If I were to cheat on my taxes, I could pay the amount I failed to pay plus the penalty and I’d be square with Uncle Sam. But if I were to cheat on my wife, how do I get back to square one of romance with her? I have often thought that in history societies and peoples go down a fork in the road and after doing that going back to the fork is impossible. You can’t just pay... Read more
Randall Balmer isn’t at all surprised by evangelicals’ support for Trump. Evangelicals, he says, are worldly and so they would naturally fall for a candidate as outrageous and as morally compromised as Trump: When I was growing up in the evangelical subculture, the most damning thing you could say about a fellow believer was that she or he was “worldly.” The charge of “worldliness” encompassed many things — sexual promiscuity or coarse language or lack of modesty — but it... Read more
Christian critics of the United States often have a point. The nation is guilty of many injustices and the promoters of American greatness often turn a blind eye to the enormities of American policy. But what religious critics (at least) often miss is how they play into the hand of American exceptionalism. Here’s one recent example where a participant at Urbana 2015 refused to participate in communion because of the U.S.’s sins (I won’t even ask why a parachurch organization... Read more
Randall Stephens makes a decent case for the origins of the evangelical persecution complex: Conservative politicians and activists have led a virtual parade of victimhood. Richard Nixon, who could nurse a grudge as few others could, may have been the most adept of the lot, but others picked up where he left off. Presidential candidates Barry Goldwater in 1964, George Wallace in 1968, and Ronald Reagan in 1980 implored and sometimes convinced voters that white, straight Americans were being threatened... Read more
Some pundits are scratching their heads over evangelical support for Trump: Evangelicals have for decades believed that the country was more conservative than not, more Christian than not. The bipartisanship on religious liberty and the civic faith of the country was conducive to that. Now they’ve woken up to a reality in the Obama years that this was a polite fiction. They worry that coaches getting fired over praying at schools, fire chiefs getting fired for citing scripture, bakers getting... Read more
Is Amazon’s decision to open brick-and-mortar bookstores an indication that the business is turning around. Gracy Olmstead wonders: We are sensory creatures. Our participation in the world is not just prompted by information and digital connection, but also by things such as feel, taste, touch. You can buy a copy of The Brothers Karamazov on your Kindle—or you can stroll over to the nearest bookstore on a rainy day. You can wander through the shelves, pick up a hardback copy,... Read more
It is the season of not wanting to be a Donald-Trump supporter, Islamophobic, and racially insensitive. So why can’t evangelicals just admit when they are liberal? For almost thirty years (anyone remember Michael Dukakis?), the L-word has spooked most of the people who are liberal. And yet, evangelicals persist in calling themselves everything but liberal. David Gushee is the latest: Progressive evangelicals tend toward a Radical Reformation type Gospel centered on the justice-advancing ministry and teachings of Jesus, and on... Read more
Pope Francis got a lot of attention in the press for uttering the controversial line about homosexuality, “who I am to judge?” But even the merciful Bishop of Rome during the Year of Mercy has to register his disapproval of Donald Trump (than bandwagon sure is filling up). Rod Dreher linked to the story: Inserting himself into the Republican presidential race, Pope Francis on Wednesday suggested that Donald J. Trump “is not Christian” because of the harshness of his campaign... Read more
Yes, that’s a provocative question, but sometime the excesses of evangelical and New Calvinist piety call for provocation. How, after all, should we read the following pious warm up to the hot heaving of Valentine’s Day? Were Jesus to respond to Oscar Wilde (as one day he surely will), we might imagine him saying, “Obviously everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about me.” Jesus the Romantic Everything in the world is about Jesus: every story... Read more
Peter Leithart proposes reasons for Protestants to observe Lent. I’m still not buying. PL: Lent didn’t keep Christians from converting Europe, forming Christendom, building cathedrals, celebrating carnivale. But inquisitions and the Crusades happened when Europeans avoided Lent, or did Christendom, cathedrals, and carnivale break a few eggs? PL: Lent is training in the fundamental Christian discipline of waiting. I thought Advent taught us how to wait. So many parts of the church calendar, so little understanding. PL: Lent is preparation... Read more
Putting the Protest in Protestant
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