This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on April 15, 2024. Megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll seethed as Alex Magala, described by two fawning onlookers as “the finest swordsman in all the world,” slowly circled a pole on stage, peeled off his red leather top, slid his tongue up to the tip of a sword, swallowed the […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on April 10, 2024. “So, that’s awesome, man,” megachurch pastor Josh Howerton concluded in what he claimed was an apology to his congregation on Sunday. “Can we move on now? Y’all good with that? We’re gonna do that. That’s what we’re going to do. OK?” Then he clapped […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on April 4, 2024. Every March, millions of people locate their yellow highlighters and black pens as they compete against family, friends and coworkers for bragging rights in their March Madness bracket contest. It all started in a Staten Island bar in 1977, where an 88-person bracket contest […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on March 29, 2024. On your wedding night, “stand where he tells you to stand, wear what he tells you to wear, and do what he tells you to do.” This is the advice Southern Baptist megachurch pastor Josh Howerton gave the women of his congregation last month at Lakepointe […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on March 27, 2024. With echoes of “You’re so vain; you probably think the Bible’s about you,” today’s conservative American conspiracy theorists are raising money for Christian broadcasters by claiming the upcoming solar eclipse is a prophetic word from God revealed in the stars and in the Scriptures […]
I did a 45 minute presentation for Secular Arizona last Friday about how ancient empire hierarchies that the Bible was written in are being applied through authoritarian Christianity and Christian nationalism today. And then we did a 15 minute Q&A. Unfortunately, I forgot to put my presentation in presentation mode. So the slides are a […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on March 20, 2024. Mainline and evangelical churches aren’t the only religious communities losing members these days. According to a new study published in the Journal of Religion and Demography, Mormonism is no longer followed by the majority of residents in Utah. Ryan Cragun, a professor of sociology at the University […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on March 11, 2024. In addition to calling for a Coca Cola-sponsored decapitation of Donald Trump’s political opponents to be broadcast live for children to watch, Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk is making headlines again, this time claiming the United States government was formed based on the book of […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on March 6, 2024. In the latest “Law and Order” episode of the GOP’s march toward theocracy, the Arizona Senate passed Senate Bill 1151, which would allow the Ten Commandments to be displayed and read in public schools. “The progressive slide down in our country right now is […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on February 29, 2024. Perusing the news is beginning to feel like reading my Bob Jones University handbook a quarter century ago. Every page unveils another clutching of control that mortifies and confounds until the reader doesn’t know whether to laugh, cry or rage. This isn’t a new […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on February 23, 2024. One of the most notable differences since leaving conservative evangelicalism has been my body’s reaction to justice-themed events on the calendar. If the day or month had something to do with LGBTQ people, my immediate reaction would be one of defiance. These events were […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on February 16, 2024. It seems no matter what table a Christian chooses to sit at these days, powerful men are determining who gets a seat, when they can talk and what stories they’re allowed to tell. This marginalization of voices on the underside of sacralized machismo is evident in […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on February 9, 2024. “Come on dude. That’s just dumber than crap. Seriously. Good God,” the conservative evangelical financial celebrity and New York Times bestselling author Dave Ramsey ranted at a parent who called into his radio program asking for advice. Ramsey’s co-host Jade Warshaw piled on, “It’s time to take the […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on February 1, 2024. “I’m not ready to repent over this. I don’t have to,” Alistair Begg boldly declared in a sermon titled “Compassion vs. Condemnation” at the non-denominational Parkside Church in Cleveland last Sunday. The accusations being leveled against Begg are that he has caved to the LGBTQ movement […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on January 31, 2024. The Kansas City Chiefs have booked their fourth trip to the Super Bowl in five years behind the leadership of head coach Andy Reid and quarterback Patrick