Scorn Profits the Blogger, but Costs the Kingdom

Last updated on: June 14, 2012 at 3:06 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

I recently posted a piece entitled, “If You’re Selling Scorn for Conservative Christians, the Market is Hot.” The essential thesis was that some progressive Christians are so angry with conservative Christians (especially the “culture warriors”) that they are accepting uncritically, legitimating, and perpetuating caricatures about their fellow believers. Genuinely concerned that the Religious Right is harming the witness of the church, progressive Christians who fulminate against the Religious Right are actually harming the witness of the church by reinforcing negative... Read more

Evangelicals and Evolution

Last updated on: June 12, 2012 at 9:28 am By Timothy Dalrymple

A Pew survey of the 4000 evangelical leaders who attended the Third Lausanne Congress of World Evangelization in Port Town, South Africa, last year found that 47 percent of global evangelical leaders believe that “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time” — slightly more than the 41 percent who believe that “A supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form... Read more

Glee, West Wing, and Jesus: A Conversation with Stephen Prothero

Last updated on: June 11, 2012 at 9:36 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

I recently wrote a piece — in response to Stephen Prothero, writing at the CNN Belief Blog — explaining that I would celebrate the “coming out” of conservative Christians on television when they were not merely present and foils for arguments against their viewpoints, but were actually capable of explaining and defending their viewpoints coherently. The point of departure was Glee, where there is a steady drumbeat not only against bullying and derision toward gays (points on which I would... Read more

Jeremy Lin’s “Unselfish Basketball”

Last updated on: June 11, 2012 at 6:34 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

Fred Barnes at The Weekly Standard ran a great review of my recent book, “Jeremy Lin: The Reason for the Linsanity.” It begins thus: There’s a big hole in the National Basketball Association playoffs. A riveting storyline went AWOL. A level of excitement that might have gripped the final playoff series this week is sadly absent. What’s missing is a single player, Jeremy Lin, the most unlikely NBA star ever. If you’ve not heard of him, you’re worse off for... Read more

If You’re Selling Scorn for Conservative Christians, the Market is Hot

Last updated on: June 11, 2012 at 1:23 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

I recently wrote a piece entitled “What if the Culture War Never Happened,” where I encouraged progressive evangelicals — who publicly blame the conservative Christians (largely of the prior generation) of the “culture wars” for giving Christianity a bad name and driving people away from the church — not to accept uncritically what their liberal confreres tell them about the culture wars. Too many young evangelicals, in my view, question the culture wars but never question the “culture wars,” or the... Read more

Glee, Friends, and Ted Kluck’s Spitfire: The Kinds of Christians We Need on TV

Last updated on: June 6, 2012 at 5:44 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

Stephen Prothero recently wrote at CNN’s Belief Blog that Christians, like gays, are “coming out” on television. He refers to the popular show Glee, which features a gay couple, a lesbian couple, a transgender singer, and a “God Squad” of Christians whose sole purpose seems to be to provide Glee creator Ryan Murphy a foil against which to make his arguments. Prothero applauds the following conversation, which took place on the show, for showing Christians struggling with their faith and talking... Read more

When Your Heart Hangs by a Thread

Last updated on: June 6, 2012 at 1:34 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

Two weeks ago, my wife and I found ourselves in the middle of a shared nightmare. Our eight-month old had been sick intermittently for what seemed like months. After a two-week illness that culminated in pink eye and ear and sinus infections, a round of antibiotics got her free and clear for a couple days, and then something new set into her throat and lungs with a vengeance. We began to notice she was sick again on a Wednesday, and... Read more

The Glory of “For Greater Glory”

Last updated on: June 1, 2012 at 5:49 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

A few weeks ago I saw an early screening of For Greater Glory in Los Angeles. After the screening, I was prepared to write a conflicted review, one that celebrated the uplifting intentions of the film but lamented that the script was overstuffed, that it tried to tell too many stories at once and so ended up not telling any one story particularly well. Then a couple things happened: (1) as I sat through the interviews of cast and crew... Read more

LOTD: Is Bad Preaching the Problem?

Last updated on: June 1, 2012 at 10:46 am By Timothy Dalrymple

I enjoyed reading John Wilson’s thoughts in the Wall Street Journal’s “Houses of Worship” series. Wilson is the editor of Books and Culture, a voracious reader, and a bit of a gadfly to everyone, always prodding for more careful thought. What most intrigued me was this paragraph: Consider the alleged exodus of young people from the church. “We won’t lose students because we didn’t entertain them,” said the dreadlocked Philadelphia activist and preacher Shane Claiborne on Twitter. “We will lose... Read more

Talking “Linsanity” with Hugh Hewitt

Last updated on: June 1, 2012 at 1:58 am By Timothy Dalrymple

Not too long ago, I had the chance to go on Hugh Hewitt’s nationally syndicated radio program and discuss my recent book, Jeremy Lin: The Reason for the Linsanity. Hewitt (very kindly) called the book “A fantastic and very interesting read, inspiring on a lot of levels.” In the first segment, we discuss how I came to write the story, Jeremy reached a point in his second season where he was praying not to be cut from the team, how... Read more