On July 31, Brent Leatherwood resigned his position as the leader of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). He lasted about four years in all, which is pretty good for an SBC leader with as many hardliner enemies as he had. And oh Read more…
Another day, another sexual predator in evangelicalism: Michael Tait has become the face of the newest scandal in evangelicalism. He’s not just any evangelical, though. He’s the former frontman for the long-running, super-popular evangelical singing group the Newsboys! Not only that, but one evangelical watchdog site calls this revelation “Nashville’s Read more…
When I review Alpha Course evangelism videos, I double-check my ideas by consulting a printed manual for the entire course. This time around, when I reviewed its fourth video, the manual contained an interesting discrepancy between its syllabus and the video’s actual contents. Today, let’s dive into this very telling Read more…
For years now, I’ve considered it a major red flag to find the presence of a church discipline policy in a church. These policies grant church leaders enormous, unchecked power over congregants—who don’t realize how that power may be misused until they themselves are caught in its crosshairs. Usually, the Read more…
Years ago, I wrote about Bill Schnoebelen as part of the Cult of Before Stories series. The Cult includes that vast collection of fake, bombastic Satanism-and-witchcraft-themed testimonies that hucksters peddle for attention and profit to evangelicals. These fake testimonies hit their peak around the late 1980s before petering out in Read more…
Somehow, evangelical pastors have figured out how to make their end of Christianity even worse—by implementing the ‘Moses Model’ of church leadership. It really is remarkable how they’ve turned an essentially dysfunctionally-authoritarian flavor of religion into such an extreme worst-case-possible scenario. But the Moses Model lets them make that transition Read more…
Recently, Calvinist pastor and G3 Conference founder Josh Buice got caught operating eight sockpuppet accounts over at least a couple of years. He used them to anonymously criticize and attack other evangelicals. So far, he’s lost his G3 leadership position at least. But he’s not the first Calvinist leader caught Read more…
Evangelicals love to claim having a superior morality to heathens. They insist that their faith produces real changes in believers that lead them to greater moral heights than we poor heathens could ever manage. But their own behavior betrays those claims. Today, we’ll see how one evangelical denomination, the Southern Read more…
Authenticity, as a concept, isn’t part of the vocabulary of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). With their latest metrics revealing yet more declines in membership, affiliated churches, and donations, this denomination is bleeding relevance. Today, we’ll cover one big reason why: Zero authenticity within evangelicalism in general. And it’s about Read more…
Last time we met up, we talked about an evangelical leader named Mike Bickle. He founded and used to lead an evangelical group called International House of Prayer (IHOPKC). Over a dramatically short time last year, his star crashed to earth. The truth came out at last: For decades, he’s Read more…