Last time we talked about how church leaders and teachers have been pushing the false idea for years that marriages must be “based on Jesus” or else terrible things will happen to the couples involved. Today we’ll talk about some of those terrible things, and then we’ll talk about the Read more
Hi y’all! We’ve been talking lately about how quite a few Christians base their marriages on a shared belief in their religion, making the whole marriage quake when one partner loses that belief. I made the point that it really doesn’t have to be that way. Today we’re going to Read more
Welcome back, R2Ders! We’re heading into the Unequally Yoked Club today. One thing I was taught from my earliest years as a Christian–and see stressed even more nowadays–is this idea that Christian couples should base their relationship with each other on a shared faith in Jesus. So I want to Read more
A while ago, Kirk Cameron popularized a fairly-new evangelism technique: claiming that he knows all about atheism because he, himself, was once an (gasp! Shock! OMG!) atheist. He thought it gave him some kind of leg up on authority and credibility to say that he’d once been an atheist, and Read more
I noticed Jefferson Bethke’s video making the rounds again, so I wanted to talk about it today. I don’t think it’s nearly as impressive as he–and his many fans–think it is.
(Content note: religious abuse, mind-blowing misogyny and anti-LGBTQ bigotry.) Big, big news, R2Ders! Over the last few days we’ve been seeing a lot of news about Mark Driscoll, the Lizard King of Misogynists, and finally there’s some kind of resolution to his increasingly-erratic, unstable fall from grace. See, it seems Read more
I saw this really interesting piece about “church cannibalism” and it ties into something else I was reading about the dwindling of religious belief in America. What these two stories tell me is that Americans are steadily becoming less religiously observant over time, but huge megachurches are growing in membership Read more
Good news for folks in the UYC! Dale McGowan’s newest book, In Faith and In Doubt: How Religious Believers and Nonbelievers Can Create Strong Marriages and Loving Families is coming out soon. I wanted to start talking about it, since I have a personal connection to this book due to Read more
Have you seen this blog post, An Open Letter to My Future Wife? We’re going to tackle it today and talk about reality vs. fantasy in marriage. Remember how I complained a while ago about how it seems like there are all these baby-Christians out there who’ve just gotten married Read more
One group of Christians, however, is finally coming to grips with their own drop in numbers. They might have the wrong explanation for it and the most nonsensical way possible of dealing with it, but they’re at least dimly aware that their denomination is starting to falter. That group is the Southern Baptist Convention, who recently declared that their denomination is facing a “baptism drought.” Today we’ll talk about why they’re facing it, and why they think they are, because those are two different things.