Engaging meaningfully with new information is a process. Avoiding that engagement is called antiprocess. When it comes to people’s beliefs, antiprocess is how they avoid confronting challenges and contradictions, and still come out thinking that they totally nailed that fight.
Church attendance continues to tank across America. Downward trends already in place before the pandemic declined even further in the wake of it. It’s a tough time to be a business offering only one product—active church membership—in a country that increasingly doesn’t want it. In reversing the decline of their Read more
Chris Carpenter has discernment on his mind. Well, that and train travel, apparently. But discernment is his main preoccupation. Recently, he had a guest on his podcast who has identified ‘7 Lies That Can Really Mess Up Your Faith.’ You’ll be happy to know that proper discernment fixes all of Read more
Being lukewarm is the other side of being legalistic. A legalistic Christian is someone who is more obsessed with rules and behavior than the judging Christian is. Likewise, a lukewarm Christian is simply one who is less obsessed than the judge with such things. Lukewarm Christians can, in this judgment, Read more
It’s fun to watch evangelicals accuse other Christians of legalism. And we all know why, right? It’s because they’ll never, ever convince anybody else of their opinions. All they have to evaluate anything is their own Doctrinal Yardstick, and it is not marked with any earthly—or really even any meaningful—measures. Read more
In complementarianism, evangelical leaders demand that women reject leadership roles in their churches—alongside any hopes of achieving equality with men. And many women do obey these demands. It’s not uncommon at all to encounter evangelical women who gleefully stomp on other women’s talents and futures in the name of Jesus. Read more
Last time we met up, I briefly mentioned an instance of truly predatory evangelism. Someone on the r/TrueChristian subreddit had tangled with what sounds like the slimiest evangelist in a pack of overqualified contenders. And our OP still has no idea in the world why this slimy recruiter is acting Read more
Every so often, I like to check out a subreddit (or “sub”) devoted to TRUE CHRISTIANS™. In fact, that is almost exactly its name: r/TrueChristian. The first time I ran into the sub, I thought it was satirical. Who knows, I thought. Maybe modern humor has finally escaped the event Read more
A recent story in Christian Post shares the dire experience of an evangelical church infested, apparently, with demons. Yes, real live demons. In this case, these demons apparently literally came out of their woodwork! And to fix their terrifying problem, the evangelicals in question doused the demons’ vessel in olive Read more
Two headlines at Christian Post reveal evangelicals’ usual strategy for dealing with decline—demands for evangelicals to Jesus harder. If they’ll just do that, these two columnists assure their readers, then all those silly little declines will vanish into the mists of memory. But it ain’t so. Today, we’ll talk about Read more