Before jackboots recruit them, offer a better way
“I’ve gotten so numb to all of this,” my friend wrote after messaging me a photo of a group of agitators flying Nazi flags outside of Disney World in Florida. I responded that I understood, …
Politics
A bank full of beggars
The Parcast Network’s Conspiracy Theories podcast recently did a four-episode deep dive into the supposed mysteries of the Vatican. While some parts were interesting and some were just silly, it opened with what I thought …
Peace with Graham
One of my pastors offered a humorous shorthand for dealing with the complexities of defining American evangelicalism when I was a teenager. He repeated the joke, popular at the time, that an evangelical was anyone …
Challenging the influence of Trump and Tuberville with the love of Christ
The First Epistle to Timothy cautions us about a particular trait of “the last days.” Specifically, the presence of “Seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a …
Exvangelical: Peeps just in time for Easter
In 1953, Russian immigrant Sam Born purchased the Rodda Candy Company and promptly replaced the handcrafted marshmallow chick line with the cold mechanization of mass production to make Peeps. What was once the work of …
Profundity and Absurdity
The two aging gladiators met on a makeshift wooden platform outside the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, TN. The most famous courtroom scene in American history did not even take place in a courtroom. The …
What might the Pentecostal/Charismatic future of Evangelicalism mean?
I got my first taste of Spirit-filled higher life theology from the long-serving recently deceased pastor of First Baptist Church Atlanta, Charles Stanley. Stanley’s The Wonderful Spirit-Filled Life and its accompanying sermon series were released …
Exvangelical: Are we the good guys?
“I thought we were the good guys.” Samantha Laruso (Mary Mouser) shares her disillusionment with her dad, Daniel (Ralph Macchio) in the first episode of season three of the Netflix series Cobra Kai. Her hopes …
After the storm, opening our eyes
The sound of a train barreling over our bedroom woke us. “Do you hear that?” my wife and I asked each other simultaneously. Outside the window, the sky was illumined by lightning so frequent that …
This is how we pray today
The poem, some say, has been given to us for times when prose cannot express the heart. It’s an art form that has been used to elevate, to devastate, and to strike mood. It can …