We’re fast approaching the holiday season, and as fun as holidays are supposed to be, for a lot of us they bring the potential for great pain. One of the scariest aspects of the holidays, for someone whose family is very religious, is the possibility of a religious intervention.
Evangelical leaders are forcing their followers into a showdown, one that it can ill-afford at this point. That Chick tract we’ve been discussing, “Dark Dungeons,” is a prime example of this idea. I’ve been using the term “Cruel Dilemma” for a while, and it seems appropriate now to bring it up–since it’s part of why I see Christianity losing so many people these days.
In a way, it’s more important to understand Jack Chick’s role in shaping right-wing Christian culture than it is to understand Jimmy Swaggart’s contribution to the mindset. For good or ill, Jack Chick was modern American fundagelicalism. I’ll show you what I mean by that today.
Certainly, we shouldn’t be surprised that Christians, having finally figured out just how bad the situation is for them, are finally swinging around to trying to fix things. But a funny thing happens when very criticism-averse people try to solve big, sweeping, systemic problems with their group: they start coming up with reasons for those problems that bear no resemblance to reality.
Thom Rainer’s blog post “Seven Areas Where Pastors Have Failed at Reading Minds” is worth the read just to get a feel for how frustrated pastors in fundagelical churches are these days. It’s largely their own fault, sure, but still, that is a lot of frustration to see boiling up from the page.
The ironic thing is that out of all the made-up, manufactured terrors that Christians burden themselves with, this one actually is a problem. Today I’ll show you why Christian leaders put so much emphasis on never being unequally yoked–and why they should fear it.
Christian leaders themselves can spin-doctor the latest bad news as much as they like (and oh, they have been!), but reality is unfolding in their ranks whether they like it or not. Their flocks don’t have the luxury of denial. They’ve had to come up with strategies for dealing with the new reality of Christianity’s demographic shift, most of it in direct defiance of their leaders’ demands.
Last time we met up, we were talking about Christian Mingle: The Movie. It’s a rom-com about a young Christian woman who pretends to be very fervent on the dating site Christian Mingle in order to catfish herself a very fervent Christian man who is not what he seems either. Hilarity ensues. Today, having gotten some rest and plenty of water, I’ll show you how this movie backfired on its makers by showing us a side of Christianity that Christians really should not want non-believers to know exists.
I noticed this movie Christian Mingle: The Movie show up on Netflix the other day and was intrigued–and commenters have mentioned it off and on as particularly cringeworthy. So why not spend a glorious day watching it?
Christians are fighting tooth and nail to get their indoctrination into schools whether it’s legal to do it or not, but there’s a truly cosmic-level irony at work here that they’re just not seeing.