Jordan Peterson gets ALL the YouTube views but PLEASE don't think that makes him emulation-worthy!
I recently received an email invite to an event named "Preaching like Peterson: Can a preacher learn anything from the rhetoric of Jordan Peterson?" Now, I don't know how the event organisers plan on answering this question. I am quite willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they have prepared something rigorously critically attentive and resistant to Peterson's toxic and dehumanising ideologies.
I'm considerably less willing, however, to actually go and find out for myself...
My own answer to what Christians can learn from Peterson about preaching is quite simply "how not to do it." Dog-whistling, contrarianism, fear-mongering and distorted, reductive, pseudo-intellectual, agenda-serving interpretation of the Bible and other venerated sources of authority? Nah, yer alright thanks.
In fact, the very first essay I submitted for my MA addressed the way Peterson (among others) interacts with the concepts of "chaos and order" in Genesis 1 – in his case, to serve his reactionary misogynist and transphobic agenda. It was rather therapeutic to write back then, and sparked an interest in biblical "authorising appeals" that carried me along into the research I'm doing today. So here's a (slightly modified and expanded) version of it, on the off-chance anyone's got the time, mental energy and curiosity enough for that sort of thing!
[Thumbnail image cc. from Avery Evans on Unsplash.]
Comments