Who is The Real Pre­ston Sprin­kle? Part 2: Rules for Thee, but not for Me

This arti­cle is part of a series, click here for part 1 or here for part 3
For the relat­ed pod­cast episode, click here

In the last arti­cle, we saw that it may be pru­dent not to take Pre­ston’s claims at face val­ue. For part 2, we should expand upon that and estab­lish a frame­work for how Pre­ston com­mu­ni­cates. This is very impor­tant for where the rest of this series will head, as this frame­work will allow us to more effec­tive­ly review Pre­ston’s teach­ings. We will look at Pre­ston’s stat­ed goals, per­son­al rules, and phi­los­o­phy for inter­views; and then we will com­pare those to his words and actions. Does the real Pre­ston align with the the­o­ret­i­cal Pre­ston?

What is Pre­ston’s Phi­los­o­phy for His Pod­cast?

Pre­vi­ous­ly I men­tioned talk­ing with Greg Coles from Pre­ston’s “Cen­ter for Faith, Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty & Gen­der” (the Cen­ter). In the con­ver­sa­tion, I asked about Pre­ston’s phi­los­o­phy for guests, and I was direct­ed to an episode of Pre­ston’s pod­cast where he spoke about that, among oth­er things. In the episode, he pre­sent­ed his mis­sion state­ment: “The The­ol­o­gy in the Raw pod­cast aims to help believ­ers think Chris­tian­ly about the­o­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al issues by engag­ing in curi­ous con­ver­sa­tions with a diverse range of thought­ful peo­ple.” Fair enough, but what does that mean? What does Pre­ston mean when he says “think Chris­tian­ly,” “diverse range,” or “thought­ful peo­ple”? We’ll see more from Pre­ston on that lat­er, but for now, it’s enough to say the def­i­n­i­tions mat­ter.

Pre­ston would clar­i­fy that he has no “fear of plat­form­ing” as it “does­n’t apply to the nature of what this par­tic­u­lar pod­cast is” because the pod­cast is not a ser­mon or teach­ing on what truth is, rather, it is about con­ver­sa­tions. Though he said this specif­i­cal­ly about the pod­cast, both this and his mis­sion state­ment seem to func­tion for all of his min­istry endeav­ors. It’s worth not­ing that the two state­ments here are not imme­di­ate­ly com­pat­i­ble. Is The­ol­o­gy in the Raw (TitR) try­ing to “help believ­ers think Chris­tian­ly” (edu­cat­ing) or is the pod­cast not teach­ing and is just con­ver­sa­tions?

Over­all this is a minor con­tra­dic­tion, but it does show a lack of clar­i­ty in defin­ing his objec­tives. Pre­ston tends to do that, obfus­cat­ing what should oth­er­wise be a sim­ple and quick point, but that is some­thing we will touch on in future install­ments of this series.

The Per­ils of Plat­form­ing

Pre­ston hav­ing no fear of plat­form­ing is not true, even out­side of ridicu­lous exam­ples like not bring­ing on the leader of the KKK. Why do I say this? Pre­ston him­self has clar­i­fied as much in com­ments made in his pod­cast with Jared Moore, where he made it clear sev­er­al times that Jared Moore is some­one he is not okay with plat­form­ing, and bring­ing him on was an excep­tion that Pre­ston seem­ing­ly regrets. This also con­tra­dicts the idea that the pod­cast is not teach­ing, as if it were sim­ply con­ver­sa­tions, then tru­ly hav­ing no restric­tions would make sense. This arrives at the heart of the mat­ter: noth­ing is neu­tral. There is no such thing as a con­ver­sa­tion that isn’t teach­ing (pro­mot­ing an idea) since if that were true the con­ver­sa­tion would be point­less. You could say that small talk is an expec­ta­tion to that rule, but even if you want to make that excep­tion, it is not rel­e­vant to the type of “con­ver­sa­tions” we’re talk­ing about. Pre­ston seems to under­stand this, as a point­less con­ver­sa­tion would run afoul of TitR’s mis­sion “to help [instruct, teach] believ­ers think Chris­tian­ly about the­o­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al issues.”

