Joel McDurmon almost apologises for the worst of his article on Ray Comfort

I am relieved to see that Dr McDurmon has in part come to his senses and, while not expressing the contrition I'd like to see for the severity of the charges he made, not only without, but in fact against all available evidence, I guess I can take him at his word that he really does think he sinned.

The main charges against Comfort were of money-grubbing and indeed extortion. Dr McDurmon apologised for saying "money-grubbing", yet didn't say anything about extortion in his apology article. That is a shame.

Dr McDurmon goes on to say:
And be sure, had I seen any of this, I would not have transgressed on this point.

This is a tacit admission that Dr McDurmon wrote his article in ignorance, which I pointed out earlier was likely. One hopes he will reconsider how much research he does in the future before dashing off such kinds of accusations against faithful brethren.

I searched the apology in vain for any mention of speaking so disrespectfully and flippantly about Comfort's street evangelism, for his calling it "high-pressure" (whatever that means), "hidden-agenda, stealth-attack approach", or "needl(ing) people on the spot about their sins". Sadly, nothing.

Speaking of which, there are a lot more areas in which this article is lacking.

No apology for attacking the video based on what he wanted to see in it.

No apology for implying that Comfort endorses an approach to evangelism that is summed up in, as Dr McDurmon put it, "nothing matters more than saving souls".

No retraction of the unhelpful (at best) line: "A gospel with questionable ethics is no gospel at all."


No apology for calling everything else Comfort has ever said into question, when he himself has demonstrably twisted Scripture in the past, thus tempting the objective reader to ignore all of Dr McDurmon's own writings.

No apology for accusing Comfort of hypocrisy.


All that to say, I am unimpressed at the apology, but my impression from watching and listening to many hours of Ray Comfort is that he is a deeply gracious man, who will doubtless be fine with Dr McDurmon's apology. Dr McDurmon would do well to follow such an example.