I had not yet learned that authoritarianism itself precludes sincerity or faithfulness in Christianity. Individual Christians might cultivate these traits, but there is no way to have a whole group of them reliably doing the same thing. Sooner or later, a bad-faith actor gets into that group — and wrecks it, often before it’s even really gotten off the ground.
Yes, the SBC ended up with a small net positive in church additions to their denomination. Much of it seems to have come from church plants, meaning brand-new churches. But that number isn’t one to celebrate, as we’ll see today.
Hi and welcome back! Yesterday, we took our first sneak peek at various statistics that will be formally released in the 2021 Annual Report of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) (archive link here). And oh boy, their numbers were not good. Not at all, nope. But then, various SBC leaders tried their darndest, Read more
It’s fascinating to me to see how the SBC’s Dear Leaders spin-doctor their decline to the flocks, not to mention how they keep trying to reverse (or at least bottom out) their decline. And friends, they outdid themselves with a shockingly-dishonest press release about their 2020 numbers. Today, I want to show you how the SBC’s leaders misrepresented the truth about last year’s numbers with their 2021 Annual Report sneak peek.
Hi and welcome back! We’ve been talking lately about the re-erupting squabble in evangelicalism about women pastors. In particular, the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) hate the idea — Al Mohler in particular. Long ago, he fully supported women pastors. But now he’s 100% against them. And today, I’ll Read more
Yesterday, I showed you the re-eruption of a decades-old slapfight going on in evangelicalism: whether or not evangelicals should allow women to be pastors. This archaic-sounding squabble represents a central issue to the usual gaggle of Christian Right bigots-for-Jesus. And very few of them despise the notion of women pastors quite like Al Mohler. He fights against the idea with all the radicalized passion of a convert — because that is precisely what he is. Today, let me show you a very different Al Mohler: one who fully supported women pastors, and then, I’ll show you the force that brought him up short one fateful day.
Today, let me show you what these two factions are, the major players involved, and the group they’ve both chosen as their focus.
LifeWay is the publishing and propaganda arm of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) — and easily the denomination’s biggest and most influential subgroup. But in recent years, LifeWay looks more and more like a star that is falling. Today, let me catch you up on what’s going on with this evangelical publishing company — and show you why their most recent leader reflects this dysfunctional group’s covert goals a lot better than its stated ones.
Today, let me show you what’s going on with the LifeWay lawsuit against Thom Rainer, and how TRUE CHRISTIANS™ ignore everything in the Bible whenever it becomes expedient. Also, I’ll show you the Christianese these folks are using to try to get their way!
In his 2018 blog post, he warned his readers that American churches were cruising toward a ‘tipping point.’ Today, let me show you what Thom Rainer meant by that — and how his song-and-dance patter has changed since then.