I had not yet learned that authoritarianism itself precludes sincerity or faithfulness in Christianity. Individual Christians might cultivate these traits, but there is no way to have a whole group of them reliably doing the same thing. Sooner or later, a bad-faith actor gets into that group — and wrecks it, often before it’s even really gotten off the ground.
Yesterday, we checked out some evangelicals’ reactions to the pandemic-related declines in birthrates around the world. These evangelicals’ general approach to increasing birthrates in general interested me. Instead of helping to make life easier for the women having these babies, evangelical leaders instead sought to shame, gaslight, scare, and strong-arm Read more
The tagline TGC created for Gospelbound claims it offers listeners “firm faith in an anxious age.” Of course, it does nothing of the sort. Instead, it offers the usual authoritarian blahblah from the most toxic elements in their entire end of Christianity. I’ve saved the most alarming of that blahblah for last: their oh-so-very Calvinist plan for churn reduction. They think more control over congregants means less churn from their churches. Today, I’ll show you what that means — and why it’s such a laughable contradiction of the supernatural claims of authoritarians.
Yesterday (and the day before, really), we touched on a post by evangelical Josh Buice, who appears to be a very fervent Calvinist. At one point, he tries hard to assert that his brand of Jesus-flavored authoritarian misogyny (JFAM) does not represent oppression of women at all. I disagree in the strongest Read more
Hi and welcome back! Yesterday, we talked about a set of predictions made by Greg Locke, an especially cringey right-wing evangelical pastor. He drew upon evangelicals’ rich history of prophecy to make a bunch of predictions — none of which came to pass. And thanks to the way evangelicals engage Read more
Yesterday, I showed you the hilarious story of how evangelical leaders like Ed Stetzer got lapped and pushed right out of the pool by these conspiracy theorists. Today, we’ll go through the traits that evangelical leaders painstakingly instilled in their flocks — only to see those traits used against themselves in time.
With their grandiose language, spiritual warriors certainly sound impressive. Ah, but if you lift the hood of this Jesus-built hot rod, you’ll find nothing more under it than a pokey little jalopy engine. Today, Lord Snow Presides over the utter banality that spiritual warriors mask with over-the-top Christianese.
Hi and welcome back! On the heels of yesterday’s discussion about two fundagelical bullies, I ran into another post about how to identify and deal with a church-based bully! What are the odds? It’s an interesting post, though. I mean sure, it applies to a lot more than just Christian Read more
Hi and welcome back! We’ve been talking lately about Christianese — which abounds in Joe Battaglia’s book Make America Good Again. The past week has been leading us to this exact place. Now, we’re ready to look at exactly how toxic Christians (like Joe Battaglia) plan to regain their former dominance over Read more
Yesterday, we watched American Gospel: Christ Alone. In this 2018 documentary, Christians bicker and argue about exactly what ‘the gospel’ even means. The documentary makers decide ultimately that it means not prosperity gospel. Today, let me show you this documentary — and we’ll see how well they make their case.