In comments last time we met up, we learned about yet another set of those guesses, all presented as amazing new ideas that would totally work to convert people without backfiring and making evangelicals look like pickup-artist creeps.
I’ve seen pastors try off and on to stop their congregants from accessing the internet, but this new book that just came out, What Falls from the Sky, really takes the cake on that score.
As part of finding our own internal validation and becoming our own support network, one of the first things we have to do is take back the personal power we’ve given away. Especially if that Christian was tangled up with one of the really authoritarian groups in the religion, this step can be one of the hardest we’ll ever take on our way toward deconversion.
These stories are related. They both reflect an endemic issue within Christianity: its broken systems’ inability to recognize basic human rights.
The biggest Protestant denomination in the United States continues to suffer serious churn in its membership, and those of us who are rooting for its failure won’t be disappointed to hear how they’re dealing with it. I recently discovered a quiet little update to one of their most surprising task force meetings.
We’ve been talking lately about the various ways that Christianity rose to power as the dominant Western religion in the 2nd to 5th centuries. But the fun couldn’t last, and now that power is declining sharply with every passing year. As Christians began losing the power to force people to comply with their demands, they also became increasingly desperate to regain that power.
Bill Schnoebelen has had to reinvent himself a few times, but maybe he’s finding nowadays that once someone’s joined the Cult of Before Stories, it’s really hard to leave.
When power-hungry people want to abuse others, and they are given the means by which to do it and victims to abuse, abuse will happen–and Jesus won’t lift a finger to stop it.
Church discipline is usually initially presented to members by way of an agreement called a ‘covenant.’ I want to show you these agreements today, and walk you through why they’re such bad news for church members.
I’d be hard-pressed to name a ministry idea that fails as hard as this one.