This does not mean that there is no time or place for explorato­ry con­ver­sa­tions or inter­views with peo­ple of oppos­ing ideas. Fram­ing is impor­tant, though, and set­ting up—implicitly or explicitly—a false idea of neu­tral­i­ty is irre­spon­si­ble. Peo­ple need clear para­me­ters to under­stand the con­ver­sa­tion’s con­text, and it is the host’s job to be the audi­ence’s guide. This is why I would not hes­i­tate to bring Pre­ston on the pod­cast, and I have extend­ed that offer to him mul­ti­ple times. Pre­ston under­stands the need to pro­vide con­text for con­ver­sa­tions with guests he dis­agrees with, but that will be fleshed out in the next sec­tion.

To jus­ti­fy what I would at best call a reck­less phi­los­o­phy, Pre­ston throws respon­si­bil­i­ty on the audi­ence, say­ing, “You have to be an active lis­ten­er. You have to ques­tion both what I say, and what my guests say.” I have to say, this irri­tates me. Not because he’s encour­ag­ing peo­ple to test things, as that’s some­thing we should do in all cir­cum­stances. Rather, it’s used to absolve him­self of any respon­si­bil­i­ty to his audi­ence and as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for not help­ing those peo­ple. A host is not there to have the con­ver­sa­tion he wants to have, but to have the con­ver­sa­tion that makes sense of the top­ic for his audi­ence. He asks guests ques­tions that clar­i­fy the top­ic for his audi­ence. The host is respon­si­ble for what he puts out, and if it was com­mu­ni­cat­ed well. Far too often in mod­ern soci­ety, regard­less of ide­ol­o­gy, we jump to accus­ing oth­ers for “misinterpreting/misrepresenting” us, rather than tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for our own com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Even if it is ulti­mate­ly up to the lis­ten­er to decide what they do with the infor­ma­tion they receive, the host is still respon­si­ble for ensur­ing his com­mu­ni­ca­tion is clear and his mes­sage can be under­stood by a rea­son­able per­son.

More than not help­ing his lis­ten­ers, he mud­dies the water by say­ing he’ll rep­re­sent objections—ones he does­n’t agree with—to his guest’s posi­tions. Why do I say that play­ing dev­il’s advo­cate is a bad thing, espe­cial­ly as that is some­thing I do on the pod­cast? Because in lis­ten­ing to many of Pre­ston’s pod­casts, I can­not tell if/when he’s rep­re­sent­ing an objec­tion he holds to, or when he’s play­ing dev­il’s advo­cate. Again, he does not act as a guide who clar­i­fies things but instead adds more con­fu­sion. In the end, what he lays out for his pod­cast­ing phi­los­o­phy is chaot­ic and arbi­trary, and places the bur­den on the audi­ence to fig­ure out what Pre­ston actu­al­ly believes.

Break­ing His Rules

Let us return to Pre­ston’s pod­cast with Jared Moore, some­thing we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly com­ment­ed on. In that episode, Pre­ston gave us many points that will help clar­i­fy the ques­tions we have, and clar­i­fy what he’s already said. As pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed, Pre­ston said many times in the pod­cast that Jared is some­one he is not okay with plat­form­ing, and that hav­ing him on was an excep­tion to a rule he has about engag­ing with crit­ics.

This seems like a bla­tant con­tra­dic­tion of the “no fear of plat­form­ing” state­ment, which leaves us with anoth­er appar­ent con­tra­dic­tion from Pre­ston. What are the rea­sons Pre­ston gives for this breach of his rule on “no fear of plat­form­ing”? He says, among oth­er things, that Jared is disin­gen­u­ous, unthought­ful, dehu­man­iz­ing, a liar, pos­sess­ing defi­cient rea­son­ing skills, and from a cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent brand of Chris­tian­i­ty.

Why is any of that an issue, though? Isn’t the pod­cast con­ver­sa­tion and not teach­ing? It would seem that the con­fus­ing and con­flict­ing philoso­phies are dumped out the win­dow when real­i­ty comes knock­ing. Pre­ston does have lim­its on who he will plat­form. Pre­ston does see the need to pro­vide con­text for con­ver­sa­tions with a per­son he dis­agrees with. Pre­ston does see his pod­cast as more than neu­tral con­ver­sa­tion.

In the clips below, you will see Pre­ston men­tion, over and over, “debate,” and how he does­n’t like to, or want to, debate dif­fer­ences. This is inter­est­ing, as it helps to clar­i­fy that he isn’t as keen to point out dif­fer­ences, or even inter­view some­one with dif­fer­ences, as he ear­li­er indi­cat­ed.

