As 2022 draws to a close, I wanted to reflect back on what I’ve learned this year as a religion writer. The vast majority of my articles are published by Baptist News Global, which is a reader-supported, independent news organization that covers “the people, events and ideas that are shaping American religion and culture.” They […]
This article originally appeared on December 30, 2022 at Baptist News Global. At the turning of the year, religion writers and pundits reflect on the stories and conversations that shaped us and look forward to the conversations ahead. So far, Baptist News Global has shared a piece about how content creators shaped these conversations across a variety of platforms, as […]
This article originally appeared on December 20, 2022 at Baptist News Global. Amy Grant is hosting her niece’s same-sex wedding on her farm, and Franklin Graham wants everyone to know he disapproves. Of course, this should come as no surprise to Graham. In a 2013 interview with the LGBTQ news outlet PrideSource, Grant said she knew by the […]
This article originally appeared on December 16, 2022 at Baptist News Global. In a world where peer-reviewed evolutionists are taken seriously and LGBTQ people are treated as peers, Bob Jones University and Sermon Audio have come up with a conservative evangelical counter-offensive known as The Vault. The two organizations have joined forces to build a doomsday vault […]
This article originally appeared on December 5, 2022 at Baptist News Global. Among the many reasons people are leaving institutional churches, there is one that runs deeper than them all. John MacArthur says it’s because “they deconstruct the Bible to give room for their pet sins and tolerances.” The Gospel Coalition says it’s because we have church […]
This story originally appeared at Baptist News Global on December 1, 2022. What if death isn’t the enemy we often think it is? And what if reconsidering our theology of death might help us live deeper into the union of self and neighbor? In four weeks, Christians across the world will celebrate the birth of Jesus. […]
This story originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 22, 2022. Remember the parable where Jesus warned against thankfulness in corporate worship? It’s a well-known parable in Luke 18, the first in a trilogy of scenes that question our assumptions about status and blessing in relationship with others. In the third scene, Jesus tells a rich […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 16, 2022. The American Civil War was “a war with a musical soundtrack,” according to Christian McWhirter. And that soundtrack continues to echo through the American church today, illustrating the different life experiences of Black and white Christians in particular, once again “marching as to war,” […]
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 8, 2022. “Should adultery be illegal? What about homosexuality?” These were questions posed to Al Mohler from a Christian schoolteacher who passed along ideas from a class discussion with his students. Four days before today’s mid-term elections, Mohler answered these questions in his daily Briefing. Mohler identifies […]
This article originally appeared on October 31, 2022 at Baptist News Global. Oct. 31 marks a holiday where many religious homes clash over how to view the relationship between material and spiritual reality. As a young child in a church affiliated with the General Association of Regular Baptists, I experienced Oct. 31 through the innocent presence […]
This article originally appeared on October 27, 2022 at Baptist News Global. One of the biggest trends in entertainment today is true crime dramas about serial killers. Forbes reported in 2020 that it was a “great year for fictional serial killers.” And now, two years later, our fascination with mass murder is continuing, but with a focus on true […]
This article originally appeared on October 20, 2022 at Baptist News Global. Donald Trump is in the news again making negative statements about American Jews while flattering his evangelical fanbase. In my piece last week, I wrote about how the dispensationalist obsession with the end times led evangelicals to embrace the Christian Zionist beliefs that “modern-day Israel […]
This article originally appeared on October 11, 2022 at Baptist News Global. There is a reason why one of the most influential worship songs of the past quarter century expresses a truth that could turn evangelicalism upside down and yet has been repeatedly rejected and banned by conservative evangelical complementarian Calvinists. Growing up in an independent […]
This article originally appeared on October 6, 2022 at Baptist News Global. “Please don’t tell my husband I said anything. These men think they can bully women into submission.” I hear statements like this from Christian women in complementarian marriages quite often. But while many of these women are aware of the weight they bear, they […]
This article originally appeared on September 26, 2022 at Baptist News Global. The Baptist youth group I grew up in was made up of three main categories of students — the Christian school students, the homeschool students, and the public school students. Every fall, as we gathered on Wednesday evenings just a few short hours after our […]
This article originally appeared on September 15, 2022 at Baptist News Global. Few stories in the Bible highlight the complexities of deconstruction and the way it divides us into speaking very different theological languages like the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. “What did Babel’s builders do wrong? Why did God punish them as he did? […]
This article originally appeared on September 2, 2022 at Baptist News Global. “Make education violent again” seems to be the slogan for a public school district in Missouri. The Cassville School District decided on June 16, 2022, to bring back spanking after parents requested for the schools to spank their kids. In a scene reminiscent of […]
