A recent story in Baptist Press (archive) caught my eye with a reference to a self-proclaimed nontheist. It seemed like such a strange way to refer to someone who holds no religious beliefs or affiliations. That observation led me through a rabbit hole of evangelical contempt for non-believers. When their religion’s Read more…
Last time we met up, we talked about how evangelicals destroy their witness online. That means they act in ways that decimate their credibility as Christians. Now, evangelicals have engaged with the internet from the beginning almost, so you might well think that they’d be able to behave themselves better Read more…
For many years, evangelicals waged a loud and obnoxious war on Halloween. It figured prominently in their culture wars during the Satanic Panic, but even years afterward they regurgitated the propaganda they’d absorbed during those critical years. Somewhere around 2018, though, I wonder if they got tired of fighting Halloween. Read more…
Not long ago, we talked about a bunch of stuff—like apologetics arguments—that Christians mistakenly think is evidence supporting their various claims. Now, I want to zero in on one particular flavor of apologetics: the kind we encounter in Creationism. Yes, this sad, weird ideology still exists. Its leaders still cheerfully Read more…
Two recent stories about prayer come to us from the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)—and both reveal evangelicals’ false narratives around it. Worse, one of those stories represents nothing less than naked opportunism at the expense of the growing number of people suffering through the new conflict/war between Israel and Hamas. Read more…
Evangelicals have zero clue how to approach atheists. That’s just the facts, ma’am. Last time we met up, we talked about evangelicals’ weird redefinitions of atheism. With those redefinitions, they create a strawman caricature of atheists, which they have a much easier time dismantling and defeating. Today, I want to Read more…
Evangelism, or evangelical recruitment, isn’t doing very well these days. When you read between the lines of their supposed success stories, you discover that very few people who weren’t already Christian are joining their churches. Worse, even fewer people who weren’t already baptized seek baptism from them. But evangelicals don’t Read more…
Usually, evangelicals have a hate-hate relationship with mental-health counseling. And they should. Counseling puts the lie to their entire conceptualization of Jesusing their troubles away. But yesterday, one evangelical guy gave a speech to Asian Southern Baptists that sought to reposition counseling as a responsibility church congregations have toward each Read more…
Last week, a Texas mother named Jamie Gooch tried to beat the Satanic Panic drum over a silly movie called Hocus Pocus 2. In a now-iconic interview, she told her Troy, Texas news affiliate KWTX all about it: “A worst case scenario is: you unleash hell on your kids and Read more…
I can see, then, why so many TRUE CHRISTIANS™ want to turn faith into a feeling rather than measuring it through compliance. This move eliminates compliance as a tangible measurement of faith. That’s good, since most Christians could never qualify as faithful that way.