Conservative Christianity is largely performative in nature, and it must be. Conservative Christian leaders ache for their flocks to be transformed by a powerful, consuming faith, but almost nobody in their flocks actually has that, much less gets transformed by it. And they’ve known this for years, although they do Read more
Frank Page has a decades-long and well-established history of not wanting to investigate sex abuse in Southern Baptist churches or holding sex abusers fully accountable for their crimes. Then he got himself embroiled in a scandal of his own.
But never fear: Almost immediately, Page got a pastoring job in an SBC church. But the story wasn’t over.
Not long ago, some evangelicals broke my heart. They were the family of a vibrant, impressionable, trusting, inexperienced young woman named Micah. In 2009, her husband murdered her. That husband, Thomas Pate, had pretended to be a true-blue evangelical to win her and her parents’ hearts. And he succeeded. It Read more
Out of every Christian lie, the one about Jesus’ magical transformation ability might be the worst. This lie tells Christians that belief in Jesus—along with adherence to a great many asterisked terms and conditions that only get revealed long after conversion—will transform them into better people. This transformation supposedly allows Read more
When an abusive evangelical pastor, Christian Watts, tried to downplay his grooming of a teenager decades earlier, he described his predation as ‘my past sin.’ That’s a time-honored tactic for people caught in his exact circumstances. Let’s take a closer look at this tactic to see why it works so well in evangelical culture.
Out of every bit of Christianese I’ve heard lately, this might be one of the chirpiest and most annoying.
When I hear about evangelical sex scandals, I’m usually just relieved if everyone involved is of-age. But that’s about to change with this Ted Haggard story.
Today, let me show you why nobody will ever convince evangelicals to be less cruel: they’ve found a performative brand of piety that lets them believe their own marketing about themselves without having to do all that tough work that goes along with real self-improvement.
You can see the divine Jesus Aura illuminating this man’s life and see for yourself how amazingly transformed he’s been by the love of his god. Friends, marvel as I present to you: Douglas Wilson, the TRUE CHRISTIAN™ who’ll change your mind about the effectiveness of fundagelical doctrines.