Artists Are the Antidote to Authoritarianism

Last updated on: March 31, 2025 at 8:34 am By Tim Suttle

Artists Resisting Authoritarian Regimes There’s a reason authoritarians fear poets, musicians, and storytellers. Artistic expression constitutes a powerful form of resistance to authoritarian regimes. When governments ignore civil rights and erode freedoms, artists become dissidents by definition. Every act of free expression becomes a form of rebellion. “Totalitarian regimes fear poets more than soldiers,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “because soldiers can be defeated, but ideas cannot be killed.” It’s possible that nothing could be more important to the future of America... Read more

Why Christian Faith Must Evolve—or Risk Dying

Last updated on: March 10, 2025 at 11:57 am By Tim Suttle

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Deconstruction is normal. A couple times each year I remind my congregation that my job is not to speak as the expert proclaiming what is officially true for us, and to demand they accept what I say. That’s fundamentalism, which is dangerous. We have a different agreement goes something like this: My job as a pastor—and as a writer and an artist— is to crawl on my belly up to the edge of the vast and endless canyon of the... Read more

The Embarrassingly True Story of the Names of God

Last updated on: June 9, 2024 at 4:42 pm By Tim Suttle

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If you’re using the name Jehovah, you’re doing it wrong. Here’s why. One of the most famous texts in the Bible comes from Deuteronomy 6:4. In transliterated Hebrew the first phrase reads: “Sh’ma, Yisra’el! Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad.” You should try saying it out loud. It might be the most enjoyable thing I’ve ever learned to say in Hebrew. In English, it says something like: “Hear O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD alone [or, is one].”... Read more

What if Churches Shouldn’t Have Goals?

Last updated on: January 4, 2024 at 10:01 am By Tim Suttle

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If you’re heavily involved in a church congregation right now, you might soon be asked to attend some kind of strategic planning and goal-setting process for 2024. My advice would be: don’t go. Not only that, I’d try to convince your leadership not to set goals this year at all, or ever again for that matter. I’m convinced that Churches shouldn’t have goals, mostly because goal-setting is a practice that comes from our success-obsessed culture. It’s what you do when... Read more

The Prophet Taylor Swift

Last updated on: December 21, 2023 at 10:37 am By Tim Suttle

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I’m a mid-fifties white male weaned on rock and roll. My top five all-time favorite artists are firmly cliche: Wilco, U2, Radiohead, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, & the Boss. If you knew those were my bands, you could correctly reverse-engineer my ethnography within a few percentage points. All that to say I’m probably the last guy you’d expect to become fascinated with the music of Taylor Swift. But I have. I’m not sure exactly how it happened. I was... Read more

Slamming Social Justice is Christianity Without Suffering

Last updated on: May 16, 2023 at 9:47 am By Tim Suttle

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I still remember when Glen Beck told viewers of his (then) daily FOXNews show something to the effect of: if the pastor of your church talks about the importance of social justice, then you need to find a new church. That was years ago, and I’ve heard it said time and time again by conservative commentators. The phrase social justice has functioned in much the same way the word “woke” now functions. It’s just a way to label and dismiss... Read more

Asbury Revival Dissipates Energies of Change

Last updated on: February 22, 2023 at 4:37 pm By Tim Suttle

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The 2023 Asbury revival will likely become the release valve that dissipates the energies of change created by Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements, as well as the tensions arising from white evangelicalism’s brazen embrace of Trumpism and Christian Nationalism. The last major Asbury revival was in 1970. At the time, the Civil Rights movement and Sexual Revolution had created so much tension and pressure that white evangelicalism seemed poised to heed its own prophetic arm and embrace real... Read more

Is Football Dangerous For the Fans?

Last updated on: February 10, 2023 at 9:04 am By Tim Suttle

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Football is in my blood. My dad was a high-school football coach. My childhood hero was Terry Bradshaw. Not to brag, but I was an elementary school flag football prodigy (I peaked athletically in the 6th grade). As a lifelong fan of Kansas State and Chiefs football, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t sincerely love the game. Yet, I’m always a bit troubled by how much I love football, and by the fact that football shapes us in... Read more

Why Biden’s Approval Rating is So Low

Last updated on: October 12, 2022 at 7:16 am By Tim Suttle

Rebounding from a low of 37%, President Biden’s approval rating is somewhere around 42-43% today, and both left and right wing pundits love to discuss. Why so low? What will this mean for the midterms? These hand-wringers should come to the youth group at my church and ask the students for an approval rating on their parents. Better yet, go to any high school and tally the approval rating of the administrator charged with discipline. I can tell you the... Read more

Best April Fools Prank Ever & Why Pranks Are (Usually) Dumb

Last updated on: April 1, 2022 at 1:13 pm By Tim Suttle

April Fools’ Day bothers me for several reasons. First, is there an apostrophe or no apostrophe? Is it acceptable to write “April Fools Day,” sans apostrophe? And if we are to go with an apostrophe, where do you put it? “April Fool’s Day” or “April Fools’ Day”? I’m pretty sure it is the latter, which means there is no way to write it without looking like a grammatical elitist, which is clearly not what this day is about. And how... Read more