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
Usually, evangelicals have a hate-hate relationship with mental-health counseling. And they should. Counseling puts the lie to their entire conceptualization of Jesusing their troubles away. But yesterday, one evangelical guy gave a speech to Asian Southern Baptists that sought to reposition counseling as a responsibility church congregations have toward each Read more
For decades now, Christians have been arguing among themselves about worship music. And I can see why. Music speaks to the heart and mind in ways that words simply can’t. Two editorials from Christianity Today reveal that this argument is nowhere near an end. In fact, it might only be Read more
In the Gospels of the New Testament, Jesus makes a lot of promises to his disciples. In between mass-healing people of physical and emotional distress through his magic, he promises that he’ll return before his followers “tasted death,” and that he’ll give them whatever they ask of him/his father in Read more
I kept running into these heartfelt evangelical condemnations of consumer Christianity. Eventually, I couldn’t help myself. I had to learn more about yet another attempt by Christians to judge and out-Jesus their competition. Definitions can vary, and so can solutions to solve what many evangelicals view as a deep systemic Read more
Lately, we’ve been talking about Christianity as a fandom. It certainly shares a great many characteristics with secular fandoms: Object(s) of devotion, ritualized behavior, participation in a niche culture, infighting both within the fans’ own particular groups and with other groups in the wider fandom as a whole, and more. Read more
The day I realized that Christianity is a super-intense fandom with extra strings attached, a lot of keys turned in a lot of mental locks for me. Ever since that magic moment, I haven’t been able to view exhortations to Christians about reigniting their Jesus-passion the same. I just can’t Read more
In the consumer internet’s early years, evangelical Creationists started a war against, um, reality itself—but they insisted that no, they were actually at war with atheists. In the ensuing 10-20 years, they haven’t changed much. They still think their #1 enemies are atheists. And they’re still pumping out the same Read more
For centuries, Christians have loved to imagine that each leader in their religion is really a servant leader. That may be true of some, but it’s certainly not true of them all. In Christianity, the worst abuses come from leaders who do not deserve to wield their power. And those Read more