Is There an Ergun Caner Failblog Entry?

All of the following quotations (obviously excluding the linked material) come from a sermon titled, "The Greatest Day in Church" apparently preached Calvary Chapel Old Bridge (Old Bridge, NJ), on January 25, 2009 (sermon available for sale or free for streaming here). I understand this is the church of the same "Pastor Lloyd" whose interview with Caner we recently addressed (link to discussion of interview). References in parentheses are to the approximate starting place of the clip from which I'm quoting. There is just so much here it is hard to organize it. However, I have tried to organize it. It includes many, though not all, of the apparent embellishments we have seen. The time stamps are approximate, and the transcription is my own. If you find errors in it, please alert me.

Ironic Comment of the Day - Winner

(5:30) "I can't - I don't tell jokes. I tell stories all the time, but I can't tell like set-ups, like 'a man walked into a room ...'"

• Sadly, it seems this point about telling stories is true.

Ironic Comment of the Day - Runner Up

(20:55) "I've now written sixteen books. Big deal. My books ain't nothin'. I don't think I've read sixteen books. I'm an idiot. If I got a PhD, anybody in this room can get a PhD. I've been teaching for ten years. For some reason, people started buying my books. I was like, 'ok.' They say, 'We want you to write on this,' I was like, 'Man, I am only going to write about what I am passionate about.' 'No, no, write this! We'll give you money!' 'Dude, I wouldn't buy it, if I wrote it.' My books mean nothing. Because most of you in this room have had a greater impact and will have a greater impact on the kingdom than I ever will."

• As far as we can tell, Caner didn't get a PhD. (see discussion here)
  
  
• It's hard to verify that he has written sixteen books. (see discussion here)

Name Claim

(2:45) "My full name, Ergun Mehmet Caner"

• We've seen official documents where his name is listed as Ergun Michael Caner.

100% Turkish Claim (With English in Brooklyn and Warrior Training Claims)

(22:35) "I am 100% Turk.

(1:00) "I am an immigrant, I'm Turkish, 100% Turkish, for which I usually have to apologize, because we have horrible atrocities that Turks do, all the time, but I came to America through Brooklyn, NY and learned English at Aquinas (some Brooklyn folk? yeah!) and then moved to Ohio (I'll tell you a little bit about that later) but moved to Ohio and then became a Christian. I was a Sunni Muslim and a jahideen not a mujahideen, not a holy warrior, but I had not made it that high, but I was a jahideen when I got saved."

(34:15) "Jesus strapped himself to a cross, so I wouldn't have to strap a bomb to myself."

• It's unclear how Caner, whose mother is Swedish, can be 100% Turkish.
  
  
• Note also the claim to have learned English in Brooklyn at "Aquinas" before settling in Ohio. Since Emir Caner was born in Ohio in 1970, and since Ergun Caner must have been 3 years old when he attended "Aquinas" in Brooklyn, if the story is true.
  
  
• Note the claim to have been a "jahideen," and apparently on track to be a "mujahideen." It's hard to disprove this claim, but if there were folks training to be "mujahideen" in Central Ohio, we assume that the U.S. government would probably want to be aware of this. (UPDATE: a number of readers have pointed out that the -een ending is plural, and at least one has pointed out that while there is a real Arabic word "jahid" it is a verb form of the word for "struggle." If I've correctly understood Arabic grammar on this point (see here, for example), the "mu-" in "mujahid" is a prefix that turns a verb relating to warfare into a participle for the person who does the warfare. Thus, removing the "mu-" does not appear to be a qualifier meaning "holy," such that it could be removed to express a lesser type of warrior. Of course, I await someone whose Arabic knowledge is greater than my own to confirm this.)
  

Father with "Many Wives" Claim (and half-brothers claim)

(39:20) My father had other wives, Amen [responsive to clapping presumably about the brothers' salvation, not the alleged polygamy] My father had other wives, but from our mother all three boys, Ergun, Erdem, and Emir - all three born again - all three married to hot Christian wives."

