Reading Time: 14 minutes Christianese does a lot of heavy lifting for evangelicals. Everyday life becomes a godly melodrama. You aren’t the guy who carries the pastor’s stuff—you’re an armorbearer. You aren’t eating lunch, you’re breaking bread. Even a simple word-shuffle like Christ Jesus can give an insidery zhuzh to whatever you’re on about. The result can be a […]
Culture War
Posted inPolitics
After the indictment: The deeper political schism behind the spectacle of Trump
Reading Time: 8 minutes After Trump received a 37-count federal criminal indictment, reactions ran the full spectrum, including incitements to armed conflict. But calls to extremist action have been part of Trumpism from the start.
Posted inReligion
How Southern Baptist pastor Heath Lambert is leaving nothing to chance
Reading Time: 14 minutes If I’m right, then it doesn’t matter at all how many people Heath Lambert loses over his demand.
Posted inHealth
Your gas stove might make you sick, but your politics can kill you
Reading Time: 4 minutes Living longer and being healthy should be uncontroversial, nonpartisan ideas—but to the American right, they aren’t.
Posted inReligion
In the War on Christmas, the heathens are still winning
Reading Time: 10 minutes In the past few decades, Christians’ attempted stranglehold on Christmas has receded further with each bit of dominance lost by their tribe. Now, finally, people are embracing the real reasons for the season.
Posted inCulture
Beyond Meathead and Archie: Can Braver Angels help bridge our current divide?
Reading Time: 4 minutes A national movement seeks to bring liberals, conservatives, and others together at the grassroots level—not to find a centrist compromise, but to find one another as citizens. Through workshops, debates, campus engagement, and more, Braver Angels helps Americans understand each other beyond stereotypes, form community alliances, and reduce the vitriol that poisons our civic culture.
Posted inCulture
Sociologist: It’s called ‘culture war’ for a reason
Reading Time: 7 minutes On May 2nd, 2022, the Haven, Kansas city council voted to remove decals from police cars that said “In God We Trust.” They did so in a sensible effort to recognize the separation of church and state. Sixteen days later, after an intense backlash from conservative citizens in Haven, the city council reversed that decision. […]
Posted inLeaving Religion
The pro-life clinic manual that deconverted me from Christianity
Reading Time: 11 minutes I started reading this CPC manual as a firm, fervent Christian. I ended it weeping, devastated, and windmilling my arms over the ledge of apostasy.
Posted inCulture
Culture warriors just wrecked an old denomination
Reading Time: 7 minutes In 2012, the RCA began to break apart over homosexuality. One faction –the more mainline end — wanted inclusion. The other — the culture warriors — wanted to the denomination to be bigots-for-Jesus. That breakup completed this month, with 43 congregations full of culture warriors leaving. They’re joining a new denomination, ARC (Alliance of Reformed Churches). All this, over a culture war evangelicals lost over a decade ago!
Posted inReligion
Why Evangelicals Lean So Hard on Original Christianity
Reading Time: 7 minutes In an age when evangelicals’ only product — group membership — is more and more tainted and unwanted by the day, all Tim Keller’s got is lying his face off to try to at least retain a few butts in pews (BIPs) before they realize it’s all fake and bleed out the back door.