Reading Time: 10 minutes Caught between the devil of a church model that many evangelical leaders openly criticize and the deep blue sea of an empty youth ministry, evangelical youth ministers have little choice.
South Park
Posted inReligion
Spiritual Warfare: Translating the Christianese (LSP #163)
Reading Time: 9 minutes With their grandiose language, spiritual warriors certainly sound impressive. Ah, but if you lift the hood of this Jesus-built hot rod, you’ll find nothing more under it than a pokey little jalopy engine. Today, Lord Snow Presides over the utter banality that spiritual warriors mask with over-the-top Christianese.
Posted inReligion
The Redemption of Johnny Lawrence (LSP #161)
Reading Time: 9 minutes Hi and welcome back! Last week, we had a really good time mocking evangelist Greg Stier for idolizing Johnny Lawrence as the villain of the new show Cobra Kai. But the comparison has stuck with me ever since I heard it a while ago. There’s something fundamentally broken in evangelical leaders if they don’t understand the […]
Posted inReligion
Christian Accountabilibuddies Are Seriously A Thing
Reading Time: 12 minutes Today, we look at Christian Accountabilibuddies, which are totally a real thing that many Christians do.
Posted inReligion
J.D. Greear Knows How to Solve the SBC’s Misogyny Problem, Too!
Reading Time: 11 minutes Poor J.D. Greear. Dude literally just got elected the Grand High Lord Poobah of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and he’s already stomping on my last nerve. Last time we touched on his solutions to the SBC’s years-long decline. Today, we’ll look at his non-solution to the problem of misogyny in his blighted, embattled denomination–and why it won’t work at all. And then we’ll look at why that’s the point.
Posted inUncategorized
Ken Ham’s Bubble Maintenance.
Reading Time: 9 minutes Creationist charlatan and serial liar-for-Jesus Ken Ham did a little bubble maintenance this week, and I want to show you how and why he did it.
Posted inLGBTQ, Religion
The Reframing Game in “People to Be Loved.”
Reading Time: 9 minutes Using very positive language to describe a very negative situation or feeling is a tactic at least as old as Christianity itself. People who have power use this sort of language to make the powerless folks they (want to) control more comfortable with being controlled–and to sell a product that nobody in their right mind would ever want to buy if its nature were accurately described. It is at its heart a very, very Christian form of dishonesty.
Posted inReligion
Christian Myth #5,921,347: “The Gospel Does Not Need Trickery.”
Reading Time: 11 minutes Christian mythology is filled with absolutely stunning examples of bizarre reasoning, and today we’re talking about one of the very worst examples of the breed: the idea that its claims are very easily proven true using credible, reasonable, rational arguments and observations, and therefore don’t need any kind of dishonest tactics to shore those claims up or support them, so Christians don’t need to lie or misrepresent anything about their religion in order to persuade others. This idea is not only a myth but an especially toxic and harmful one to both believers and those around them.