(43:10) "My father had other wives. My father died in '99, never accepted Jesus. I have half-brothers and sisters who don't know Jesus."

• We can only find evidence that Caner's father had two wives: Caner's mother and a woman that Caner's father apparently married after Caner's mother was divorced from Caner's father.
  
  
• We can confirm that Caner has two half-sisters from Caner's father's second wife, but we cannot identify any half-brothers. Indeed, while the Caner's are mentioned in their father's will, no other male offspring are mentioned. (link to will)

Racial/Ethnic Comments

(2:30) "I married a southerner. We are the ultimate mixed marriage."

(3:30) "Her Father is from Possum Kill, NC, so you can guess he was thrilled when the towel-head showed up at the door to date his daughter"

(5:10) "You eat squirrel brains, you redneck. You eat innards and call them 'chit'lings,' you can eat this. " (reportedly his words/thoughts in response to his father-in-law's suspicion of his cooking)

(6:55) "We have two beautiful, wonderful, half-breed children. [childrens personal info omitted] They ignore me in two languages." (In another address, he identifies the two languages as "Turkish" and "redneck" - 10:20 at the link.)

(9:15) "I thought, 'There's a black man with a question!'" (pretend scared voice)

(22:35) "And I know there's two types of Muslims that come to America. One type running away from Islam and those that are coming to propitiate it. You've seen the ones who are running away. Usually, they come to America - they're in love with it - they wear the tight polyester pants. Come on - I've seen my people - you ain't gonna embarrass me by any of these things. We got the one eyebrow - we've got it slicked back. We've got our designer impostor perfume on. And we tryin' to make our move - we tryin' to mac. We're like, 'How you doing beautiful woman, come dance with me, dance with me. No, no, my name is Kanye - come on dance.' That wasn't us."

(40:30) "One church - one Pastor - one's pastor's wife: Yuki Miller was from Japan. Clarence met her when he was overseas. They were a mixed marriage too. And Yuki was this tall. Couldn't understand a word she was saying, she'd start praying, we do a prayer thing at night, all join hands, and she'd start: [using exaggerated far-east accent]'Heavenry Faddah - we thanka you fo [unintelligible] today.' Man, I didn't know what she was saying, but she was talking to somebody I wanted to know."

(46:35) "Thanks for listening to a towel-head."

• I don't think Caner actually has any antipathy or hatred either for southerners or those of his own or other races/ethnicities. Nevertheless, it is surprising to see such a volume of these sorts of comments. Sadly, some of the "Caner haters" have drawn some very negative conclusions from these sorts of comments. My advice to Caner is to discontinue these. (In another clip, you may recall, Caner even refers to White people as "crackers" about 3/4 of the way through.)
  

Sexual Comments

(39:55) "All three married to hot Christian wives. You go to Facebook (R), man. Look at pictures of my wife. My wife is fergalicious, man."

• I am glad he loves his wife and finds her attractive. I can't believe that folks think it is appropriate for him to be suggesting that folks ogle her on Facebook (R). I've never seen his wife, and I'm content to take his word for it, as to her physical beauty. I would again, however, encourage him not to make a spectacle of her.

Debate Claims

(9:20) "I'm a professor. And most of the time in my life I'm with hostile crowds, as you could tell with debate. You can go on iTunes (R) and get all my debates for free. No subscription or anything, you just type in my name. And you'll see, I debate anybody. And I teach apologetics, that is defending the faith, specifically to hostile crowds, to world religions. Global apologetics is defending Christianity in light of near eastern, middle eastern, far eastern religions."

(10:10) "And so, most of the time, I'm not with fellow believers. Only when I'm in the classroom. And even there, I tell the students, we bring them into our classes, for interviews. We bring in Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and such. And we do these debates. And I rarely get to talk about how I ended up here."

• We've previously looked at his debates, and found that all we could locate were rather tranquil interviews (link to discussion).
  
  
• Note that Caner even seems to acknowledge that the "debates" are just "interviews" in his classrooms.
  
