Reading Time: 2 minutes When Christian evangelist Franklin Graham and hate-group leader Tony Perkins are calling you a sinner, it’s probably because you made the mistake of being kind. That’s what happened with singer Amy Grant, who received harsh condemnation from the bigots for an act of Jesus-like generosity. Grant was recently awarded the Kennedy Center Honors, an award […]
Christian Contemporary Music
Posted inSpirituality & Ritual
Why popular Christmas songs don’t mention Jesus
Reading Time: 6 minutes I can understand why Christians try so hard to claim a monopoly over Christmas: nothing about the holiday really speaks to Christianity. No, Christmas speaks to something much, much better.
Posted inReligion
The New Mo-RAL Pa-NIC: Syncopation! (LSP #164)
Reading Time: 8 minutes Back in 2011, a Christian salesman tried his best, bless his cotton socks, to start a(nother) moral panic over syncopation. He thought that if you put your em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble, then you’re opening the door of your frontal moral lobe to Satan himself. But he wasn’t warning his tribe out of the goodness of his heart. Today, Lord Snow Presides over ridiculous Christian hucksters and the dishonest tactics they use to make sales.
Posted inGeneral, Religion
‘Christian Rock’ During the Satanic Panic (LSP #158)
Reading Time: 8 minutes Hi and welcome back! I’ve wanted to feature this topic for a while now, and today seems like a great day for it. Way back when, evangelicals clutched their pearls over an imaginary Satanic plot to take over the world. A big part of that plot centered on demons influencing the hearts and minds of […]
Posted inReligion
Hillsong Songwriter Marty Sampson Has Left the Jesus Building
Reading Time: 9 minutes Marty Sampson, a songwriter for the Christian band Hillsong, recently announced his deconversion on his Instagram account. Today, we’ll look at that announcement, and at the main reason he gave in it: the stuff Christians don’t talk about.
Posted inLGBTQ, Religion
Another Christian Band Bites the Dust.
Reading Time: 8 minutes I saw this one video the other day and thought it was really good–but something twigged in my memory about the band in it. From there, I began tallying up similar bands, and now I’ve got to ask: what’s going on with Christian music lately? Is it just me, or is there like a lot of them who started out Christian and now aren’t?
Posted inReligion
The really scandalous part of ‘People to Be Loved’
Reading Time: 10 minutes That’s quite a lot of deception both in and out of one person, but it’s really more out of his tribe rather than himself; he’s not advocating much that is really very different than what they as a group are coming to believe. But he thinks he’s presenting something very innovative and different, and today we’re going to talk about why–and what about the book really is scandalous.
Posted inReligion
God’s Definitely Dead, and Mortally Embarrassed. (SPOILERS)
Reading Time: 16 minutes “God’s Not Dead” is an incredibly inept and horrible movie, and this is my full summary of it.
Posted inLeaving Religion, Religion
Faking it: The scandal of Michael Guglielmucci
Reading Time: 8 minutes The young man had a shaved-bald head and oxygen lines around his nose. Apparently, Michael Guglielmucci suffered from a serious form of terrifyingly aggressive cancer–but the well-fed 20-something still managed to belt out Christian worship music at the top of his clearly-quite-functional lungs with absolutely no trouble. Something wasn’t right about that image at all. […]
Posted inReligion
Why is Christian Media So Awful?
Reading Time: 15 minutes When I listened to the kinds of Christian music that I’d loved once after deconversion, I noticed quickly that it was actually terrible! And maybe I’ve figured out why.