Who then is the type of per­son that Pre­ston will not plat­form? Well, it is some­one he sees as hav­ing a fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent brand, or as Pre­ston said, “cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent brand,” of Chris­tian­i­ty. That is a very telling phrase, “cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent.” To have a “cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent” view on a top­ic is to have an incom­pat­i­ble, dif­fer­ent in essence, cru­cial­ly dif­fer­ent view. When applied to Chris­tian­i­ty, that would mean a salvif­ic dif­fer­ence, as that is the only dif­fer­ence that is fun­da­men­tal, essen­tial, or cru­cial. Do not agree with that expla­na­tion? Add the con­text that Pre­ston thinks Jared’s “brand” is not “close to the heart and truth of Jesus.”

What does this mean? Well, it means that those who he will plat­form have a com­pat­i­ble brand of Chris­tian­i­ty (dif­fer­ent in non-fun­da­men­tal ways). So Jared Moore, who holds a view of sex­u­al­i­ty that Pre­ston claims to fun­da­men­tal­ly agree with, rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent Chris­tian­i­ty (a dif­fer­ent gospel). Eliz­a­beth Black of Kalei­do­scope, who holds to views of sex­u­al­i­ty that would fun­da­men­tal­ly dis­agree with beliefs Pre­ston claims to hold, thus would rep­re­sent a brand of Chris­tian­i­ty that is com­pat­i­ble with Pre­ston.

Do you see the issue here? Not only is Pre­ston, func­tion­al­ly, mak­ing a gospel dis­tinc­tion and draw­ing lines due to that, but he is plac­ing peo­ple with unortho­dox views in his brand of Chris­tian­i­ty. Fur­ther, his words have lost most reli­a­bil­i­ty, and the need to inves­ti­gate what he says has become much greater. This is why the foun­da­tion we’re build­ing through part 2 is so essen­tial.

Rules for Thee, but not for Me

Final­ly, we reach the title of the arti­cle. There were already hints of this, but this is where the rub­ber meets the road. Sev­er­al points became clear when he applied his philoso­phies with Jared. First, as the episode went on, Pre­ston repeat­ed­ly defend­ed him­self, rather than by answer­ing ques­tions, by appeal­ing to some piece of con­tent he’s cre­at­ed. This was done to “expose” Jared for not hav­ing read/listening to the mas­sive amount of con­tent Pre­ston has. The thing is, Pre­ston admit­ted to only doing a few min­utes of scrolling Jared’s Twit­ter feed in order to come to a con­clu­sion about him.

Though Pre­ston makes a great deal of “thought­ful­ness” and “human­iz­ing,” he was dom­i­neer­ing in the con­ver­sa­tion, and con­stant­ly inter­rupt­ed Jared. It seems he holds his guests to a dif­fer­ent stan­dard.

Pre­ston bemoaned peo­ple not con­tact­ing him direct­ly, yet he has not respond­ed to the mul­ti­ple emails (among oth­er attempts to con­tact him, even offer­ing to vis­it Boise and have an off-the-record con­ver­sa­tion) that I have sent him. Beyond that, he admit­ted to hav­ing a rule of not engag­ing crit­ics. That seems a bit of a dif­fer­ent stan­dard for his crit­ics than he holds for him­self.

Final­ly, Pre­ston said he was­n’t the one call­ing some­one a heretic. Except he did, and not even by impli­ca­tion. He claimed Jared, and by exten­sion oth­ers, had a cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent brand of Chris­tian­i­ty, as we pre­vi­ous­ly looked at. Now, some might defend Pre­ston by say­ing, “That’s not what he meant.” My response: “But that’s what he said.” I can only go off what he said, and that is the mean­ing of what he said. If that’s not what he meant, then the bur­den of cor­rec­tion and retrac­tion lies with him.

To con­clude, I want us to look at the fol­low­ing com­ment for the YouTube release of the Jared Moore pod­cast. This com­ment is the top com­ment on the video.

Though I think this com­ment is a bit too gra­cious to Pre­ston, it does show that even his own audi­ence could see the incon­sis­ten­cy on dis­play.

We need to keep in mind the lessons learned in this part of the series, as they will be impor­tant as we dive into his more direct teach­ings.

Ques­tion for Pre­ston

What is the fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence between your brand of Chris­tian­i­ty, and Jared’s, and how do you rec­on­cile the use of “fun­da­men­tal”?
Bonus: Can you explain the con­tra­dic­tions between your stat­ed mis­sion state­ment and clar­i­fi­ca­tions of what the pod­cast is, but also between your stat­ed posi­tions and your actions con­cern­ing Jared?