  
• Where is the evidence of Caner debating in a "hostile" crowd? Perhaps he has done so, and there is just no evidence of it, but it is very strange that there is plenty of evidence of the interviews and none (that has come to my attention) of him debating folks in a hostile environment.

Dressing Funny Claim (And "last day I saw my father" claim)

(31:50) "Tackett goes, 'Here he is!' Like you've got to point out the boy in the dress, right?"

(35:05) "In the middle of the sermon, when I felt he's talking right at me, I stepped out and walked to the front. And there Clarence was, handkerchief in hand - preaching '(vocalizing of preaching rhythm) - What?' There's this boy standing in front of him in full gear."

(23:40) "We wore keffiyeh ..."

(36:40) "We went to Afterglow, that's where all the youth went out after church, Denny's IHOP, etc. I took my keffiyeh off, told the waitress I was saved, ordered ham. I'm all about my ham. And I go home, and I told my father, 'Papa, ishulaha umuduru hai esus isa ibn ara turrah,' Jesus is my Lord and savior. And it was the last day I saw my dad."

• There's no evidence that we can find that Caner ever wore keffiyeh - in fact his high school pictures make him look like a pretty ordinary kid. (see the discussion here)
  
  
• Also, it is not typical for Turkish Muslim laymen, even in Turkey, to wear keffiyeh and robes, as far as we can tell. Watch the recent Gaza relief flotilla funerals and notice how, aside from the clerics, everyone is dressed in basically Western clothes.
  
  
• Finally, the "last day I saw my dad" comment isn't accurate. Caner saw his father again before his father died, according to his own testimony elsewhere. That's very sad that he was cut off from his father for many years, but he is slightly embellishing by claiming it was the last time he saw his father.

Grandmother Claims

(42:00) "In 1995, at almost the age of 100, my grandmother got saved. My mom is a church planter in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Grandma, five foot tall and shrinking. Meanest woman on the planet. Anyone else got a mean grandma? They beat the livin' tar out of you - anyone else? Grandma wouldn't negotiate. Grandma wouldn't do time out. Grandma would do knock out - choke out, black out, that was my grandma. When my grandma got saved, someone blew up the Koran-the the the Bible, like - her Koran was large print - they got the idea and they said, 'ah' - they got our big Bible, they blew it up, they led her to Jesus. Emir, my youngest brother, got to baptize her. Stood in the waters with her - started crying. I'm sitting in the crowd, weeping. Erdem weeping. Our wives weeping. Mormor, grandmother, looked up at Emir [sound effect] smacked him. Smacked him in the baptistry, 'Do it!' That's what she said."

• The accusations of physical abuse by his grandmother strikes one as a little extreme. It has the sound of an exaggeration, though how could anyone know?
  
  
• What is especially odd is that "mormor" is the Swedish word for maternal grandmother, yet Caner suggests that this grandmother had a large print Koran.

Came to America in 1978 Claim

(23:35) "And when we came to America in '78, through Brooklyn, we settled in Columbus, OH, to build mosques. "

• As far as we can tell, Caner came to America around 1969-70. (see discussion here)
  

Conversion Senior Year or Later Claim

(22:35) "I am 100% Turk. That's not as important as telling you I lived 18 years of my life as a Sunni Muslim."

(27:25) "Jerry Tackett was an obnoxious kid trying to earn an AWANA badge. I don't know - I mean I don't know what it was. But beginning in my freshman year, and going until my senior year, Jerry Tackett never took "no" for an answer. For three and a half years, almost four years, Tackett kept coming after me. 'Dude, you want to come to the lock-in? Dude, you want to go roller skating? Dude - fifth quarter, hotdog hog-out, pizza pig-out,' all those youth things that people do. 'No, no, no.' Freshman year, Sophomore year, Junior Year, 'Leave me alone!' I have my prayer rug in the locker room and I'd roll it out and I'd be praying and my forehead to the ground and I'd come back up and there he's standing, 'Hey!'"

