"Test everything; hold fast to what is good."
Not all of the Big Four carry equal weight. I’ve commended Jonathan Dudley’s excellent book, Broken Words, for his frank and insightful assessment of the four tribal markers that characterize the boundaries of American evangelicalism: abortion, homosexuality, evolution and environmentalism. Opposition to all four of those constitutes evangelical tribal identity. Such opposition need not be [...]
David Sessions offers some interesting thoughts on the Rev. Billy Graham’s unusual decision to aggressively enter a partisan political dispute — “Why Moderate Billy Graham Supports North Carolina Gay Marriage Ban“: But what appears to be a departure for Graham actually illustrates an ongoing dilemma for evangelical Christians: the fact that they’ve realized they need [...]
Here’s another downside to evangelical tribalism: It makes evangelicals more prone to being suckered by affinity scams. Two brothers ran a phony $6 million securities offering and Ponzi scheme that preyed on evangelical Christians tied to a private school, according to federal prosecutors. The SEC sued Usee Inc. and brothers Terry Wiese, 64, of Little [...]
“We live in a time when the claiming of a religious identity has become more important than abiding in what that truth implies,” Marilynne Robinson said last month at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College. That “claiming of a religious identity” and the elevating of it above the meaning, content or substance [...]
I want to mention one more problem that arises from biblicism, or biblical literalism: It fosters conflict. It fosters really nasty conflict — the kind that starts with the belief that The Other Side must be evil and then goes downhill from there with little hope of resolution. Biblicism invites this kind of conflict because [...]
Books & Culture just posted a review of the latest from Christian Smith, a sociologist who has produced some of the most insightful and useful studies of American evangelical Christianity. Smith’s new book tackles a subject essentially important to evangelical culture and faith: biblicism, or biblical literalism. He’s against it, as is clear from his [...]
The good news for any filmmaker planning to do a Civil War movie is that you can tap into a pre-existing fan-base of enthusiastic Civil War buffs who are sure to generate plenty of buzz for the project. The bad news is that this same fan-base might just kill your movie if you don’t get [...]
Follow Patheos on
Copyright 2008-2013, Patheos. All rights reserved. Terms of Service | Patheos Privacy Policy | Site developed by Avalon Consulting, LLC
Follow Patheos
Progressive Christian: