Prayer has always been the ultimate example of magical thinking. That means doing something that has no effect on a desired outcome, but the person doing it thinks it does anyway. And nobody knows that deep down quite like evangelicals do. As much as their Dear Leaders constantly push the Read more
While cruising around the Christ-o-sphere today, I happened upon a post about ‘navigating doubt‘ (archive). Written by Ron Tewson, it’s an absolute mess of bad logic, unsupported claims, and mischaracterizations. That all said, though, it’s also a perfect example of how Christians learn to push away their legitimate doubts about Read more
Last time we met up, we talked about how evangelicals destroy their witness online. That means they act in ways that decimate their credibility as Christians. Now, evangelicals have engaged with the internet from the beginning almost, so you might well think that they’d be able to behave themselves better Read more
Not long ago, we talked about the evangelical concept of a witness. This Christianese term describes the sum total of their knowledge of Christianity, their wisdom in communicating it, their effectiveness as evangelists, and their overall credibility as people. Evangelicals have never been great at maintaining their witness. In the decades Read more
We’ve been talking lately about how sales-minded Christians really need their targets to have the correct worldview. As I’ve mentioned, I grew up with the absolutely perfect one, at least from that point of view. It was a wonder I lasted till my teens before some evangelical somewhere got ahold Read more
Being lukewarm is the other side of being legalistic. A legalistic Christian is someone who is more obsessed with rules and behavior than the judging Christian is. Likewise, a lukewarm Christian is simply one who is less obsessed than the judge with such things. Lukewarm Christians can, in this judgment, Read more
Last time we met up, I briefly mentioned an instance of truly predatory evangelism. Someone on the r/TrueChristian subreddit had tangled with what sounds like the slimiest evangelist in a pack of overqualified contenders. And our OP still has no idea in the world why this slimy recruiter is acting Read more
When I said last time that evangelicals really did not like Hume’s attempt to wrangle miracles into coherence, I was not kidding around. Hume completely pissed in miracle claimants’ coffee cups. He raised the bar for miracles so high that no Christians could hope to clear it. No wonder they hate him!
Once again, the tiresome immorality of miracles raises its ugly head. Five years ago, Christians rejoiced in Jesus’ apparent decision to rescue a bunch of kids stranded inside a dangerous Thai cave. This time, the people Jesus refused to rescue sat inside the ill-fated Titanic sightseeing submarine. Today, we’ll explore Read more
When evangelical leaders tell their flocks to Jesus harder, they’re not just hoping to fix declines in membership and cultural power. They’re also hoping the flocks will use that non-solution to fix serious mental illnesses—like depression. Today, I’ll show you how they think this process should work, why it never Read more