Ergun Caner is "Back In Black"...and Yes, It Did Take More Than Edited Videos to Take Him Down!

Ladies and Gentlemen, our friend Ergun Caner is "Back in Black"...and as you'll see in the video below, "You Can't Touch This". Welcome back, friend!

Ergun was right when he said it takes more then edited videos to take him down! He made it back! Here is his latest message posted on his YouTube channel:

"No thanks to the frustrated basement bloggers, I have been the victim of a great deal of persecution. Just like Jesus. But as I said at the prayer breakfast in Bristol last week, it takes more than some edited videos to bring me down! Not sure how many apologetics videos I'll be able to do right now. As you can see, I haven't really settled into my new office yet, and still have a lot of boxes to put away. In the mean time, ask your pastor if he is looking for an expert on Islam to come speak to your church. I am, as always, for hire."

Seriously, some of you know of Todd Friel of Wretched Radio, and at the end of this clip you'll hear Todd's recommendation on what evangelical Christianity is to do with Ergun; this was broadcast on Todd's radio show about two weeks ago. When you hear a very smart evangelical who has no ties to the SBC or their cronies speak about Caner, you realize how badly the Caner defenders absolutely have their heads stuck in...the sand. Welcome back Ergun. We look forward to more videos.

James White - Speaking the Truth on Ergun Caner

Below is yesterday's (9/27/10) video blog entry from James White's blog of Alpha and Omega ministries.

If you have followed the Caner debacle, you need to watch this video. It is a bit long, but what White says needs to be heard by evangelicals, especially those whose church Caner will be visiting to speak on his latest tour. White has some tough words to say, and unfortunately no one else is speaking these words in private to Caner thus White says them publicly.

I don't know James White, have never spoken to him, and he likely wants nothing to do with my blog. I never, ever heard of White until the Caner debacle began.

But thank you James White for speaking the truth. Too bad no one in the Southern Baptist convention or at Liberty is willing to do what you are doing. I guess they are all cowards, and don't want to pay the price for standing for the truth.

Caner Retaliates: Bloggers are "Frustrated People in their Basement" and "It Takes More than Edited Videos to Bring me Down"

Yesterday, Ergun Caner apparently decided to do what he told his church a few weeks ago that he would not do: he has decided to "take the bait and retaliate".

The Lynchburg News and Advance reported this morning that yesterday at a Bristol, VA prayer breakfast Caner addressed the Liberty University investigation, downplayed the seriousness of the allegations, took a swipe at his blogger critics, and basically said "any pastor in America" would be in trouble for lying if they listend to 200 hours of their sermons.

This sickens me. If you ever thought Caner was repentant for his 8 1/2 years of perpetual exaggerations to congregations all over the United States about his past, you were wrong. I will admit, I was wrong. At least Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker had the sense to appear as though they were repentant. Swaggart at least shed a few public tears and looked to the heavens and declared he had sinned. Not Caner. He is full steam ahead, attack the critics, mischaracterize the allegations that led to his dismissal as seminary president, and to top it all off, he feels compelled to brush all pastors to be just like him. Shameless, shameless, shameless.

Thank you Liberty University and Jonathan Falwell - you have created this monster by mishandling this entire fiasco. You waited to investigate until the main stream media got involved. You pooh-poohed the bloggers' claims until the press realized we were telling the truth. Then and only then did you do an investigation, but then refused to release any the investigative committee report findings, and simply slapped him on the wrist and kept him at your university. He now will use his position as "Professor at Liberty University" to continue his speaking circuit - and while he may tone down his rhetoric of being "raised in Europe" and learning of America from Turkish television - it seems he is content to use his engagements to mischaracterize what has happened in 2010 that led to his dismissal to rehabilitate his image and keep the gravy train rolling.

