Reading Time: 12 minutes Given how the denomination used the information gathered, it seems very likely that the numbers look so humiliatingly bad that their leaders don’t even want to know what they are anymore.
Authoritarian Leaders and Followers
Posted inReligious News
Shots fired: Pope Francis goes after US Catholic hardliners
Reading Time: 8 minutes While meeting with Jesuits in Portugal, Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope, lamented how ‘backward’ American Catholic hardliners are these days.
Catholicism has always been in a constant state of change. But this American faction can’t admit or allow that.
Posted inReligion
Will evangelicals be fooled by the ‘He Gets Us’ campaign?
Reading Time: 14 minutes An article in Christianity Today lauds the supposed runaway success of ‘He Gets Us’ marketing campaign. We examine the article on its own merits, finding it completely lacking.
Posted inReligious News
Southwestern Seminary: The newest battlefield for Southern Baptist faction warfare
Reading Time: 12 minutes The battles raging around Southwestern Seminary in recent years give us a potent clue about what’s happening behind the scenes at this embattled denomination. They also tell us exactly what happens when any authoritarian organization becomes dysfunctional.
Posted inReligion
Guessing why his religion is declining, a Christian clings to a beloved fantasy
Reading Time: 13 minutes A recent Medium piece about Christianity’s decline has been making the rounds on social media. In it, a Christian makes three assertions about his religion’s decline. Two are partially correct. But the last reflects a beloved but completely untrue myth that Christians almost universally embrace. Let’s examine each of these assertions to find an answer […]
Posted inReligion
Captive audiences: Why Uber and Lyft are evangelicals’ newest mission field
Reading Time: 10 minutes Recently, Hemant Mehta asked a very good question: “Why are Lyft and Uber letting Christian drivers preach at passengers?” It’s a very good question. Uber and Lyft have not, as of this writing, explained why they allow this. Another good question is how evangelicals got to the point where preaching at captive audiences has become […]
Posted inReligion
American evangelicals: Still hungry for persecution
Reading Time: 11 minutes American evangelicals have been indoctrinated for decades with tribalistic fantasies of real religious persecution. Their own leaders have also inaccurately described persecution for decades. At this point, the tribe has no idea what persecution really looks like.
Posted inReligious News
The Southern Baptist 2022 Annual Report is finally here
Reading Time: 12 minutes Thanks to the folks at the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC), we FINALLY have the SBC’s 2022 Annual Report.
Posted inPolitics
Ammon Bundy: Lying for Jesus, yet again
Reading Time: 9 minutes Ammon Bundy needs attention again, I suppose. After a frenetic summer of grandstanding outside of a hospital, he continues to campaign for public office in Idaho. To help him win the upcoming governor’s race, he planned a September 10th rally at a park in Boise. However, his election committee lied to the park’s governing board […]
Posted inReligion
Why authoritarian Christians desperately need literalism
Reading Time: 10 minutes The very worst sorts of Christian leaders and groups desperately need their followers to buy into biblical literalism, which is quite possibly the most childish and poorly-informed hermeneutic possible.