Yesterday Chad Holtz left a comment to a post of mine from May 2011, What Jesus Really Meant by the Story of Lazarus, in which I suggest that the parable is not, as it’s traditionally accepted to be, intended as a lesson about the reality of a literal hell, but rather as a lesson about ourselves. In response Chad wrote: As someone who lost his pulpit for not believing in hell, I would have loved this rendering. But I think... Read more
Hi John – Though I live in New Jersey and work in New York City, I’m just now writing you from Lynchburg, Virginia. I’m visiting my four kids, who live here with their mom, who is my ex-wife. As you may know, Lynchburg is the home of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. It’s pretty much ground zero for American fundamentalist Christianity. (more…) Read more
Received this letter yesterday; my response is below it. Hi John: What’s your take on the legitimacy of pagan practices and rituals: devil worship, praying to pagan gods, etc.? Do those have real effects, or has that been exaggerated by fundamental Christians? (more…) Read more
This is the translation into Spanish of a post of mine that eventually become my post Taking God at His Word: The Bible and Homosexuality (which is included in my book UNFAIR: Christians and the LGBT Question.) Additional Spanish translations of my articles are here. Dios no nos pide que elijamos entre compasión y fe en la Biblia. (more…) Read more
Yesterday I put up a podcast episode that today I realized was too … not good enough. Too strident; too much of what I say on my blog anyway. So I’ve updated it with this podcast episode, in which I discuss some of why I’m so designed to align with outsiders. (more…) Read more
I changed the title of this episode (and uploaded a whole new version of it; I thought the original too strident). The new episode it called, What’s the deal with me and gay people, anyway? (more…) Read more
A quick thought relative to yesterday’s Are anti-gay Christians my “brothers and sisters” in Christ? The point is sometimes made that I lack insight into the mindset of a good person/Christian who also feels that homosexuality is a sin against God—that because I’ve never held that belief myself it’s not possible for me to truly understand the Christian who does. “There are many good loving [Christians] who really just don’t get it,” said one commenter to yesterday’s post. “But I’m... Read more
Got this in yesterday: Dear John, I stumbled across your blog while doing other research and was interested and then confused. Though I appreciate your loving, Christian manner and what you have to say about Christians not treating homosexuals with hell fire antics, God’s word is quite clear on the subject. (more…) Read more
The largest Protestant denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention was founded in 1845 in protest against growing anti-slavery sentiment in America. For most of the 20th century the SBC served as spiritual ground-zero for Christian white supremacists. In 1995 the SBC finally apologized for its appalling past, and announced to the world that they were no longer racist. (more…) Read more
If you’re a fan of this blog, you know that we who populate it with … words are not typical Christians. We’re … well, in the main, I would say, Unfundamentalist Christians. We think it’s perfectly okay to be gay; we don’t think that God is a jealous, angry butthead in the sky waiting to punish anyone who crosses him; we don’t think people go to hell for nothing more offensive than not being a Christian. (Most of us also... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In