Recently I was chatting with a Christian magazine editor and the subject of the “nones” (about which I recently blogged) came up. The question on everyone’s mind is, of course, how to attract “nones” back to church or at least how to keep millennials (many of who are perceived as abandoning church altogether) in the churches. One strategy that’s floating around is to hide, or at least not talk about, sin and repentance because supposedly millennials have no particular feelings... Read more

Note: If you are pressed for time and cannot read the whole essay below, feel free to skip to the end where I list 10 criteria. The essay describes my own history of interest in and research about “cults” and new/alternative religious groups. Developing Criteria for Recognizing a Religious Sect as a “Cult” Many religious scholars eschew the word “cult” or, if they use it at all, relegate it to extreme cases of religious groups that practice or threaten to... Read more

How Seriously Should We Take the Phenomenon of “The Nones?” According to a recent Pew-funded study of American religion, the percentage of Americans who claim to have no religious affiliation is growing. Many people are disturbed by this. Here I’d like to muse a bit about that. First, who are the “we” in the title of this blog post? “We” are American Christians, especially American Christians who take the Christian faith seriously and believe it. To be more specific, “we”... Read more

I grew up thinking of God, the God of the Bible, the “Christian God,” as “a being”–at the top of a great chain of beings but with a clear gulf fixed between him and everything else down the chain. The gulf was crossable only from God’s side and had to do with the fact that only God is eternal and uncreated. Everything else in the chain was below God and created by God. The gulf was widened by the fall... Read more

Recently I posted an essay here about “Living Theology” ending with some comments about my own desire to find and experience true New Testament Christianity as it was in the times of the apostles. That reveals my own bias toward ecclesiastical Restorationism. That is the belief that the “job” of the church in every age and place is to restore the New Testament church as much as possible. Most people know, and I readily acknowledge, that such an effort must... Read more

“Living Theology: Knowing and Following Our Resurrected Lord”   This is a talk I gave at the recent MissioAlliance Gathering in Alexandria, Virginia. The forum topic was “Living Theology: Knowing and Following Our Resurrected Lord.” (The theme of the Gathering this year was “Resurrection Life.”) I was one member of a panel; each member gave his or her own talk on the topic. I was the first to speak; two panel members used some of their time to disagree with... Read more

Is God Also Our Mother? This debate over appropriate language for God has been going on for at least half a century now. Some Christians struggle with calling God “Father” for three reasons. First, some say addressing God as Father reinforces patriarchy—the idea that males have the right to rule over and dominate females (and males with less status and power). (Yes, I know, some have expanded the term “patriarchy” to include all forms of social hierarchy.) Second, some say... Read more

Pentecostal Pacifism: A Lost (and Denied) Tradition Recently here I blogged about the supernatural and how, in my opinion, many evangelicals have neglected, if not denied, it due to a general search for respectability. Nowhere is this evangelical search for respectability more evident to me than among Pentecostals. All Pentecostal Christians pay lip service to miracles, but how many actually believe in and pray for miracles? Many do, but I would guess their number is fewer than fifty years ago.... Read more

Boys and Men Suffer Sex Abuse, Too, But It Is Under Reported and Widely Ignored My thesis here is that many more American males are victims of sexual abuse than most people know or care about. How many people would guess that, according to a recent study, twenty percent of reported incidents of sexual abuse in the active duty military involve male victims? The report admits that counting the number of male victims is a problem because many male victims... Read more

Is There (Can There Be) A “Christian Philosophy?” Many Protestants, especially those influenced by Kant’s anti-metaphysical philosophy that put religion in the realm of “practical reason” and those influenced by dialectical (anti-natural theology) theology, resist all talk of a “Christian philosophy.” (This is to say nothing of many “experiential Christians” who think “philosophy” is just a bad idea in and of itself.) For a variety of reasons and influences, modern Protestants have been reluctant to engage in, if not outright... Read more