Recently, I learned of very sad news: Darrin Patrick, an evangelical pastor, has apparently died by suicide. Unfortunately, this news represents part of a widespread and growing trend in that end of Christianity. Today, let me show you what that trend is, and what it means for evangelicals as a group.
Yesterday, we examined a big report by conservative culture warrior Lyman Stone on behalf of American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He had a lot of things to say about the decline of Christianity in America, and I detected a constant theme of fearmongering and potential exaggeration throughout his work. We’ve already covered what his assertions are. Now, here’s my assertion: Lyman Stone needs his target audience to be scared enough to buy his product, because ordinarily they’d recognize what a bad idea that’d be.
Hi and welcome back! A few days ago, a conservative think tank offered up a meta-report on Christianity’s continuing decline. The report, called ‘Promise and Peril,’ also seeks solutions to hopefully reverse that decline. I read it today and a bunch of stuff jumped out at me. Today, I’ll show you Read more
Though it was mercifully brief, Sean McDowell alluded to one of the nastiest bits of manipulation in his business, the cruel dilemma. Today, let me show you what the cruel dilemma is, why it’s so manipulative, why apologists use it, and how it’s backfiring nowadays.
Lately, I’ve noticed a distinct narrative developing in fundagelicalism. It involves claims of wild evangelism success amid the pandemic. So far, nobody’s ponied up numbers supporting these claims (only contradicting them), but this sure wouldn’t be the first time Christians have made claims without evidence. This time around, though, the claims come from quite a venerable source. Today, let me show you someone from Billy Graham’s evangelism business making claims of a revival in China — and why I don’t trust this story.
Hi and welcome back! Recently, megachurch pastor Rodney Howard-Browne got himself in legal trouble for violating Covid-19 stay-at-home orders from his county. Readers of Roll to Disbelieve will easily remember this name because he was a very big figure in our recent look at the Toronto Blessing. Not coincidentally, he’s also Read more
In this installment, the bad guy’s closest servant turns out to be a whistleblower, while angels help out way more than usual while somehow being way less helpful than they really should be, and we learn how little Frank Peretti knows about women’s fashion in the 1980s. Today, Lord Snow Presides over Christians’ illusions and mythology about prayer and angels.
Welcome back! We return to our off-topic chat series, Lord Snow Presides (LSP), in which we examine Frank Peretti’s 1986 best-selling atrocity This Present Darkness. In today’s installment, we discover how a TRUE CHRISTIAN™ pastor works out a very serious church conflict. (Turns out, it’s easy!) Today, Lord Snow Presides over the Read more
Years ago, I started a long blog series called The Unequally Yoked Club. It aimed to help Christian couples deal with a spouse’s deconversion at a time when the available advice sucked beyond all logical measure. Today, we’ll see that Christians’ marriage advice to the unequally-yoked has gotten worse in recent years.
The more seriously Christians take their ideology, the more dangerous a malignant leader becomes to them. One prime example of these rules could well be what just happened in Acts 29, a huge Christian church-planting business. Their leader, Steve Timmis, just lost his job there. And he lost it by being, apparently, a grade-A jerkweed. Today, let’s check out Acts 29 and see what red flags Steve Timmis might have been waving there long before his situation came to a crisis point.