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.
The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (Book)
Posted inReligion
The Bait and Switch of ‘Fire Insurance’ Evangelism
Reading Time: 10 minutes Evangelists sure like to threaten their marks with eternal torture! They do it to score new recruits for their groups, but there’s a double-edged blade lurking within their conceptualization of their product as fire insurance. Today, let me show you how this phrase works in evangelicals’ broken system.
Posted inReligion
Frank Keating: An(other) Evangelical Mascot Turned Out to Be A Total Failure
Reading Time: 8 minutes Today, I’ll show you what Frank Keating did, how his effort failed, and how nobody in his tribe of theocrats cared.
Posted inReligion
Evangelical Gatekeeping (Makes Their Numbers Look Prettier)
Reading Time: 11 minutes Hi and welcome back! As I look back at the carnage of our recent book review of The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, I’m struck by something its author, Ronald J. Sider, does to give himself a tiny little ray of hope for the future. It’s something we’ve seen evangelicals do constantly, too: gatekeeping exactly who […]
Posted inGeneral
The Legacy of ‘The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience’
Reading Time: 9 minutes Now, fifteen years later, let’s see how well Ronald J. Sider’s suggestions went. How many leaders took his suggestions? How’d that go? Has his corner of the Christianity sandbox improved since then — or not? Today, let’s check out the legacy of The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience.
Posted inReligion
The Real Scandal of ‘The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience’
Reading Time: 7 minutes Hello and welcome back! Lately, we’ve been talking about a 2005 book by Ronald J. Sider, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience. With its publication, its author hoped to spur evangelicals into pretending to care about their own rules. We’ve covered quite a few of its flaws so far, but there’s one I’ve been saving for […]
Posted inReligion
One Denomination to Rule Them All (Won’t Happen)
Reading Time: 10 minutes Hi and welcome back! Lately, we’ve been reviewing a classic 2005 evangelical book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience. In it, author Ronald J. Sider tried his darndest to convince evangelicals to start obeying their own rules. In this installment, I’ll show you a totally-out-of-left-field suggestion of his from Chapter 4. See, he wanted churches to […]
Posted inReligion
Fixing Evangelicals’ Broken Authoritarianism
Reading Time: 10 minutes Recently, we encountered Ronald J. Sider’s 2005 evangelical classic, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience. In it, the author explored what he viewed as evangelicals’ signal failure: their utter unwillingness even to pretend to care about what Jesus told them to do during their finite lifetimes. However, Sider offered a downright galaxy-brained solution to this terrible problem. Indeed, he was completely positive that this solution would totally fix everything. Yes, truly! Today, I’ll show you how Ronald J. Sider totally and permanently solved the problem of evangelical hypocrisy through the simple magic of authoritarianism.
Posted inReligion
How Hell-Belief Inevitably Leads to Hypocrisy (The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience)
Reading Time: 10 minutes As long as evangelical leaders like Ronald J. Sider push Hell-belief, there’s no way believers will ever care about pursuing that Jesus lifestyle. In fact, it’s why their entire flavor of Christianity is marked more by hypocrisy than by adherence to their rules. Today, I’ll show you how Hell-belief leads to hypocrisy, and more importantly, why it always will.
Posted inReligion
Solving Exactly the Wrong Problems in Evangelicalism (Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience)
Reading Time: 10 minutes Recently, we explored a now-classic 2005 book by Ronald J. Sider, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience. In it, Sider fell victim to the classic evangelical blunder. No, I don’t mean getting involved in a land war in Asia. I mean the classic evangelical blunder: he identified The Big Problem Here, but it’s not actually what’s wrong. Thus, his solutions will fix the wrong problems. Today, let me show you what Ronald J. Sider thought the problem with evangelicals was, and then what it actually is.