This article originally appeared on August 29, 2022 at Baptist News Global. Last week, it was the almost humorous riff on beards as signs of God’s favor on manly men. This week, it’s a not-at-all funny critique of Critical Race Theory and intersectionality — by a white man who is the father of a multiracial set of […]
This article originally appeared on August 23, 2022 at Baptist News Global. There is perhaps no greater trend in American Christianity than deconstructing the theology and ethics of white evangelicalism. Books, articles, podcasts and even music are being created daily to explore the reasons why so many people are leaving the faith they’ve known. And there […]
This article originally appeared on August 15, 2022 at Baptist News Global. “We were a nation founded upon, not the words of our founders, but the words of God because he wrote the Constitution.” So said Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick at the second Conservative Political Action Conference held this year with the theme “Awake, Not Woke.” The conference was […]
This article originally appeared on August 10, 2022 at Baptist News Global. The internet droned on last week about the future of artificial intelligence and the human race when people began to compute that George Jetson was born on July 31, 2022. The Jetsons premiered in 1962 with a storyline that was set in 2062 and George Jetson being […]
This article originally appeared on August 1, 2022 at Baptist News Global. There is a popular trend among some evangelicals to criticize both sides of political and religious debates equally while proposing a third way that appears to be above the fray. They might say, “While the right says this and the left says that, I […]
This article originally appeared on July 25, 2022 at Baptist News Global. Imagine a world where the “land of the free and the home of the brave” operates like a fundamentalist Christian school. What kind of freedom would be possible? As difficult as it may seem to imagine Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale coming to a city near […]
This article originally appeared on July 18, 2022 at Baptist News Global. A moment more than 13 billion years in the making happened last Tuesday as the James Webb Space Telescope revealed its first five images to the world. Hailed by NASA as “the dawn of a new era in astronomy,” the images revealed a deep field of […]
This article originally appeared on July 5, 2022 at Baptist News Global. Pro-life conservative evangelicals erupted into unanimous jubilation at the news of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. But while united in their celebration, they are divided in their vision for the future of the pro-life movement and unaware of its past. Karen Swallow […]
This article originally appeared on June 20, 2022 at Baptist News Global. “This whole genealogical effort could lead to a new genre of bumper stickers, I think, like ‘My forefathers were Philistines’ or like ‘Goliath was in my family’ or ‘I come from a long line of Hittite kings’ or here’s a good one, ‘My […]
This article originally appeared on May 25, 2022 at Baptist News Global. In the wake of the Guidepost report that Southern Baptist Convention executive leaders covered up knowledge of sexual abuse for decades, we are reminded once again of how religious abuse has deeply traumatized millions of our neighbors. One of the ways evangelicals have processed a […]
This article originally appeared on May 10, 2022 at Baptist News Global. Few topics enflame conservative evangelicalism’s self-righteous ire like the topic of abortion. We’ve all seen social media posts from friends that depict or describe abortion procedures in the most graphically violent ways in order to shock us. Who could possibly be in favor of violently […]
This article originally appeared on April 27, 2022 at Baptist News Global. Imagine if the online theological discourse that led to the rise of Donald Trump and the conservative determination to use political power and misinformation to push their agenda on others was owned by a man rich and powerful enough to buy and control it for $44 billion. That is essentially […]
This article originally appeared on April 6, 2022 at Baptist News Global. While many conservative evangelicals focus on fighting culture wars in an attempt to save the United States from progressive ideologies, New York Times bestselling author Preston Sprinkle seems to have accepted that Christians should reimagine their identity as exiles rather than as culture warriors. As host […]
This article originally appeared on March 24, 2022 at Baptist News Global. When Lia Thomas touched the wall during the 500-yard freestyle swim and became the first NCAA Division I national champion who self-identifies as a transgender athlete, many people quietly wondered whether her victory was something to celebrate or lament. On one hand, historic victories from underdogs […]
This article originally appeared on March 14, 2022 at Baptist News Global. “Do you affirm the doctrine of inerrancy as articulated in the Chicago Statement?” demands Denny Burk, professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, tweeting his line in the sand to defend what he thinks are attacks against historic orthodoxy by the ever-so-dangerous Beth Allison Barr. Bringing up […]
This article originally appeared on March 7, 2022 at Baptist News Global. After Baptist News Global broke the news that Voddie Baucham was being asked to accept a nomination to become the next president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Theobros could hardly contain their excitement. Owen Strachan tweeted: “What Voddie saw TEN YEARS AGO, many evangelicals still refuse to see. […]
