Putting the Protest in Protestant
Why do evangelicals specifically and Americans more generally think that religion or politics or some kind of moral conviction needs to define all parts of personal identity? Read more
Why do evangelicals specifically and Americans more generally think that religion or politics or some kind of moral conviction needs to define all parts of personal identity? Read more
The Reformation started because Luther objected to a sales pitch. Read more
The idea of abandoning evangelicalism is not new. Low Tide How is it that a religious movement, begun in the decade after World War II, that appears to be running out of gas, caught on at exactly the same time with people who would normally rank as some of the most skeptical and irreligious? One obvious answer is politics. Evangelicalism came to national attention when believers claiming that identity entered the drama (stage right, of course)of electoral politics. That occurrence... Read more
Jamie Smith has a mildly clever take on President Trump’s comments about Christmas greetings. To Trump’s remark that we will be saying Merry Christmas again without embarrassment, Smith reminds the POTUS that the holiday is political in ways not intended: The biblical account of the birth of Jesus Christ is drenched in political significance. His genealogy in the Gospel of Matthew makes Him royalty, the heir of King David. The titles Savior and Messiah, which we imagine are merely religious,... Read more
Funny how fundamentalists were worried precisely about a vacuous, moralistic faith a century ago. But did anyone take them seriously? Read more
A conservative columnist at the Washington Post claims that evangelicals are proving their harshest critics right because they defend Donald Trump. But her reasons don't make sense. Read more
Jemar Tisby writes at CNN about Vice President Pence’s allegedly outrageous behavior at the Indianapolis Colt’s football game on Sunday (and it wasn’t violating the Fourth Commandment): Even though I agree with the players who are kneeling to protest an unjust criminal justice system, I also support Pence’s right to walk out of a football game. The real issue in the vice president’s actions isn’t free speech. It’s that his performance of outrage is opportunism of the basest and most... Read more
I was catching up on Bloggingheads TV podcasts this morning and heard Robert Wright (around minute 25) in his discussion of group psychology with Jay Van Bavel describe Donald Trump in terms that would calm everyone down if they could simply remember that the president is not a cardboard cut out of evil but simply a regular human being with the same issues of pride and selfishness that afflict all human beings. It’s just that Trump doesn’t have the same... Read more
Rare is the ill will coming from either side of the Tiber in this year of Protestantism’s 500th anniversary, but David Mills reminds Roman Catholics and Protestants why the Reformation is flawed from Rome’s perspective. It turns out that the stress on the Bible is a weakness because Protestants don’t interpret and understand Scripture in accord with — wait for it — the church: “They really know their Bible,” Catholics say of our Evangelical friends. They say it with admiration.... Read more
The controversy surrounding monuments to Confederate officers and soldiers got me wondering about how other countries deal with former dissidents. What, for instance, do the British do with American revolutionaries freedom fighters? According to Edwin Lerner, London alone has six statues of U.S. presidents. FDR wouldn’t be a surprise since his relationship to Winston Churchill was crucial to the Allies success in World War II: [Roosevelt’s] statue stands in Grosvenor Square where there has been an American presence for over... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In