Hello from Italy! (And thanks to JS for alerting to some of the links below.) Yes, Emily: The way my experience played out makes sense within the culture that shaped me. Of course, the principles about gender and sex that we absorbed in SBC institutions and broader evangelical culture were not explained as principles. Instead, they made up an invisible web of discourse within which we learned to negotiate. If the first thread of that web is that women’s bodies... Read more

By David Fitch, Professor at Northern Seminary One approaches the concluding chapter of The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone, the architect of the Black theology Movement, with great anticipation. We come with deep longings to see change. We come asking, “what shall we do in the face of the horrific racism that rules our society? What is the good news in all of this?” The gospel for James Cone is: …more than a transcendent reality, more than “going... Read more

Perhaps the most neglected and disputed aspect of Christian faith is the person and role of the Holy Spirit. We (most of us anyway) will recite the Apostle’s Creed with sincerity and affirm a Trinitarian doctrine of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius... Read more

Not long ago I posted on the loss of the evangelical soul, a post in part stimulated by the tone of conversations I am witnessing on FB. Everybody’s a prophet these days and thinks so because, so they think, they are speaking truth to power. They’re not. They’re yelling in a barrel full of self-appointed prophets. Today’s post moves into signs of evangelicalism’s demise. Let’s get the standard definition of evangelicalism on the table first: an evangelical is committed to... Read more

By David Fitch, Professor at Northern Seminary. James Cone’s The Cross and The Lynching Tree, although six years old, still has much to teach about living into Christ’s Kingdom in regard to the systemic injustice of racism around us. Cone recently passed away and is recognized as the founder and leader of the black theology movement. Cone’s book is a study in the paradigm of liberation theology and its method. In what follows I review it as a foundation for... Read more

By Dr. David W. Opderbeck Seton Hall University School of Law Professor of Law Director, Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology Livingston Baker Research Fellow CIPP / US The Supreme Court’s Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission opinion was released recently.  It landed with more of a drip than a splash.  Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion held that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had shown specific animus towards the Christian baker, Jack Phillips.  However, the majority opinion did not decide the more difficult question whether... Read more

Not long ago I posted this: It’s time to bury the word “evangelical.” It’s both past time to bury it but it’s also time yet again to bury it. I stand by that more today than even when I posted it. The term is now useless. Roy Moore lost but the vote in Alabama proved that evangelicalism as a movement has lost its moorings. The Political Turn of Evangelicalism is undeniable, and I spoke about and against this in both The... Read more

It’s time to bury the word “evangelical.” It’s both past time to bury it but it’s also time yet again to bury it. I have a strategy for doing so, but first this: Kate Shellnutt, at CT, writes, More than 80 years ago, the first president of Princeton Evangelical Fellowship aspired for the organization to allow students “to enjoy Christian fellowship one with another, to bear united witness to the faith of its members in the whole Bible as the inspired... Read more