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
An evangelical leader named Mike Bickle has been dealing with the consequences of his actions for perhaps the first time in his entire life. Throughout his career, he has escaped accountability by taking advantage of the serious flaws within evangelical culture. Today, we’ll examine those flaws—and see how they allowed Read more
The Southern Baptist Convention, or SBC, has known about their entrenched sex abuse problem for at least a few decades now. Everyone else found out about it in 2019 with ‘Abuse of Faith.’ Since then, however, SBC leaders have done virtually nothing to reform their denomination. The SBC’s biggest names Read more