Technology has nothing to do with evangelicals’ lack of wisdom or their disobedience. We can lay both of those problems at the feet of evangelicalism itself.
Christians are very good at not having ears to hear when it comes to understanding dealbreakers in their own faith. I’ve no doubt they’ve noticed how often hypocritical Christians show up in ex-Christians’ stories and how often non-Christians talk about the topic. But they haven’t really figured out why Bad Christians are a problem.
A COVID conspiracy theorist named Naomi Wolf got into a huge fight over COVID restrictions with the Black owner of a restaurant in a small town called Salem. Since then, the owner’s restaurant has been dealing with constant–and increasingly racist–attacks from other conspiracy theorists.
When I hear about evangelical sex scandals, I’m usually just relieved if everyone involved is of-age. But that’s about to change with this Ted Haggard story.
In 2006, Randall Balmer accused evangelicals in the Religious Right of wrecking evangelicalism. But they didn’t. Christianity itself did.
This J. Robert Smith fella definitely tells his TRUE CHRISTIAN™ audience what they desperately want to hear. (To put it in Christianese, he tickles their ears. And that’s not a good thing.)
Authoritarians hate a lot of people. But they hate apostates far more than anybody else. An apostate is a threat and a danger, one which must be eliminated immediately and with as much force as can be mustered.
The very worst sorts of Christian leaders and groups desperately need their followers to buy into biblical literalism, which is quite possibly the most childish and poorly-informed hermeneutic possible.
Next Gen will totally and for sure fix the SBC’s decline!
In the military, with its huge, life-altering penalties for insubordination and disobedience, it’s more important for military leaders to firmly and decisively rein in these overreaching authoritarians.