(28:40) "Going into my senior year, I figured I found the way to shut him up. I said, 'I'll go with you to your church, if you come to the mosque. So this high school senior, this seventeen year-old boy named Jerry Tackett walked to the mosque on Broad St. in Columbus, OH, walked in with a Bible in his hand, and a 'Jesus Saves' t-shirt."

(30:20) "I was trying to be anonymous, sit in the back, and there comes Tackett, and there comes his friends, and there comes all these youth. Four years they'd been going on me and they never gave up."

(39:20) "I was in college, eight months later, my phone rang. I discovered that both my brothers had gotten saved. My father had other wives, Amen [responsive to clapping presumably about the brothers' salvation, not the alleged polygamy] My father had other wives, but from our mother all three boys, Ergun, Erdem, and Emir - all three born again - all three married to hot Christian wives."

• From what we know, Dr. Caner graduated from Gahanna Lincoln High School in the spring of 1984 (link to discussion here). Based on the apparent fact that he was born in late 1966, he would have been 17 years old when he graduated.
  
  
• Conversion at 18, therefore, would be during his first or even second year of college.
  
  
• Caner's senior year was in 1983-84. When we've heard him give a date for his conversion, the date has been November 4, 1982. That would be the the first part of Caner's Junior year, not his Senior year.
  
  
• Eight months after November 4, 1982, would be July 1983, the summer before Caner's Senior year.
  
  
• The illustration above is taken from one of Caner's yearbooks. The caption in the yearbook states: "While on the foreign langauge hayride, junior Ergun Caner gets bombarded with hay. The hayride was an annual event held at Kitzmiller Farm in New Albany." Compare that illustration also to Caner's claims about dressing funny, above. Note that American hayrides are typically a fall activity, when the hay is harvested. So, it may be that this could have been taken after November 4, 1982, or before it. Perhaps Ergun Caner will stop by to tell us when the hayride actually took place?
  
  
• Finally, we've elsewhere seen Ergun's brother Emir claim to be saved in November 1982. They seem to agree that Ergun Caner was saved even earlier than his brother, Emir. So, it's unclear whether in fact the date of Ergun's conversion perhaps should be his sophomore year, instead.
  
  
• The 1982 date, interestingly, can also be derived from 1995 date for his grandmother's conversion and the following quotation, i.e. 1982 plus 13 years equals 1995.
  

(44:10) "It took four years for Jerry Tackett to get to my heart. Five years for my brothers. Another nine years for our mother. Another thirteen years for our grandmother."

Radical Devotion Claim

(23:30) "My father's name is Acar Mehmet Caner. I say it out loud, because just telling the story you don't get to do that often, and most Muslims who are Muslims have never met a murtad. I am a murtad. I left Islam, I am a believer in Jesus Christ. My father was an ulima in the mosque, an ulima is a scholar. And he was an architect by vocation. And when we came to America in '78, through Brooklyn, we settled in Columbus, OH, to build mosques. That is exactly what my father did until the day he died in 1999. We were not the casual Muslim, we were not the comfortable Muslim, we were the devout. We wore keffiyeh, we spoke Arabic and Turkish, we read the Koran, we fasted 40 days during Ramadan, we lived by the rules of halal and haram and mushbu, the dietary restrictions. We prayed five times a day facing Mecca, you know, "Bismillah r-rahim wahamdullah al r-rahim." We didn't look like you. We didn't act like you. I didn't dress like you, and let me be very clear with you: I hated you, because I was raised to."

(1:00) "I am an immigrant, I'm Turkish, 100% Turkish, for which I usually have to apologize, because we have horrible atrocities that Turks do, all the time, but I came to America through Brooklyn, NY and learned English at Aquinas (some Brooklyn folk? yeah!) and then moved to Ohio (I'll tell you a little bit about that later) but moved to Ohio and then became a Christian. I was a Sunni Muslim and a jahideen not a mujahideen, not a holy warrior, but I had not made it that high, but I was a jahideen when I got saved."

(34:15) "Jesus strapped himself to a cross, so I wouldn't have to strap a bomb to myself."

