Once again, a complementarian pastor has revealed why so many evangelical men like their sexism-for-Jesus relationship rules. And once again, evangelical women struggle to reconcile that truth with the indoctrination they’ve absorbed. (The 80s songs are linked throughout the post because before I gained the vocabulary to describe my unhappy Read more
As we saw last time we met up, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is still in decline. As they ramp up to their big Annual Meeting this June, let’s check out hardliners’ suggestions about saving it! (SBC Lingo: A messenger is a participating member church’s representative, sent to the meeting. Read more
Every year, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) holds elections for several important offices. Perhaps the highest-profile of these is that of the denomination’s president. As we close in on their 2024 Annual Meeting, five SBC leaders have tossed their hats into the Thunderdome to fight for that role. Five (or Read more
Evangelicals have been flailing for years to bump up their evangelism numbers. Really, they’ve done everything except be worthwhile groups to join! And now, they’ve got a wild new hope—a new study showing that a good number of Americans are sad about religion being on the decline in our country. Read more
One of the lesser-known evangelical Christianese phrases, iron sharpens iron, does a lot of heavy lifting. It’s one of the permission slips in evangelicalism. Usually, their permission slips offer guilt-free abuse of others outside the tribe. This time, everything happens within the tribe. We’re going to check out this phrase, Read more
Hypocrisy is an endemic part of evangelicalism. All evangelicals are hypocrites, at least going by the official meaning of the term. In other words, they all behave in ways that run counter to the ideals they espouse. Evangelicals’ roadmaps are broken, so they cannot ever travel from Point Conversion to Read more
Not long ago, some evangelicals broke my heart. They were the family of a vibrant, impressionable, trusting, inexperienced young woman named Micah. In 2009, her husband murdered her. That husband, Thomas Pate, had pretended to be a true-blue evangelical to win her and her parents’ hearts. And he succeeded. It Read more
Given how the denomination used the information gathered, it seems very likely that the numbers look so humiliatingly bad that their leaders don’t even want to know what they are anymore.
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