Reading Time: 12 minutes Recently, the United States government finished the first part of its investigation into federally-funded boarding schools that abused Native Americans. As you might expect, it’s a dark read. Primarily, it reveals that for 150 years, the American government used these schools to systematically destroy Native Americans’ culture. Worse, the government sought to destroy that culture […]
the big problem here
Posted inCulture
Evangelical reform: Who’s gonna force accountability on pastors?
Reading Time: 6 minutes Whenever things go hideously wrong in any evangelical group, evangelicals tend to think that The Big Problem Here was a lack of accountability. Had proper accountability existed in their group, nothing bad would have happened because nothing bad could have happened without someone noticing it and addressing it. Scandals, in particular, happen because whoever caused that scandal drifted away from their accountabilibuddies.
Posted inCulture
The ‘Christian Love’ Flows for Deconstruction
Reading Time: 8 minutes This past year, toxic Christian leaders have finally come around to viewing deconstruction as a very serious threat to their power. (And it is.) They’ve been responding to that threat in the only way they know: with ‘Christian love,’ which as usual looks like cruelty, false accusations, and endless hateful screeching.
Posted inGeneral
The Jesus obsession in ‘The Great Divorce’
Reading Time: 11 minutes By the time I joined evangelicalism (in the mid-1980s), I learned to feel downright guilty for not injecting enough Jesus-ification into my life. I couldn’t just read a fantasy novel for the sake of it, go to a movie, or enjoy music that didn’t mention Jesus even once.
Posted inReligion
The Three Stages of Christians’ COVID Prayers
Reading Time: 5 minutes Christians always go through a distinct progression of prayers in times of stress and sickness, and indeed they must. And today, I’ll show you the three stages of prayers Christians offer — and more importantly, why these stages exist.
Posted inGaming, Religion
Belief Has ‘Vanished’ in Ireland — and an Archbishop Reveals Why
Reading Time: 7 minutes Yes yes, Jesus is all great and fun and all, but he won’t stop a predator from joining the youth ministry. The Happy Pretendy Fun Time Game must pause briefly while the GM — er, the pastor does a quick RL background check.
Posted inReligion
Watch for Self-Interest in Evangelicals’ Criticisms of Themselves
Reading Time: 10 minutes Whenever we encounter any evangelical who is criticizing Christianity at all, especially if it’s really good news for Team Secularism, watch for their own potential self-interest to show — and be very careful indeed in taking their criticisms as the truth. Today, I’ll show you how evangelical self-interest governs those criticisms — and the solutions that accompany them.
Posted inReligion
George Barna: Hucksters Can’t Stop Huckstering
Reading Time: 9 minutes About a year ago, we had a good laugh at George Barna and his shrill attempts to sell evangelicals his products through the use of fear and dread. It was a pleasing chaser for the sour scariness of his dystopian world-domination plans. Well, he didn’t learn a thing after evangelicals largely ignored his sales pitches last year. Lately, he’s returned with another attempt to frighten evangelicals into buying his product. Today, we ask why hucksters like George Barna just can’t stop, well, huckstering.
Posted inReligion
Why SBC Leaders Lied for Jesus About the 2021 Annual Report
Reading Time: 7 minutes Hi and welcome back! Yesterday, we took our first sneak peek at various statistics that will be formally released in the 2021 Annual Report of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) (archive link here). And oh boy, their numbers were not good. Not at all, nope. But then, various SBC leaders tried their darndest, bless their li’l cotton socks, […]
Posted inReligion
Sheila Wray Gregoire Doesn’t Realize That Evangelicals Already HAVE a “Jesus-Centered Sexual Ethic”
Reading Time: 8 minutes Lately, evangelicals are understandably much abuzz about their most recent batch of sex scandals. In response to them, Sheila Wray Gregoire, a Christian blogger, offers up what she hopes will be a solution to end sex scandals — and women’s misery within evangelicalism itself at the same time. She calls her solution “a Jesus-centered sexual ethic.” However, she doesn’t realize that evangelicals already have one. Today, let me show you what her suggestion is, and why it’ll never fly with evangelicals.