Let me say this as well: in the News and Advance article you'll read that he speaks of his conversations with the LU investigative team, and that Caner refers to "edited videos" as though somehow the evidence against him was manufactured. Well, I would like to speak about my knowledge of the evidence used by the LU investigative team, and I can assure it was not "edited videos". You see, like Caner, I too had conversations with the LU investigative team. I was contacted by a very respected member of the LU faculty whose last name everyone reading this would immediately recognize. In their quest of the truth about their seminary president the team needed to get copies of sermons that were not available on the Internet. This faculty member didn't apparently view me as a "frustrated person in his basement" and considered me a very reliable source for copies of complete, "unedited" sermons. This person told me that they did read the blogs but desired to get complete copies to hear Caner's statements in their full context.

This faculty member was very kind and gracious, and appreciative of me being willing to share information that had been removed from the Internet including the infamous FBC Jacksonville November 2001 sermon, and the four classic Caner sermons delivered to the the Ohio Free Will Baptist men's retreat in early 2007. So while Caner told the bunch up at Bristol that it was "edited videos" that couldn't bring him down, I can assure you, the committee investigating him sought original, complete, in-context statements made in his sermons. But he didn't tell the Bristol bunch that.

It is too bad that Caner is going this route. I don't know why he did not just come out after his month-long haitus following his dismissal as seminary president and make a blanket confession of exaggerations and ask for people to forgive him, and then move on. Instead it seems the approach is to take pot shots here and there at his critics, paint himself as a victim of frustrated bloggers out to "take him down", to continue to use congregations and speaking engagements to defend himself, and mischaracterize what happend this year. Perhaps he has every intention of still telling his stories - after all, yesterday at Bristol he rolled out the 'ole "Jesus died on a cross so I didn't have to strap a bomb on myself" routine.

Lastly, I want to make a comment about this statement from Caner:

“Every pastor in America, ask them if you can go through 200-odd hours of your sermons. Would they find where you said your kids’ names wrong or dates wrong? Yeah, of course. You just smile and move on.”

So his view is that if every pastor in America had an examination of 200 or so hours of their sermons, we'll find the same kinds of lies that were found in his. Well, I myself didn't have to go through 200 hours of your sermons, Ergun.

All I had to do was go through 0.75 hours, Ergun, when you came to First Baptist Jacksonville in November 2001, and lied to us about your past to convince us that you were a trained terrorist who was in Islamic Jihad, trained in Europe. That has nothing to do with your kids' names or dates. It has to do with you misleading us about your past, and who you were, which helped to create a caricature of yourself as a former terrorist trained in Europe in Islamic Jihad. And you still haven't apologized to the people of First Baptist Jacksonville for your lies in our pulpit in 2001 that helped launch you to SBC-stardom. I hope you have at least privately apologized to Jerry Vines, who sat behind you nodding and amening as you lied to our congregation that morning.

And Ergun, you're wrong about other pastors. None of my pastors - none of them - have ever lied to me about where they were raised, or born, or when they learned English, etc. None, not one, ever.

Pastors, I hope you appreciate Caner trying to lump you all into one category as being liars just waiting for disgruntled bloggers to dig up your lies. Sad that to defend himself, he is content in dragging his cohorts down to his level.

Shame on you, Ergun.

Financial Transparency Update: Bell, CA Mayor, Manager, and Councilmen Arrested - Including Local Pastor

In early August a story broke in the Los Angeles suburb of Bell, California, where the city manager, the sheriff, and city council members were found to be earning ridiculously high compensation packages. I blogged about this story here.

There was no local press or government watchdog group keeping an eye on City Hall - and thus the city officials used taxpayer money as their own private stash.

In this mostly poor immigrant city of 40,000 where one out of six residents is below the poverty level, the city manager was earning close to a million a year, the sheriff about 1/2 million, and the part-time council members were earning about $100,000.

This week the mayor, city manager, and some of the council members were arrested for misappropriation of public funds and conflicts of interest to the tune of about $5.5 million. The citizens celebrated in the streets when they learned of the arrests.

One of the city council members arrested was the local pastor of the Bell Community Church, Luis Artiga, pictured above.

The LA Times reported in August that Artiga was appointed to the city council to fill an expired term not knowing what his compensation would be, and when he got his first paycheck he thought it was "a miracle from God." According to AP, Artiga also received unauthorized loans from the city manager.

