Evangelicals can’t defeat actual atheism, so they vastly prefer strawman atheism—their own unique and deliberate mangling of atheism. The real thing is impenetrable to them, and they very clearly realize it. But this strawman form of atheism is much easier to tackle. Today, let me show you how what was Read more…
Last time we met up, we talked about the recent death of Hal Lindsey, who wrote The Late Great Planet Earth. The book made Lindsey a mint and guaranteed him a lucrative career in evangelical prophecy. In 1978, eight years after the publishing of that book, its movie version came Read more…
Some years back, Christian bookstores made a mint with heavenly tourism books. These books claimed to offer not only PROOF YES PROOF of life after death, but also evidence for Christianity itself. For years, they made money. And then, the entire genre collapsed. Today, let’s talk about the rise and Read more…
It’s been very interesting to see how dysfunctional authoritarians approach deconstruction in other Christians, especially with regard to how they’ve dealt with doubt over the past 10 or 12 years.
By the time I joined evangelicalism (in the mid-1980s), I learned to feel downright guilty for not injecting enough Jesus-ification into my life. I couldn’t just read a fantasy novel for the sake of it, go to a movie, or enjoy music that didn’t mention Jesus even once.
make informed decisions about their own fates. Not even his extra-imaginary imaginary god can make that happen for him.
Out of everywhere evangelicals seek to make sales, Japan might be one of their most resistant evangelism markets. But three dishonest evangelical couples have recently decided to use some beloved Japanese art forms to lure in unsuspecting marks: cosplay, fake collectibles, and a manga-style comic book called Manga Messiah.
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.
Gospelbound’s own marketing claims that it will give listeners ‘firm faith in an anxious age.’ We checked out their most recent episode, about a TGC-produced book called Before You Lose Your Faith, and we weren’t impressed. But hey, maybe they just forgot about their target audience because they were talking about their own book. So I wanted to check out what else they were telling potential doubters. Today, let’s evaluate another of their episodes — from the point of view of a Christian who desperately needs a jolt of ‘firm faith in an anxious age.’
TGC’s people think that churches need to step up to be safe harbors for Christians struggling with their faith. That’s an impossible demand, but also a very safe one for them to make.