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.
original christianity (myth)
Posted inReligion
Tim Keller pushes the myth of ‘Original Christianity’ for a reason
Reading Time: 9 minutes Every so often, I’m convinced, Tim Keller starts feeling like the conversation has begun to meander away from his favorite topic (himself), so he blurts out something ridiculously fatuous to get everyone looking his way again. This time, his attention-seeking took the form of lies about Original Christianity.
Posted inGeneral
Gospelbound Embraces the False Myth of Persecution
Reading Time: 9 minutes Hi and welcome back! Lately, we’ve been talking about a podcast called Gospelbound. It’s a production of The Gospel Coalition, a hard-right Calvinist evangelical group online. In this particular episode of Gospelbound, two guys talk about all the awful persecution that their tribe totally faces. Except this persecution is largely a complete myth. In reality, they’re usually […]
Posted inUncategorized
An Ex-Christian Evaluates a Gospelbound Podcast
Reading Time: 7 minutes Gospelbound’s own marketing claims that it will give listeners ‘firm faith in an anxious age.’ We checked out their most recent episode, about a TGC-produced book called Before You Lose Your Faith, and we weren’t impressed. But hey, maybe they just forgot about their target audience because they were talking about their own book. So I wanted to check out what else they were telling potential doubters. Today, let’s evaluate another of their episodes — from the point of view of a Christian who desperately needs a jolt of ‘firm faith in an anxious age.’
Posted inReligion
Why Jesus-ing Harder Won’t Bring Churchless Believers Back
Reading Time: 10 minutes When we were talking about churchless believers last week, I mentioned that I hadn’t seen a lot of Christians offering concrete strategies for bringing these believers back into church sheepfolds. The ones who do offer strategies tend to offer ones based around Jesus-ing harder. But that won’t work here any more than it’s ever worked anywhere in Christianity. Today, let me show you why Jesus-ing harder doesn’t ever fix anything — and why it can’t.
Posted inReligion
What Churchless Believers Tell Us About Christians’ Powers of Coercion
Reading Time: 10 minutes What we see now in Christianity’s declining numbers is what a purely-optional, coercion-free Christianity looks like. And it looks like a little minority religion that is largely irrelevant and meaningless even to its own believers.
Posted inReligion
The Big Problem Here: Singleness Edition (LSP #168)
Reading Time: 8 minutes Seriously. How could I possibly resist the spectacle of an evangelical offering up The Big Problem Here for unwanted singleness? Now add in the fact that these two stories intersect with our current topic of evangelism. How how how how could I resist? I couldn’t. That’s how.
Posted inReligion
Lost Coercion: The Center of Christianity’s Current Decline
Reading Time: 10 minutes That cultural change was and is a loss of Christians’ onetime powers of coercion. Today, I’ll show you why it spells the absolute end of their domination everywhere it spreads.
Posted inReligion
How the Great Pan Died: Book Discussion (LSP #78)
Reading Time: 4 minutes Last year, we began talking about a book called How the Great Pan Died. Some of us even located used copies of this out-of-print 1968 work. Finally, we plunge into formal discussion about it! Come join us for an intriguing look at the possible origins of Christianity–and a look at possibly how everything went hideously wrong.
Posted inReligion
Original Christianity: A Vision of the Past That Clouds the Future
Reading Time: 10 minutes Way back when, when Yr. Loyal&Etc. was just a wee teenybopper Christian lass, I believed heart and soul in a concept that even today ensorcels Christians. That concept is Original Christianity. Let me walk you through the idea today, and show you how it completely fails even a cursory examination.