On September 2nd, Pew Research released yet another blockbuster post about secularization. It reveals that the process of secularization tends to begin with lowered participation in religious rituals, followed by fading of religious identity and eventually even de-prioritizing even affiliation in name only. This study has got to be worrying Read more…
On July 31, Brent Leatherwood resigned his position as the leader of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). He lasted about four years in all, which is pretty good for an SBC leader with as many hardliner enemies as he had. And oh Read more…
In recent years, more Christians are facing doubt than ever before. But their communities and leaders still haven’t learned how to respond to it. They’re still largely using the same toolbox they had in decades past. Let’s explore that toolbox—and see where it fails to fit into real-world doubters’ experiences. Read more…
For years now, I’ve considered it a major red flag to find the presence of a church discipline policy in a church. These policies grant church leaders enormous, unchecked power over congregants—who don’t realize how that power may be misused until they themselves are caught in its crosshairs. Usually, the Read more…
For years now, pastors’ wives have been on my emotional radar. So when I saw an intriguing note about the upcoming Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Annual Meeting, it got my attention right away! There, a “biblical counselor” plans to offer ministers’ wives up to 90 minutes of free counseling. It’s Read more…
Over the past five years or so, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has been fighting more and more over their Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). This relatively-new subgroup of the SBC has become a proxy for the fight between the denomination’s two factions. One of those factions, the hardliner Read more…
Somehow, evangelical pastors have figured out how to make their end of Christianity even worse—by implementing the ‘Moses Model’ of church leadership. It really is remarkable how they’ve turned an essentially dysfunctionally-authoritarian flavor of religion into such an extreme worst-case-possible scenario. But the Moses Model lets them make that transition Read more…
Recently, Calvinist pastor and G3 Conference founder Josh Buice got caught operating eight sockpuppet accounts over at least a couple of years. He used them to anonymously criticize and attack other evangelicals. So far, he’s lost his G3 leadership position at least. But he’s not the first Calvinist leader caught Read more…
Evangelicals love to claim having a superior morality to heathens. They insist that their faith produces real changes in believers that lead them to greater moral heights than we poor heathens could ever manage. But their own behavior betrays those claims. Today, we’ll see how one evangelical denomination, the Southern Read more…
Tradcaths, a super-vocal, super-conservative branch of Catholicism, have been extra weird since Pope Francis died. I can see why, too: Most of them converted into Catholicism from extremely conservative hardliner evangelical groups, so they expect Catholicism to work like their old faith—just with extra incense and chanting. Nor do they Read more…