is this true? Did anybody verify it? Should this person really be standing in our pulpit? And when we discover that something isn't true, are we willing to admit publicly that we got fooled?
That's where institutions either correct themselves or begin deteriorating. First Baptist Jacksonville helped give Ergun Caner an enormous platform. The Southern Baptist celebrity machine helped turn him into a star. And when the story eventually unraveled, precious few of the people who helped create the phenomenon seemed particularly interested in standing up and saying, "We got this wrong."
Maybe that's because accountability is considerably more enjoyable when you're preaching it to the people sitting in the pews. It's a little less fun when the sermon on accountability is about you, the "man of God".
The Main Auditorium was still standing. The crowds were still coming, the conferences were still going, the celebrity preachers were still arriving, and everything looked fine.
But another swing had landed.
Wrecking Ball Blow #2.
No comments:
Post a Comment