Today, Lord Snow presides over a movie that might be about Christians and tackle a thoroughly Christian topic about one of the most universal Christian beliefs in the world, and yet still–despite all of that Christian-ness–couldn’t be considered a “Christian movie” by them.
Poor Paige Patterson. The fallout continues for this domestic-violence-advocating Southern Baptist leader. Why, the SBC denomination itself has begun tearing at its own flanks. Two sides square off for a Battle Royale. And possibly the most tragic figures of all in the fight are the right-wing Christians who don’t understand how the conservative movement they love so much has led their end of Christianity directly to this pass. Today, I’ll show you what I mean.
I love cooking. But sometimes my attempts to revise a recipe gets me into trouble. The most recent case in point: an attempt to revise the ingredient list for homemade mayonnaise. Today I’ll show you what happens when a revision goes hideously wrong–and how this adventure was a perfect example of how I want to live my entire life.
We’ve been talking this past week about evangelism in Christianity and how it fails. Christian leaders favor a more confrontational form of evangelism. Their followers, by contrast, often prefer a decidedly less confrontational form. They want to rely on their Jesus Auras to win them conversions! Today I’ll show you what that other type of evangelism is, why it’s so popular, and how it fails.
Paige Patterson, a bigwig with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), gave a speech in 2000 to a bunch of his fellow Christians about how women should respond to domestic violence. Someone remembered those comments recently. His predictably-toxic advice is a very potent reminder today about why those pews need to be emptied, now, STAT, completely. Today Lord Snow Presides over how not to reverse a serious organizational slump.
A funny thing happens when Christians learn that their favorite tactics backfire hard when trotted out on actual prospects. One large group of Christians drops the failed strategy with relief. Another group, however, drills down harder on it. I’m going to show you one of the folks in that second group, and we’ll take a close look at his reasons for clinging to the technique he likes best.
Christian evangelists act, in a very real sense, as salespeople of their ideology. And they are not making a lot of sales these days. They can’t even keep the few customers they still have! So evangelical churn has become a serious problem–not just for evangelicals, either. Not long ago, we talked about a Christian who thought he’d figured out a brand-new sales tactic. In that post, I touched on the two tactics Christian salespeople typically use. Today, I’ll expand a little more on the first of them, confrontational evangelism–and why it fails, and why Christians can’t stop using it regardless.
A few days ago I showed you this big meeting that a bunch of evangelical leaders held at Wheaton College. They’d decided to meet up to try to salvage their religion’s tainted brand somehow. And I predicted that it would be a complete failure. Well, I was right. But as ineffectual as that meeting was, evangelicalism’s far bigger failure occurred outside the meeting’s closed doors.
Christians sure have a lot of theories about deconversion, namely about why people are rejecting their sales pitches. Sure, most of those theories are wrong, but they can’t have everything. After I show you some of those theories, Lord Snow will be presiding over a very special episode: EXTIMONY TIME AHOY. If you’ve been thinking about sharing how you deconverted, then here is your chance.
Another day, another bunch of scandals erupting out of fundagelical Christianity, and yet more predators exposed. Nobody’s even surprised by any of it anymore; it’s all become just part of our cultural landscape: hypocrites gonna hypocrite. I’m just wondering when people are going to realize the sheer scope of this situation. Fundagelicals are facing an endemic, entrenched sex abuse scandal.