One of my very favorite Christian pretendy games is spiritual warfare. For years now, we’ve marveled at just how important this game is to right-wing Christians. The more loudmouthed the Christians, the more control-hungry, the more they love spiritual warfare! There’s a reason for this love, of course. Today, let’s Read more
Accounts differ somewhat regarding exactly what happened with Pope Francis this past month, but everyone close to the situation agrees that he was very sick and is still recovering. He seems to have stabilized somewhat at this point, but his courtiers are still all aflutter. Speculations abound about what’ll happen Read more
As I researched the Anglican Church’s ongoing sex abuse crisis, a secondary story about organizational power emerged. It illustrates the gulf between an organization’s leaders and its followers—and how those leaders must be much more careful than they think about how their behavior comes off to followers. This story pairs Read more
Trevin Wax is one of the hardline evangelical Calvinist lads over at The Gospel Coalition (TGC). We’ve discussed his work more than a few times. He aims his message at evangelicals who might be fixin’ to deconstruct their faith. Since there appear to be a lot of deconstructing evangelicals out Read more
In a recent creepy Handmaid’s Tale-style address, Pope Francis warned his followers about social media-induced brain rot. But that should be nowhere near his biggest worry. Though he doesn’t appear to realize it, he actually advised Catholics to develop the exact mental skills that have freed millions of people already Read more
Antiprocess fascinates me. Instead of helping us process new information, antiprocess helps us avoid doing that. And it does so to protect our egos from any challenges to dearly-held beliefs. One story that recently got a lot of attention illustrates how this works on not one but both sides of Read more
With most reasonable people worrying about overpopulation these days, it can be surprising to encounter right-wing Christians getting mad at women for not making babies. That, however, is exactly what they’re doing. For years now, right-wing Christians have blamed women for not having tons of kids. But they’re only looking Read more
Of late, the Anglican Church has been exposed in yet another sex abuse cover-up scandal. Nobody should even be surprised at it, either. Over here in Freedom Land, we’re used to evangelicals being disgusting hypocrites. When an evangelical leader lands in the news, we already have a good idea of Read more
Last time we met up, we talked about the recent death of Hal Lindsey, who wrote The Late Great Planet Earth. The book made Lindsey a mint and guaranteed him a lucrative career in evangelical prophecy. In 1978, eight years after the publishing of that book, its movie version came Read more
The famous—or perhaps more accurately infamous—Endtimes prophet Hal Lindsey recently died. His passing produced surprisingly little fuss outside of evangelicalism. Irony may have a sense of humor there, since Jimmy Carter also recently passed too, and almost everyone seems to be talking about him. It seems strange even to put Read more