Two headlines at Christian Post reveal evangelicals’ usual strategy for dealing with decline—demands for evangelicals to Jesus harder. If they’ll just do that, these two columnists assure their readers, then all those silly little declines will vanish into the mists of memory. But it ain’t so. Today, we’ll talk about Read more
Older evangelicals long ago figured out how to rationalize their own sexual hypocrisy with both their embrace of those rules and their ongoing attempts to force those rules on others. I’m sure it was quite easy, too.
The other day when we talked briefly about the concept of manifesting, I wasn’t expecting to encounter it almost immediately afterward. But that’s where I found myself a few days ago while checking out Christianity Today. This time, a Canadian pastor pits the idea against consenting to holiness, which he Read more
In the Gospels of the New Testament, Jesus makes a lot of promises to his disciples. In between mass-healing people of physical and emotional distress through his magic, he promises that he’ll return before his followers “tasted death,” and that he’ll give them whatever they ask of him/his father in Read more
In broken systems with flawed messages, group leaders would rather lay that blame anywhere but where it deserves to be.
I kept running into these heartfelt evangelical condemnations of consumer Christianity. Eventually, I couldn’t help myself. I had to learn more about yet another attempt by Christians to judge and out-Jesus their competition. Definitions can vary, and so can solutions to solve what many evangelicals view as a deep systemic Read more
Lately, we’ve been talking about Christianity as a fandom. It certainly shares a great many characteristics with secular fandoms: Object(s) of devotion, ritualized behavior, participation in a niche culture, infighting both within the fans’ own particular groups and with other groups in the wider fandom as a whole, and more. Read more
In the consumer internet’s early years, evangelical Creationists started a war against, um, reality itself—but they insisted that no, they were actually at war with atheists. In the ensuing 10-20 years, they haven’t changed much. They still think their #1 enemies are atheists. And they’re still pumping out the same Read more
I’d say ‘Don’t ever change, r/TrueChristians,’ except I already know they won’t. So there’s no need to say it.
For evangelicals, who literally define themselves by their drive to recruit new people for their churches, church drift represents far more than an absolute tragedy.