This article originally appeared on February 24, 2022 at Baptist News Global. The first time I saw pornography was at a public school playground during summer break when I was 8. I had ridden my bike over to the school to play, when a couple teenage boys called me over and said they wanted to show […]
Check out my interview on the Gravity Leadership Podcast! EPISODE DESCRIPTION: “Many have listened with great interest to the Christianity Today podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill,exposing the leadership abuses of Mark Driscoll and the fallout among the members of his church. On this episode we will take a closer look at how […]
This article originally appeared on February 1, 2022 at Baptist News Global. “I think it’s time to drop the virtual option,” says Tish Harrison Warren in an op-ed for the New York Times, arguing that churches should stop livestreaming their services. She explains: “Bodies, with all the risk, danger, limits, mortality and vulnerability that they bring, are […]
This article originally appeared on January 24, 2022 at Baptist News Global. Owen Strachan woke up on Martin Luther King Jr. Day with decades of injustice weighing heavily on his mind: Men with long hair. Strachan, who is former president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and is now provost and research professor of […]
This article originally appeared on January 18, 2022 at Baptist News Global. Let’s call this controversy Wrap-Coat-Gate. Trustees and administrators at Bob Jones University recently grew so alarmed over a wrap coat designed by a student for a class project that they publicly called the student’s work sacrilegious, blasphemous, dishonoring to Jesus, offensive, and egregious. […]
This article originally appeared on January 5, 2022 at Baptist News Global. When Beth Moore left the Southern Baptist Convention in 2021 and soon after was seen in a photo serving Communion at an Anglican church, the social media outrage became a reminder that few people seem to rile up Southern Baptist and conservative evangelical TheoBros as much […]
This article originally appeared on December 20, 2021 at Baptist News Global. After having what will one day be recognized as a Hall of Fame NFL career, Demaryius Thomas died unexpectedly of what police are calling “a medical issue” in his Georgia home on Dec. 9, 2021. He would have turned 34 on Christmas Day. As […]
This article originally appeared on December 9, 2021 at Baptist News Global. As we reflect back on 2021, one theme will be how three of the major conservative evangelical denominations have become compromised by sexual abuse and sexual abuse coverups. The Presbyterian Church in America became embroiled in a scandal over the past couple years when a […]
This article originally appeared on November 29, 2021 at Baptist News Global. When David Gushee wrote his article “The Deconstruction of American Evangelicalism” for Baptist News Global, he kicked off what would become the focus of the next stage in the debate between conservative evangelical complementarians and their egalitarian counterparts. That debate took the form of […]
Check out my interview on the Full Mutuality podcast! EPISODE DESCRIPTION: “Author and musician Rick Pidcock joins the show to share his thoughts on Christianity Today‘s podcast, ‘The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill,’ evangelicalism’s take on deconstruction and the ex-evangelical phenomenon, and the platforming of former evangelical pastor Josh Harris. You can read Rick’s […]
This article originally appeared on November 23, 2021 at Baptist News Global. Christian churches in the United States often take advantage of national holidays to communicate particular theological points. For example, Memorial Day and Veterans Day provide opportunities to celebrate the idea of Jesus sacrificing his life on the Cross for spiritual freedom. Independence Day triggers […]
This article originally appeared on November 18, 2021 at Baptist News Global. It was an overcast morning near Smyrna, Tenn., as a small Cessna private jet abruptly descended toward the earth. Seven people on board, who had been looking forward to a trip to Palm Beach, Fla., were now taking their final breaths. And as the […]
This article originally appeared on November 12, 2021 at Baptist News Global. The majority of my adult life has been spent within the conservative evangelical Calvinistic world of Desiring God, Grace to You, Ligonier and The Gospel Coalition. Having grown up in the rules-focused world of the independent, fundamental Baptists, these ministries provided a much-needed relief […]
During my time at Northern Seminary, two of the most impactful theological insights for me had to do with learning to recognize my theological assumptions and examining the consequences of my beliefs. In her new book, Why Is There Suffering: Pick Your Own Theological Expedition, Bethany Sollereder provides a brilliant path for exploring how our theological […]
This article originally appeared on November 3, 2021 at Baptist News Global. On the heels of the recent whistleblower accusations against Facebook, the social media company has decided to change its primary organizational name and logo. Founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted the irony of the name-change timing during the launch of Meta, Facebook’s new parent company brand. “With […]
This article originally appeared on September 27, 2021 at The Center for Christogenesis. The sound of a thousand people singing filled the room in perfect sync with the driving sound of the band. As we sang and played, my eyes looked around the room. These were people whose stories I knew. As a worship leader, […]
This article originally appeared on September 27, 2021 at Baptist News Global. The openly queer Christian artist Semler was elated to report the breaking news that the parking attendant at a Switchfoot concert supports gay rights. And that wouldn’t be the only surprise of the night. As they drove to their parking space, Semler joked about how huge […]