Yes, the SBC ended up with a small net positive in church additions to their denomination. Much of it seems to have come from church plants, meaning brand-new churches. But that number isn’t one to celebrate, as we’ll see today.
Hi and welcome back! Yesterday, we took our first sneak peek at various statistics that will be formally released in the 2021 Annual Report of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) (archive link here). And oh boy, their numbers were not good. Not at all, nope. But then, various SBC leaders tried their darndest, Read more
It’s fascinating to me to see how the SBC’s Dear Leaders spin-doctor their decline to the flocks, not to mention how they keep trying to reverse (or at least bottom out) their decline. And friends, they outdid themselves with a shockingly-dishonest press release about their 2020 numbers. Today, I want to show you how the SBC’s leaders misrepresented the truth about last year’s numbers with their 2021 Annual Report sneak peek.
Hi and welcome back! We’ve been talking lately about the re-erupting squabble in evangelicalism about women pastors. In particular, the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) hate the idea. And in most particular, Al Mohler hates the idea. Long ago, he fully supported women pastors. But now he’s 100% against Read more
Hi and welcome back! Yesterday, I alluded to the mistreatment evangelicals heap upon people who express disappointment with their experiences in the religion. To be sure, it does happen. It happened to me, in fact! Yes, people join these evangelical groups on the basis of a whole bunch of marketing Read more
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
In the wake of the pandemic, many countries are experiencing a drop in their birthrate. That won’t be surprising or big news to most of us. Nor would most of us be surprised to learn that American evangelicals themselves aren’t immune to the social forces that influence everyone else’s family planning decisions. But evangelical leaders are certainly upset about all of this. They’re trying to blame the decreasing birthrate on sin and evil ickie straw feminism, instead of taking responsibility for what’s probably actually happening. Today, let me show you the story itself — and then show you how evangelicals are freaking out about it for all the wrong reasons.
Hi and welcome back! Lately, we’ve been talking about a podcast called Gospelbound. It’s a production of The Gospel Coalition, a hard-right Calvinist evangelical group online. In this particular episode of Gospelbound, two guys talk about all the awful persecution that their tribe totally faces. Except this persecution is largely a complete 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.
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.’