Here’s one group that hopes to keep tabs on evangelicalism’s boundaries, but turns out — darn — it’s hard: 4. Report a church that doesn’t align with TGC’s Foundation Documents. If you find a church that doesn’t seem to be in alignment with TGC, we ask that you’d let us know. You can do so by clicking the “Report” link next to each listing. We value your input since TGC is not able to personally review each church in the... Read more
This article is part of the Patheos Public Square on the Future of Faith in America: Evangelicalism. Read other perspectives here. If someone were an evangelical in 1859 and was wondering about the future of born-again Protestantism, would he or she have predicted a fundamentalist controversy in around six decades or the rise of a cluster of institutions in the 1940s that would actually identify evangelicalism once and for all. Can we today project a church and political controversy that... Read more
If consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, color mine small. Over at the Gospel Coalition, John McDowell and John Stonestreet offer advice on how Christians should proceed after the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage. The problem is that the six points of advice only add up to four. Number One: We can change our reputation from those who hate gays to those who love them. Number Two: We must tell the truth about same-sex attraction, homosexual sin, and... Read more
Anthony Esolen is discouraged as many Christians living the United States are. The legal process does not seem to be favoring Christian conservatives and the political process seems to be undermining the privilege that Christianity used to enjoy. Here‘s how Esolen puts it: We no longer live in a culturally Christian state. We do not live in a robust pagan state, such as Rome was during the Pax Romana. We live in a sickly sub-pagan state, or metastate, a monstrous... Read more
If anyone wanted to know how difficult the argument against same-sex marriage is going to be for a certain group of evangelical Protestants, consider the following. Kevin DeYoung, who is as his name suggests much younger than I, asked 40 questions of Christians who celebrated the Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage. Forty seemed high to me, and there in lies the problem, but Kevin raised a number of sensible concerns for any serious reader of Scripture, among them: 2. What... Read more
While folks are still sorting out the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage, a little history may be useful for putting into perspective the awkwardness that comes with mixing religion and politics. Kevin Kruse’s new book on the “invention of Christian America,” a fairly recent construction as it turns out, contains some not-so-pretty episodes in the way that Republican presidents used evangelical faith. The following recounts those heady days when worship services took place — even — in the White... Read more
Lots of angst over last week’s Supreme Court decision about same-sex marriage. But should Christians act like their home has been invaded by enemies or should we live as if this world is not home? When you put the American flag in your church building, you may be suggesting a level of comfort with the nation that is unhealthy. But aside from flags — let’s see, did that also come up last week? — reactions to the Court’s decision may... Read more
Jessica Bennett explains that women and men are different: Here’s an under-140-character musing for you: the hashtag can teach us something about gender. A male Twitter user might tag that observation with something like #linguistics, #gender, or maybe #hashtags. A female user is more likely to add something like #duh. #Duh isn’t an inherently feminine response. It is, however, an example of an expressive hashtag—a hashtag that’s used not to tag a tweet (its original purpose), but to provide commentary.... Read more
Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment has had trouble getting much attention what with the murders in Charleston, the debate over the Confederate Flag, and the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act. But for all the competition in the headlines, Ross Douthat offers an interpretation that might endear the pope to all those Protestants who still have copies of Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth (I use the Pertinacious Papist’s digest of Douthat’s column to save my... Read more
People complain about celebrity pastors. Fame can make a pastor unaccountable, a lone ranger. It can also make ordinary pastors look just that — average. But what about the people — you and me — who fall for celebrity? It’s not as if a person can decide to be a celebrity. She has to do something that people — lots of them — find appealing. In which case, celebrity is as much a problem for the ordinary believer as it... Read more
Putting the Protest in Protestant
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