CT's 'Mars Hill' Podcast Misplaces the Blame

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, a Christianity Today podcast hosted by Mike Cosper, begins with the query -- "Who Killed Mars Hill?" This first episode ends by answering its own question, “we all did it," upending the true crime genre its title suggests. There are no cliffhangers or clues, but an episode-by-episode autopsy of a dead-on-arrival corpse that represents more than a single body. "This is hardly an isolated phenomenon" Cosper notes, “Why do we keep doing this? Why are we regularly platforming people whose charisma outpaces their character and who leave devastation in their wake? Something attracts us, we buy in, and then we watch the collapse like spectators at a demolition derby. Understanding why this happens is really the purpose of this whole podcast." Compelling as it sounds, there are problems with this framing, if the goal is to truly understand a broader phenomenon within the evangelical church writ large.