Analyzing Christianity
A Matter of Faith: The Mega-Review
In ‘A Matter of Faith’, a 2014 Christian movie, a girl attends a college biology class and almost loses her faith!
Analyzing Christianity
It’s not a god-shaped hole—but a god-shaped wound
For many years, Christians have been trying to convince everyone that human beings have a “god-shaped hole” in their beings that cries out for belief in their particular god to fill it. But that’s not true. Rather, many people suffer from a god-shaped wound—created by the salespeople who want to fill it with their product.
Analyzing Christianity
The Trouble with Tribbers.
A long time ago I wrote about fundagelical preppers and how the doom-preparation community had been taken over by fundagelical zealots fearing Rapture and Armageddon. There are some new developments in that story–but first, here are some new Rapture scares to look at!
Analyzing Christianity
Lord Snow Presides #8: Meet Texe Marrs.
I’m looking at end-of-the-world conspiracy theorists right now and ran across a name I hadn’t heard before: Texe Marrs. I’m wondering how he’s managed to evade my notice until now, considering he clearly ran in the same sort of circles I did back in the late 1980s!
Analyzing Christianity
Preston Sprinkle still doesn’t get it
So Preston Sprinkle went into the overflowing hopper of Christians Who Think They’re Saying Something New and Exciting But Aren’t, and we all moved on. Then around Easter I caught wind of him proudly announcing that he’d written some more stuff on the subject and done a podcast or something, and I found myself groaning inwardly.
Analyzing Christianity
Stages of grief at the end of apologetics
I’ve been coming into contact with a lot of different ideas about apologetics itself as a field. One of the more intriguing of those ideas comes from Myron Penner, a Christian who wrote a book called The End of Apologetics. He did an interview with a blogger when the book came out, and the reactions to that interview were so fascinating that I wanted to show them to you.
Analyzing Christianity
Leaving the Shack to Find Our Independence.
It seems fitting, however, to return to this topic of power now as we look at the Christian glurge movie/book The Shack and observe its main teaching: that independence is to be distrusted and rejected.
Analyzing Christianity
Sophia’s (False) Choice.
The Shack, the latest popular Christian glurge to get made into a movie, pretends to be a serious answer for the age-old question plaguing Christians: why does their god, who is supposed to be omni-everything as well as loving and gracious, allow terrible things to happen in his created world?
Analyzing Christianity
Just a Little Bit of Racism in The Shack.
The Shack, the latest in a long line of Christian glurge movies and books, lives in that weird middle ground where Christians think they’re being progressive and yet turn out to be as locked in systemic racism as any of their peers.
Analyzing Christianity
The Shack: A Land Where Dreams Come True.
The Shack is one of a very long line of Christian glurge media that recreates reality for believers, giving them the thrill of “seeing” their beliefs mesh at last with the real world. But for everyone else, stories like this one simply make the religion sound worse.