In any dying industry, its leaders obsess about making their irrelevant product feel relevant again. Christianity is no different. To most Americans, its product—membership in specific Christian groups—seems more and more irrelevant. But evangelical leaders in particular can’t retool that product to fit the times. Instead, they employ various strategies Read more
In recent news, the American Bible Society (ABS) released its “State of the Bible” report, which gauges how relevant Christianity is to Americans. ABS tries to paint a rosy picture of recovery from decline, but their data actually points in the opposite direction. This report is a bombshell, revealing a Read more
Last time we met up, we talked about an evangelical leader named Mike Bickle. He founded and used to lead an evangelical group called International House of Prayer (IHOPKC). Over a dramatically short time last year, his star crashed to earth. The truth came out at last: For decades, he’s Read more
An evangelical leader named Mike Bickle has been dealing with the consequences of his actions for perhaps the first time in his entire life. Throughout his career, he has escaped accountability by taking advantage of the serious flaws within evangelical culture. Today, we’ll examine those flaws—and see how they allowed Read more
Once again, right-wing Christian leaders are spinning bad news straw into gold, and as always it’s gloriously daffy. With churches emptying and scandals piling up, let’s unpack the bad news they can’t face—and how they’re lying to their flocks about winning the culture wars (This post first went live on Read more
A lot is going down in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). I mean that literally. Their membership hasn’t even yet hit the bottom of its long-haul decline, and now the money train is slowing down. And now, as they gear up for their big Annual Meeting (June 8-11 in Dallas), Read more
In recent weeks, we’ve been looking at the Bizarro World of Catholic evangelism of evangelicals. However, that movement occurs in both directions. Today, let’s see why Catholic and evangelical converts say they are ‘crossing the Tiber.’ Along the way, we’ll see if we can’t spot commonalities in their conversion testimonies—and Read more
Sometimes, Christians start flailing around trying to figure out what their practice of Christianity is missing. I was reminded of this truth just last week while researching our Catholic evangelism topic. Along the way, I ran across a Catholic convert’s testimony. It contained the usual tropes of something being missing Read more
For years now, I’ve suspected that Catholic evangelists have been focused on hardline evangelicals. Recently, some hardline evangelicals began noticing that too. Today, let’s explore how Catholics are targeting this mission field—and more importantly, why. (This post first went live on Patreon on 3/28/2025. Its audio ‘cast lives there too Read more
The Southern Baptist Convention, or SBC, has known about their entrenched sex abuse problem for at least a few decades now. Everyone else found out about it in 2019 with ‘Abuse of Faith.’ Since then, however, SBC leaders have done virtually nothing to reform their denomination. The SBC’s biggest names Read more