There is no safe space in John Piper’s cruel theology
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on June 30, 2026. Jesus orchestrated the brutal murder of your teenage friend and her mom. So says John Piper in a recent “Ask Pastor John” podcast episode titled, “Sovereignty and My Murdered Friend.” The podcast begins by acknowledging it’s a “very heavy episode” before asking people to donate […]
Let’s talk about how Cities Church treats women
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on January 21, 2026. “David Easterwood is a pastor here. He is also the director of the Field Office for ICE in St. Paul. So someone who claims to worship God, teaching people in this church about God, is out there overseeing ICE agents,” civil rights lawyer Levy […]
All are welcome — except those we don’t like
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 12, 2025. While white evangelicals like to brand their churches to their neighbors as cool and kind, their behavior toward their neighbors often is cruel. I recently came across a perfect example of this through the social media posts of Nate Schlomann, executive pastor of Village […]
Here’s another reason Calvinism is morally bankrupt
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on September 4, 2025. Note: This article includes detailed discussion of child sexual abuse in the context of why God allows suffering in the world. Now the TheoBros are using the gospel to spread indifference about the rape and murder of 10-year-old girls. This week’s example of […]
Hegseth’s nomination fits the TheoBro pattern creating abuse culture
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 26, 2024. Given the state of their churches, it makes total sense that conservative evangelicals would elect a president who has a history of bragging about sexual assault. And it also makes sense that this sexually abusive president would nominate five people to his cabinet who […]
White Calvinist theology has gone to hell
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on August 23, 2024. “They’re going to hell,” declared Founders Ministry president and Southern Baptist pastor Tom Ascol. In a scene reminiscent of Oprah Winfrey’s “You Get a Car” giveaway, Ascol proclaimed, “Kamala Harris is going to hell, … (Anne) Branigin is going to hell, Jake Tapper is […]
What grief, denial and fear have to do with the evangelical fascination with Trump
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 […]
Pope Francis vs. John Piper: Two views of ‘masculinizing’ the church
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 […]
In dialogue with Doug Wilson and the ‘pop Calvinists,’ at least Wilson is consistent
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 […]
How Michael W. Smith, George W. Bush and one popular worship song expose the problem of Calvinist theology and politics
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 […]
What has John MacArthur actually said about race, slavery and the Curse of Ham?
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 […]
BNG column sparks Thanksgiving Twitter war of words between complementarians and two female scholars
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 […]
Interview: “Josh Harris, Evangelicalism, and Deconstruction, with Rick Pidcock”
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 […]
The five pillars of conservative evangelical Calvinism that are incompatible with love
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 […]
Knocking down the straw man of theological liberalism
This article originally appeared on August 30, 2021 at Baptist News Global. One of the growing frustrations many deconstructing Christians, ex-evangelicals, liberationist and liberal theologians share is how conservative organizations like The Gospel Coalition constantly misrepresent us through “straw man” fallacies. In the field of logic, a “straw man” is when somebody twists or exaggerates another […]
I lived in the culture of ‘The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill,’ and there’s one part of the story that’s wrong
This article originally appeared on August 24, 2021 at Baptist News Global. The more people talked about Christianity Today’s new podcast, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, the more I knew I eventually would need to listen to it. In 2004, my wife and I left our families and friends behind to move across the country and […]
Meet the Theobros, who want you to know they’re right about everything
This article originally appeared on June 28, 2021 at Baptist News Global. In this world of spiritual warfare, theological compromise and Republicans losing the White House, there lives a group of men, mostly white, who put on their armor, saddle up and ride into the glorious battlefield known as Twitter. They alone wear the belt of […]
American Christianity in China also imports gender bias and Calvinism
This article originally appeared on April 9, 2021 at Baptist News Global. Imagine if America’s coalition of conspiracy theorist, cowboy Christianity had colonized its way into the world of international politics and sexual abuse cover-ups under the guise of spreading the gospel. Research scholar Mary Li Ma believes this isn’t an imaginary scenario, but a very real one […]
American Gospel: Christ Crucified is stuck in a time warp
This article originally appeared on December 28, 2020 at Baptist News Global. Based on the heated responses I’ve received to my review of the first American Gospel: Christ Alone documentary, I began to realize I should review producer Brandon Kimber’s second film, American Gospel: Christ Crucified. Kimber had read my first review and reached out to me, and despite […]
My journey from being a young-earth Creationist, Dispensationalist Republican to seeing my neighbor as worthy of my vote
This article originally appeared on October 27, 2020 at Baptist News Global. My body was tense as I sat in the white-walled classroom of my Baptist high school in Middle Georgia. With the sounds of pretend canons firing at the Civil War reenactment across the street, I listened to my teacher tell us about how President […]
Six ways ‘American Gospel’ is small-minded and abusive
This article originally appeared on August 14, 2020 at Baptist News Global. I grew up so terrified of God’s wrath that I drove through a stoplight while staring at my speedometer, afraid I’d lose my salvation for breaking God’s law in Romans 13 by going 36 mph in a 35-mph zone. When my grandfather died, I […]
In ‘Hamilton’ King George has Calvin on his side
I watched “Hamilton” last night for the first time. And I was struck by the parallels in King George’s song You’ll Be Back to the Calvinistic view of God. The lyrics say: “The price of my love’s not a price that you’re willing to pay …Now you’re making me mad …And when push comes to shoveI will […]
Uncategorized
This article originally appeared on September 17, 2019 at Worship Overflow. You may have noticed over the past few articles I’ve posted that they’ve each been listed as “Uncategorized.” At first glance, this may appear to be due to laziness on my part. But in a weird way, it has actually been a healing exercise for […]