Reading Time: 10 minutes Dwell Community Church (formerly Xenos Christian Fellowship) can’t catch a break! Their leaders keep getting accused of being a cult. I can see why! Dwell/Xenos functions as a dysfunctional authoritarian system.
Evangelical Christians
Posted inReligion
The reality of people being ‘hungry for the Word’
Reading Time: 9 minutes In the Christ-o-sphere, people have always been hungry for the Word, even if in reality they reject Christian sales pitches now more than ever. Today, let me show you how Christians use this beloved Christianese phrase, and what reality has to say about the matter.
Posted inReligion
Evangelist recruiters and the omnimax god who needs human help
Reading Time: 9 minutes Christians demonstrate by their actions that they know perfectly well their god couldn’t manage to arrange a visit to the potty without them helping him every step of the way.
Posted inReligious News
‘There is a payback coming’ as evangelicals dream of revenge and dominance
Reading Time: 9 minutes Let’s check out a recent gathering of authoritarian evangelicals. I’ll show you their plans–and the not-so-hidden desires of their hearts.
Posted inReligious News
Sermon plagiarism: why it suddenly matters to some Southern Baptists
Reading Time: 10 minutes The current president of the SBC, Ed Litton, got caught using someone else’s sermon without attributing it. Usually, sermon plagiarism is simply a minor but common sin in evangelical leadership. But this time, Ed Litton’s faction enemies, the Old Guard, began howling for his resignation. Oddly, they didn’t care at all that his predecessor, J.D. Greear, did something considerably worse during his own reign.
Posted inCritical thinking
Discipling: Yes yes, but what does it look like?
Reading Time: 6 minutes A recent Lifeway survey reveals that many evangelical leaders don’t know what discipling actually looks like in practice, much less how to disciple. Here, we have another active case of yes yes, but what does it look like? And I am here for it because it reveals so much of what’s wrong with Christianity as a whole.
Posted inReligious News
How Hillsong is quickly falling apart
Reading Time: 6 minutes So far, Hillsong has lost 9 of its 16 American campuses. It’s a swift comeuppance for a church that seemed too big to fall. But Hillsong has shown, through these constant scandals, that their dazzling and trendy image is distinctly at odds with their lived reality.
Posted inReligion
The Hillsong scandal—and damage control—continues
Reading Time: 8 minutes A few days ago, the world learned that Brian Houston–beleaguered founder of Hillsong Church, a global megachurch–violated his church’s code of conduct with “inappropriate behavior” directed at two women. He’s trying his best to spin-doctor what he did, but he’s just making his situation worse. In the process, he’s revealing just how extensive his enabler network is–and how far they’re willing to go to protect Hillsong itself.
Posted inReligion
This Christianity Today scandal doesn’t surprise me at all
Reading Time: 8 minutes I’m not even half surprised by any of these revelations. For years now, I’ve noted unsettling trends in this publication. Once again, then, we learn to our detriment that evangelicals cannot have authoritarianism and institutional sexism without it breeding scandals and abuse.
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
Why Christians push a false narrative of hopelessness
Reading Time: 12 minutes Christians’ false narrative of hopelessness represents a big part of their current marketing to their target customers. But in truth, it only worsens the actual hopelessness that their salespeople claim to be alleviating.