America is in a weird space these days, in terms of religion. By now, the cultural and membership decline of Christianity in America has lasted so long that younger Christians can’t remember a time when their religion wasn’t in decline. Dreams of revival have become ever more important to their Read more
Recently, people have been talking about evangelism in crowded spaces with no way to exit—evangelism to captive audiences, in other words. The evangelists in question do it on purpose, of course. They even gloat about how much they love the fact that nobody can leave the venue. But their gloating Read more
Hi friends! I’m still struggling with health issues, but I wanted to share something with you that made me smile today. I’m researching a post about evangelists looking for captive audiences, and thought of something a community member said the other day: If someone tried to preach at him on Read more
In the past, we’ve talked about evangelicals’ modern fixation on inerrancy—the doctrinal belief in the Bible as a divinely-ghostwritten, error-free, literally-true document. We’ve even talked about how inerrancy functions as the ultimate high-control authority source for dysfunctional hardline groups. But today, I want to show you why believers in inerrancy Read more
As we wrap up our look at Alpha Course, one fact stands out above all others: This isn’t a very persuasive series. We’ll bring everything home now by summarizing the entire thing, then evaluate it for effectiveness. (This post first went live on Patreon on 7/28/2026. Please support my work—see Read more
We’ve finally arrived at the very end of Alpha Course, the UK-based evangelism series that stands unrivaled as the most popular one of its kind. To cap off their series, our hosts are going to try to make church membership and attendance completely essential to one’s experience of Christianity. But Read more
Just over ten years ago, big-name apologetics hustlers realized that Christianity was fully and truly in decline. These apologists embarked on a new narrative: That their product, apologetics, would turn the ship around and get Christianity back into cultural dominance. Today, let’s check out their grand visions and predictions—and see Read more
In Alpha Course 15, we learn all about divine healing: Why it happens, how to interpret a lack of healing, and the enormous effect these miracles have on evangelism and one’s own personal faith. But along the way, the hosts accidentally reveal that miracles don’t really happen—and that they’ll do Read more
While I’ve been dealing with health problems behind the scenes, it looks like Republican Senator, warmonger, and hardline Donald Trump supporter Lindsey Graham had far worse ones on his own plate. Mere hours before his death on Saturday night, he sorta-kinda joked with someone that he couldn’t possibly die right Read more
As our AV group watched Alpha Course 14 recently, one thing that went through my mind afterward was happy pagans. That’s a somewhat dated evangelical term from the 2010s describing people who are perfectly content without Christianity. The video kept hammering at how Christians’ “good news” would intrigue others, and Read more