This is a love story, but it is not about another person. That would come later. This is a story about how I discovered a truth that somehow made its way into Christianity. This is how I discovered that why yes, perfect love does cast out fear.
This Bible quote, which comes from Matthew 28:19-20, is called the Great Commission: Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. . . Read more
Today we’re going to be talking about Christians who claim to know stuff they really don’t know. It happens a lot, so clearly there’s been some miscommunication on the subject of late. It always blows my mind when Christians act like experts about stuff they are simply not experts about. Read more
Way back in the 1970s, a British Christian named Doreen Irvine wrote From Witchcraft to Christ. According to its tagline, it was supposedly her “sensational true story of a woman rescued from Satan’s grasp by the power of God.” And I’m sure you are already wondering how accurate that tagline Read more
There’s a longer post coming, but here’s a little sneaky-peek to get the party going, so you know where my headspace is when I talk about the Unequally Yoked Club. I’d been out of church for a while. I guess I was 24 or so. This was in Portland, after Read more
Christianity’s been quietly redefining the word “love” to the point where I can’t really be sure that any Christian I talk to who uses that word is actually using it in a way that I would ever recognize.
All this time, despite my misgivings about the very un-Christlike people in my church’s leadership and in my own little family, I spent a lot of time at the church, as one might expect. My mother’d been downright alarmed when she’d realized I was spending five out of every seven Read more
The Christian love of bombastic testimonies creates a ‘cult of before stories’ full of believers who richly reward their biggest liars.
Now that I wasn’t involved in weird evangelical churches anymore, I blossomed at last in the late 80s. I discovered the Drama Club at school, slowly made normal friends, and tried to fit in. I got involved with a historical re-enactment group called the Society for Creative Anachronism and found Read more
I’m out of the Southern Baptist megachurch by now and sitting in the school library at a long table with some girlfriends researching something or other. The library is built right in the middle of the school building itself, with glass walls so anybody inside can see everything going on Read more