All Posts Tagged: "J. Gordon Melton"

How dialogue changed Elliot Miller’s view of the local churches.

The importance of dialogue and how dialogue led Elliot Miller to reassess the local churches.

The countercult community’s error in rejecting Dr. J. Gordon Melton’s Open Letter.

The importance of context in understanding others’ teachings.

Doing discernment ministry properly and the consequences of statements made in error.

Hank Hanegraaff, President of Christian Research Institute, and Elliot Miller, Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Research Journal discuss the importance of proper research and apologetics methods, the serious consequences of careless scholarship, and how dialogue changed their perceptions of the local churches.

An index to the testimony in The Experts Speak with links to relevant portions on specific topics.

This Preface to the printed volume of The Experts Speak describes the contents of the book and how it is structured.

The “Meet the Experts” section of The Experts Speak gives basic profiles of the six experts who studied the local churches and the teachings of Witness Lee for the Lee et al v. Duddy et al case concerning The God-Men.

The “Introduction” to The Experts Speak presents the historical background of Lee et al v. Duddy et al and describes the role of the expert witnesses in the case.

Dr. J. Gordon Melton, Director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion and author of the standard work Encyclopedia of American Religions, testified that SCP had completely misrepresented Witness Lee and the local churches and had made many false and damaging accusations in its book The God-Men. [Note: Dr. Melton is currently Distinguished Professor of American Religious History at the Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University.]

The full text of Dr. J. Gordon Melton’s booklet An Open Letter Concerning the Local Church, Witness Lee, and The God-Men Controversy, written and published by Dr. Melton after the conclusion of Lee v. Duddy. After giving a general background of the local churches based on Dr. Melton’s research as the leading authority on contemporary American religious groups, this booklet shows The God-Men‘s twisting of Witness Lee’s words in four key areas—propositional revelation, morality, rationality and use of the mind, and personal versus biblical authority. Based on SCP’s blatant misrepresentation of Witness Lee’s teaching, Dr. Melton recommends that The God-Men and any writing based on it be discarded.

After the end of The God-Men case (Lee v. Duddy) in 1985, Dr. J. Gordon Melton, one of the expert witnesses in the case, wrote and published An Open Letter Concerning the Local Church, Witness Lee and The God-Men Controversy. Dr. Melton demonstrated conclusively that The God-Men had misrepresented Witness Lee teaching and recommended that it, and any other writing based on it, be discarded.

A brief history of the background of The God-Men by Neil Duddy and the Spiritual Counterfeits Project (SCP); of the landmark case, Lee et al v. Duddy et al, in which it was ruled to be “in all major respects false, defamatory and unprivileged, and, therefore, libelous”; and of the aftermath of that decision.