Why did this scandal happen?

It's very simple. Where there is little to no financial transparency with how servants use other people's money, the money will usually be misappropriated to some degree. This was an extreme case - District Attorney Steve Cooley called the Bell scandal "corruption on steroids". When spenders know the givers are watching how nickels and dimes are spent, these types of shenanigans are very unlikely.

As reported by AP:

"Since the scandal broke, public officials, city managers and others have said the situation in Bell showed why people must insist that elected officials communicate honestly and openly with them.

'One of the problems that was obvious with Bell was the lack of transparency and the lack of involvement on the part of the public,' Dave Mora, West Coast regional director of the International City/County Management Association, said recently.

Cooley praised the Times, saying the scandal occurred in part because residents and much of the news media paid little attention to what was happening at Bell City Hall until the story broke.

Rizzo, Adams and Spaccia resigned and the council members reduced their salaries to about $8,000 following the disclosures."

There is that word: transparency. Financial transparency, that is. It is all the rage in government. Texas governor Rick Perry was credited with starting the trend in 2006 when he started posting online his office expenses and salaries. Now most states have passed financial transparency laws "placing records of government expenditures within the reach of the curious on the Internet."

When will our mega churches and our convention agencies get on board with the trend?

Until they do, giving by churches and individuals won't be as high as it could be, and unnecessary expenditures will continue to consume too much of the money that is given. Talk to Mary Branson about the waste she saw at NAMB under Bob Reccord. And mega churches are becoming less transparent, not more. And those asking questions about pastor salaries, gifts, nepotism - well, they aren't too welcome anymore. Or their wives.

So are the SBC leaders more interested in protecting their turf and their salaries and their bennies than they are reaching the nations? If they are serious about spreading the gospel as effectively as they can, they should try a little more financial transparency, and a lot less guilting the sheep into giving using a false tithing doctrine based on Malachi 3.

I don't think they'll do that, however. Look what happened at Bell as described in the AP quote above: when the city officials had to be transparent with their incomes and subjected to close public scrutiny by the givers of the money, the council member's salaries dropped from $100,000 to $8000 in no time flat.

Amazing what a little financial transparency will do.

By the way, I wonder if Pastor Luis Artiga's church practices financial transparency now?

Ergun Caner Speaks at "Value Voters Summit" of Family Research Council

Last Friday Ergun Caner spoke briefly at the "Values Voters Summit" of the Family Research Council held in Washington, D.C. He was one of about 39 speakers at the 3-day event. He carefully described himself as "Turkish, born in Sweden, immigrant, Yankee".

Below is the video of Caner's speech.

Caner used many of his same jokes, and had the religious right yuckin' it up at his cracks about him thinking a possum was a giant rat (common mistake), that he was fooled into snipe hunting by his church, how Baptists think chicken is the gospel bird, how little he understands women and how his North Carolina church played "torture the immigrant Yankee".

His message to the values voters was that as they stand up for their convictions in the political arena they should be like Stephen, willing to be persecuted for their faith. He used an alliteration to describe what they can expect: they are appointed, annointed, and armed by God, but they can expect to be abused and attacked for their views.

Caner told his audience their critics "will mock you, and stalk you on Twitter." Really? Values voters will be "mocked", and "stalked on Twitter"? Why would they be stalked on Twitter? How is someone stalked on Twitter? Or is he referring to his troubles earlier this year, that he like Stephen was persecuted for the gospel?

But the good news is there was no introduction as "Ergun Mi'Kael Giovanni Mehmet Janel", no reference at all to him living in Beirut or being trained in Jihad or learning about American culture through Turkish television. Not even a reference to the mysterious "Possum Kill, North Carolina" or his many debates all over the world. So he is doing better, progress is made. But he still makes claims about how "I lost my family, I lost my father, lost my home, lost my culture" in reference to his Christian conversion.

Best of all, at the end, he didn't refer to himself as a "towel head" or "sand nigger" as he customarily did on the evangelical circuit, but this time he closed with "Thank you for reaching a little punk like me. Thank you for loving the unlovable."