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.
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.
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.
Hi and welcome back! Recently, we covered a post by Brett McCracken on The Gospel Coalition (TGC) (archive link). In it, he slammed deconversion and ex-Christians in the most hateful and contemptuous ways imaginable. But at least he demonstrated nicely that evangelicals have finally begun to notice the process of Read more…
Today, let me show you what the Perfect Sales Pitch looks like–and why Magic Christians can’t let go of the idea.
Even in a movie made by Christians to completely pander to other Christians, Only God Can peddles neat, tidy endings for these converts that don’t even halfway look like reality. Today, we look at their conversions–and where they’d likely end up in the real world.
Lately we’ve been talking about the horrible Christian movie Only God Can. In it, we encounter a great many tropes beloved of evangelicals. And one of their very favorites–said on that Zorg voice of course–involves how they see their god engaging with humanity. See, he’s got a novel approach to winning friends and influencing people: he destroys their lives till they bend the knee. Yep! Today, my friends, we look at the Jesus beatings that shall continue until salvation improves!
Hi and welcome back! We saw a movie recently, Only God Can, that covered quite a few tropes in fundagelical thinking. Today, we’ll be covering one of the most-beloved ones of those tropes: the idea that TRUE CHRISTIANS™ are much happier and more functional than poor widdle heathens ever could Read more…