Russell Moore has launched a devastating attack on prosperity preachers, criticising those who sit on a "golden throne".
In a message posted on his website, the president of the Southern Baptist Church's ethics and religious liberty commission said it was "good news" that the Christian faith "isn't normal anymore".
Moore said: "One of the most dangerous things we could do, I think, as the Church is to normalise Christianity, and normalise the Gospel."
He said he got the same "jolt" of adrenaline from watching prosperity preachers as others got from watching horror movies.
In the Signposts podcast, Moore described a prosperity preacher who said that even if the gospel was untrue, she would still be a Christian because it is "the best way to live".
He criticised the message and said the preacher had failed to understand the gospel and the state of the global persecuted church. He insisted "Christianity comes with a scandal and with a cross".
In response to the televangelist, he said: "That's easy to say from a golden throne on television.
"That is not easy to say in first century Ephesus when identifying yourself with a crucified and resurrected Messiah means that you are going to lose your standing in the marketplace.
"That is not easy to say in an unregistered house church in China right now. That is not easy to say in Sudan.
"And, in fact, that is never what Christianity has proposed itself to be."
The Bible, said Moore, shows that "Christianity thrives when it is, as Kierkegaard put it, a sign of contradiction".