Mahomes, two of the best individuals ever at their respective roles. With 269 total wins, Reid has […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on January 26, 2024. “Whether Trump means it or not is kind of irrelevant because he’s saying the things to people who are hurting,” filmmaker Michael Moore told a gathering of voters in his 2016 documentary TrumpLand. “It’s why every beaten down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on January 19, 2024. “Kind of disturbing” is how journalist Katie Couric described an Axios piece about how Donald Trump built an insurmountable lead in Monday’s Iowa caucus by catering to evangelical MAGA pastors. “They say obviously they embrace Trump because of the Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v Wade,” […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on January 10, 2024. “MAY THEY ROT IN HELL,” Donald Trump posted in all caps on Truth Social Christmas Day. “AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!” Although this message was par for the course when it comes to Trump, it also offered a moment that caught many people off guard. “What […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on January 2, 2024. It’s ironic that in a movement built on prophetic dreams where God supposedly reveals the secrets of the world, apparently nobody ever receives a dream about the credible allegations of sexual abuse going on in the church. Mike Bickle is the latest example of […]
It’s hard to believe it’s been four years since I left my cleaning business with the intention of being a stay-at-home dad and pursuing my writing. Three months after the transition, BioLogos published my first piece, which was a co-written interview about my album Consider the Stars. Then four months after that, I began writing […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on December 27, 2023. “One of the great sins we have had is ‘masculinizing’ the church,” Pope Francis admitted to the International Theological Commission last month in what could potentially become the most impactful theological repentance of the year. “Women have a capacity for theological reflection that is […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on December 14, 2023. Twenty-three years after John Piper called Doug Wilson an “absolute genius at sarcasm and irony,” pop Calvinists are still wringing their hands over how to respond to the conservative Reformed pastor from Moscow, Idaho. “You’re very clever, really clever. And I think we need […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on December 8, 2023. Few activities fuel a connection with Advent like reading the news. Stories about weather catastrophes, wars and rumors of wars have many Christians across the theological and political spectrum wondering if the apocalypse is near and perhaps finding themselves praying the words, “Even so, […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 30, 2023. “Every IFB church is a powder keg ready to explode,” says Eric Skwarczynski on Let Us Prey: A Ministry of Scandals, which released last weekend on HBO Max and Investigation Discovery. The four-part docuseries follows the stories of sexual abuse survivors within the Independent Fundamental […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 21, 2023. The Satanic Temple agreed to a settlement with Pennsylvania’s Saucon Valley School District last week for $200,000 in legal fees and access to their buildings for their After School Satan Club. It’s another victory for those who oppose Christian supremacy by appealing to the same religious […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 13, 2023. The latest theater of conservative evangelicalism’s multiple-front spiritual warfare cosplay is being dubbed the “War on Technology” by Cypress Baptist Church of Benton, La. It began as a gathering in October 2022 that promised to “help families win the technology battle in their homes.” […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 7, 2023. The Association of Certified Biblical Counselors has removed Bill Shannon, women’s pastor and counseling pastor at John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church, from their approved counselors list due to credible allegations of protecting abusers and harming women. The accusations were cosigned in September by Hohn Cho, […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 1, 2023. One of the most dismissive and hurtful statements ex-evangelicals hear from our conservative evangelical family and friends after we deconstruct their walls is: “You must have never been saved to begin with.” Another way they say it is, “You must have had a head […]
Eden lay silent and still on her bed as the shadows watched from every corner of her large drab room. Each stone wall stood tall and featureless. Her latched door seemed to be a world away. And all she could hear was the sound of her breath. As she gripped her thin blanket, Eden closed […]
I appeared on the Beached White Male Podcast this week to discuss my articles about Andy Stanley, father wounds, and the war in Israel. Check it out!
