THE QUESTION: How much should local religious congregations, agencies, and charities pay their leaders? THE GUY’S ANSWER: This topic is brought to mind by three simultaneous articles published in December. In the first, The New York Times “Ethicist” column responded to an anonymous employee of a non-profit agency that works on consumer rights and economic literacy who’s upset that due to a  financial crisis its management cut the staff by a fourth. This was said to be necessary to protect the... Read more

THE QUESTION: What do today’s U.S. Protestants believe about the use of alcoholic beverages? Have attitudes softened? THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: Yes, without question. And there’s been a bit of soul-searching about this in America’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. Its press service reports ongoing concern especially about teen alcohol abuse has increased somewhat since recent Senate testimony about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Catholic prep school experience. Further, just afterward “USA Today” reported a study showing from... Read more

THE QUESTION: Many archaeologists have raised skeptical questions about the Bible’s historical accounts, especially in the Old Testament. How do conservatives respond? THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: A September headline in London’s tabloid Daily Express proclaimed a “Bible Bombshell,” with “stunning new evidence that could prove” Joshua’s invasion of the Holy Land following the Exodus from Egypt. However, in the article the archaeologists involved, David Ben-Shlomo of Israel’s Ariel University and Ralph Hawkins of Averett University in Virginia, gave only carefully framed... Read more

PAUL’S QUESTION: Can “evangelicals” and “charismatics” worship together? THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: Ah, those “worship wars” that have so roiled and reshaped U.S. Protestant churches this past half-century. The questioner, a music teacher, has attended “evangelical” churches with relatively “traditional” worship compared with the “contemporary” style associated especially with “charismatic” churches. “We’ve gone through a monumental shift of style in our lifetime, which has never happened before,” says Ed Stetzer of Wheaton College (Illinois). Music is only part of the... Read more

THE QUESTION above, and current developments depicted below, involve skeptics’ long-running assertion that modern science makes religion outmoded and it should be discarded as irrational. Is faith still credible in our scientific age? How do devout scientists view this supposed “war” between science and religion? THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: Gary Saul Morson, a Russia expert at Northwestern University, offers an important analysis of why the purportedly “scientific” — and horridly bloodthirsty — Soviet regime worked zealously to exterminate all religion... Read more

NORMAN’S QUESTION: Do the Old and New Testaments belong together? (Commenting from a stance critical toward Christians, Norman adds that ignorance of history underlies their “comfortable view that the Bible is one and that there is no problem between the Old and New Testaments.”) THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: This classic and complex theme is erupting anew thanks to a U.S. Protestant megachurch pastor cited below. Also, churches have long faced strife over the authority and interpretation of the Old Testament... Read more

THE QUESTION: Should national flags be displayed, or patriotic songs be sung, during Christian worship? THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: This issue comes to mind amid the seasonal fuss over professional football players’ political protests during the pregame National Anthem. Not to mention veterans organizations’ indignation when non-veteran Donald Trump temporarily refused to lower the White House flag to half-staff in honor of the late prisoner of war John McCain. Considering the emotions in such secular situations, it’s unsurprising that the... Read more