• We've seen the warrior training claims above. The only evidence that has been presented, apparently to substantiate it, has been called into question. (link to discussion)
  
  
• We've also addressed issues of how Ergun looked and dressed above.
  
  
• It's hard to justify Caner's claim that only rarely gets to tell his story. At any rate, I've heard his story told many times.
  
  
• There's no evidence that we've seen to support Caner's claim that his father was an ulima. Perhaps he was, but we cannot see any evidence of that.
  
  
• I would love to see some evidence that Caner's father actually built mosques. It may be true that he helped in some way, but I cannot find any evidence that he actually served as an architect even for the Islamic Foundation on Broad St., although I have tried to find confirming evidence.
  
  
• While Dr. Caner's father undoubtedly spoke Turkish, and while the essential Muslim prayers are in Arabic, we don't have any evidence that Caner actually spoke Turkish and Arabic. In fact, we have some evidence to the contrary.
  
  
• It's not possible that the Caners fasted 40 days during Ramadan, because Ramadan doesn't last 40 days for Sunni Muslims (or for anyone - it's a lunar month, which means it is never more than 30 days long). Wouldn't a former devout Muslim know how long Ramadan was? Perhaps it's just an error of memory, which is what I thought at first, when I had only seen two instances. (see the clip embedded below) With this third instance, however, I am finding it hard to believe that it is simply something that Caner has forgotten.

As far as I can tell, halal and haram and mushbu are the three categories into which a particular food can fall: permitted, forbidden, or (in essence) maybe. I'm not really sure if "mushbu" is a standard term: the first hit I got for it in the literature was John Ankerburg et al. quoting Ergun Caner (link). The terms halal and haram, however, do not refer just to dietary rules but to rules for life generally.

Arabic/Turkish Knowledge Claim

(36:40) "We went to Afterglow, that's where all the youth went out after church, Denny's IHOP, etc. I took my keffiyeh off, told the waitress I was saved, ordered ham. I'm all about my ham. And I go home, and I told my father, 'Papa, ishulaha umuduru hai esus isa ibn ara turrah,' Jesus is my Lord and savior. And it was the last day I saw my dad."

(23:35) We wore keffiyeh, we spoke Arabic and Turkish, we read the Koran, we fasted 40 days during Ramadan, we lived by the rules of halal and haram and mushbu, the dietary restrictions.

• We have no good reason to think that Ergun knows Arabic, as I've mentioned above.
  
  
• It's not clear which language or languages Caner is trying to speak in the first identified clip. It does sound a little like the pseudo-Arabic that Dr. White and his tutor previously critiqued (link to critique).

Conclusion

This sermon was an absolute mess. I had hoped to take a break from Caner-related stories for a while. However, upon having this sermon brought to my attention, I realized it should help to illustrate to Caner himself and to his supporters that this goes beyond an occasional discrepancy or an accidental one-time misstatement. Instead, this looks more like a pattern. Unless there is some good explanation - and we have not seen any explanation from Caner - it is hard to see in what positive way could interpret these comments from Caner.

For me, the truly sad thing is this. I greatly appreciate Caner's speaking abilities: he's a great orator, in my opinion. I also think he has an amazing testimony underneath all the embellishment. A lot of what Dr. Caner writes and says is very good. Despite the fact that a significant portion of this sermon was about Caner's life story, Caner drives home the message of the need to evangelize, and I am in full agreement with him on that.

These comments that Dr. Caner has been making, he has been making publicly. If they are not true, he really ought to repent and seek the forgiveness of those whom he has misled, regardless of the reasons he had. Please be clear as well, I don't think that Dr. Caner had bad reasons for what he did. I think, as the first quotation I provided above illustrated, he just likes telling stories, because he thinks they help illustrate the point and make it memorable.

I don't know his heart, and I am saddened both by the rabid "attack the messenger" response from folks like Peter Lumpkins and by Caner's own hesitance to come clean, as he appeared to be starting to do in February. I pray that God will bring repentance (if it is called for) and healing to Dr. Caner, and that God will enable those Christians who are upset at apparently having been misled to forgive Caner.

-TurretinFan