ratemydeity.com

Last updated on: June 22, 2016 at 9:55 pm By johnturner

Review sites protect us from the hotel that serves rubbery scrambled eggs as its “free hot breakfast,” from the physician who hacks off the wrong limb, and from the college professor who expects students to read assigned texts. We live in an internet culture saturated with review sites. Yelp, tripadvisor, angie’s list, amazon. But for the things that really matter, we’re mostly on our own. There is churchrater.com, which promises to help visitors “find a church that fits,” but it doesn’t seem... Read more

Moving Beyond “When Helping Hurts”

Last updated on: July 8, 2016 at 9:09 pm By David Swartz

This guest post comes from Steve Offutt, a professor of development studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is author of New Centers of Global Evangelicalism in Latin America and Africa (Cambridge University Press 2015) and editor of an important new book, Advocating for Justice (Baker 2016), that challenges older evangelical approaches to development work. *** When evangelicals think about how to alleviate poverty, they rely on two books: When Helping Hurts (2009), by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, and Walking with... Read more

Religious Freedom: The Contested Core of Baptist Identity

Last updated on: June 21, 2016 at 8:03 am By Chris Gehrz

Like mosques today, school prayer once caused Baptists to debate religious freedom Read more

Summer Reading List of American Protestant History

Last updated on: July 8, 2016 at 9:09 pm By Chris Gehrz

Interested in the history of American Protestantism? A few summer reading suggestions... Read more

More on Publishing and Presses

Last updated on: June 15, 2016 at 12:08 pm By Philip Jenkins

I recently posted about the prestige of different publishers, and the vast difference that makes in the academic world. If you are an academic and you publish with a famous university press, that is wonderful for your career. If you go with a vanity press, that can sink your career. That division of presses also matters in defining whether a particular issue is part of mainstream debate, or way off on the disreputable fringe. The problem in all this, though,... Read more

The Crisis of Corporate Evangelicalism (Part 1)

Last updated on: July 14, 2016 at 7:51 am By Tim Gloege

Part 1: who are the “corporate evangelicals?” These have been banner days for those of us who study conservative evangelicalism; less so for those who claim that identity. Over the last two years, the movement that once seemed to be the paragon of political discipline has come apart at the seams. This was not caused by outside forces alone; as the recent proliferation of “I’m an evangelical, but… ” commentary suggests, it stems also from an identity crisis born... Read more

Surviving Rejection on the Academic Job Market

Last updated on: June 14, 2016 at 11:31 pm By Beth Allison Barr

I still remember checking my watch and thinking vaguely about what I would eat for lunch. It was around lunchtime, so normally there wouldn’t have been anything odd about my wandering thoughts. Except that I was in the middle of a job interview for a tenure-track position. I knew from the direction of the conversation that I wasn’t going to get the job. My thoughts had thus turned to more immediate matters–my growling stomach. Indeed, after the interview was over, I... Read more

How Can Christians Love Their LGBT Neighbors? Start by Learning Their History

Last updated on: June 14, 2016 at 2:51 pm By Chris Gehrz

How studying LGBT history is a way of loving our neighbors in the wake of the tragedy in Orlando Read more

British Christians Debate “Brexit”

Last updated on: June 13, 2016 at 12:22 pm By Chris Gehrz

In nine days British voters will determine if their country remains a member of the European Union, as it’s been since 1973. (If you’re not familiar with the details of this referendum, the BBC can bring you up to speed.) Though British Christians are no longer a majority in what prime minister David Cameron insists is a “Christian country,” they may make the difference in a tightly contested campaign that has recently swung in the direction of “Brexit.” Studying the run-up to the 1975 referendum that ratified British membership in the European Economic Community (67%... Read more

The Hierarchy of Presses

Last updated on: June 10, 2016 at 6:52 am By Philip Jenkins

A learned friend once made an excellent point, which sounds like a joke but is not. The good news, he said, is that we live today in the golden age of book publishing. The bad news, though, is that we live in the golden age of book publishing. What he meant was that today, more than ever before, it is very easy to get a work published. The down side of that, though, is that it is extremely important to... Read more