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on October 26, 2023. Is it any wonder that the two most influential definitions of the “good news” in a Western society built on capitalism and retribution would be about people getting paid or being punished? In conservative evangelicalism, we see a heavy emphasis on the punishment side. […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on October 17, 2023. As someone whose ancestors immigrated to the United States from Lebanon, the faces of children suffering in the war in Israel remind me of my own children. The limp body of a 5-year-old girl being carried through the rubble, and the bare, bloody shoulders […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on October 10, 2023. With war raging once again in Israel and Palestine, it seems far more people have opinions to proclaim about it than openness to listening. After the horrific attacks carried out by Hamas in which more than 1,600 people were killed and many more injured, […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on October 5, 2023. “Farewell, Andy Stanley.” So seems to be the response from Al Mohler, Christianity Today, and many other evangelicals to Stanley’s defense of North Point Community Church hosting the Unconditional Conference for LGBTQ Christians and their parents. Sam Allberry, writing for Christianity Today, argues Stanley “seriously undermined” a “New Testament sexual ethic.” As […]
This article originally appeared at ‘Reading Religion,’ a publication of the American Academy of Religion. In Religion’s Power: What Makes It Work, Robert Wuthnow investigates the power dynamics of religion by studying the mechanisms by which it is practiced. Drawing on his ethnographic and historical experience in sociology and religion, he proposes that religion’s power to […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on October 2, 2023. We first met her nearly two decades ago as a neatly wrapped character named Shannon Hendrickson in a bestselling “Boy Meets Girl” book written by her ex-husband about his theology of courtship after kissing dating goodbye. The character we were told about had led […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on September 21, 2023. LGBTQ kids who grow up in conservative evangelical families tend to have father wounds because evangelicals view LGBTQ people as given over by God to a reprobate mind for the degrading of their bodies and therefore eternally condemned. The challenge many conservative evangelical parents […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on September 19 2023. How can journalists reach evangelicals who get triggered by the term “climate change”? This is the question Rebecca Randall asks in a piece last week for BioLogos. Despite the fact that 97% of scientists accept climate science and 92% of Americans who identify as “highly religious” […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on September 8, 2023. With week one of the college football season kicking off last weekend, fans across the country began dreaming once again about the gridiron glories of violence and victory. And for the parts of American culture shaped by white evangelicals, these simmering passions carry culture […]
One struggle I have as a religion writer is with how to cover a topic that includes voices that trigger and hurt people I care about. For example, if I was a political analyst for CNN, I would need to cover Republicans and Democrats. And while I would be very focused on exposing the Christian […]
“For example, a housewife in her backyard may be asked by a man how to get to the freeway. At that point she is giving a kind of leadership. She has superior knowledge that the man needs and he submits himself to her guidance. But we all know that there is a way for that […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on August 29, 2023. Commemorating the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington is an opportunity to reflect not only on the vision of Black liberationists, but also on how conservative white evangelicals’ resistance to change is continuing through an entitlement to power rooted in insecurity. Al Sharpton, […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on August 22, 2023. Note: This article includes an explicit discussion of sexuality. Desiring God’s latest installment of cheap Screwtape Letter knockoffs features Greg Morse attempting to mimic C.S. Lewis’ classic novel by writing a letter from a “marriage counselor” demon named Grimrod to his dear nephew Globdrop. In […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on August 18, 2023. “Wicked looks at what happened in the land of Oz — but from a different angle,” the most popular show on Broadway advertises. “So much happened before Dorothy dropped in.” As we shuffled out of the theater at the end of the show, we were […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on August 11, 2023. Last Saturday afternoon, historian Kristin Du Mez sat down at her computer to see if her new friend Lindsay Booker had posted any updates about the gathering Booker organized earlier that day at the Madison Library in Huntsville, Ala. Even though Du Mez was […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on August 7, 2023. Christian supremacism has gotten completely out of hand in the United States. We’ve seen it in the insurrection warfare of the New Apostolic Reformation, the battle against librarians by the likes of Kirk Cameron, the desire to punish homosexuality by Al Mohler, Dan Patrick’s claims that God wrote the […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on July 28, 2023. I wasn’t allowed to watch Toy Story 2 when I was 21 years old because the trailer depicted a group of Barbies in bikinis led by Tour Guide Barbie. So when I found out some influential conservatives were having a conniption fit over the Warner Bros new Barbie movie, […]
I appeared on the Beached White Male Podcast today to discuss my story as well as three pieces I’ve written on eugenics, Tim Scott and complementarianism. Check it out!
I appeared on the Full Mutuality podcast today to discuss the news over the past year about Bob Jones University. Check it out!
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on July 21, 2023. I haven’t attended church in almost four years and can’t imagine going back. I don’t share this lightly. I was so dedicated to the church that I structured my entire career spanning two decades cleaning restrooms and floors in order to have the flexibility to volunteer many hours […]