How Mark Driscoll Gamed the Publishing Game

March 6, 2014 By Tony Jones

Years ago, Rick Warren finagled his way onto the bestseller lists. Before Purpose-Driven Life came out, Warren had hundreds of churches lined up to buy thousands of copies, all of which he bought through Pastors.com and resold to said churches. It was so effective that Warren’s marketing rep and Zondervan left his job there and wrote a book about the process. Warren vehemently disavowed that he’d done anything unethical. Instead, the 35 million copies he’d sold was not marketing but... Read more

Evangelical Pastor Turns Pro-Gay

March 6, 2014 By Tony Jones

Ken Wilson, pastor of Vineyard Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has just published a book entitled, A Letter to My Congregation, in which he explains his change of mind and heart on the issue of homosexuality. He may be the first active pastor of a large evangelical congregation to make such a switch. David Crumm at Read the Spirit has an interview with him: DAVID: Since David P. Gushee is also putting his name on the line with this book,... Read more

Scot McKnight, Please Respond to This

March 3, 2014 By Tony Jones

Reza Aslan shows his true ignorance of biblical scholarship in under three minutes: Original Sully post (with a juicy Bart Ehrman quote) here. Read more

This Is Normal Now

March 3, 2014 By Tony Jones

The above landed on our doorstep yesterday morning. At breakfast, I held it up and asked the kids what they thought. They thought nothing. There was no change on their face, there was no “yuck factor,” there was no reaction of any kind. There was, instead, a sense from a 9-year-old and a 13-year-old that this gay kiss was normative. Some will argue that even though this is now culturally normative, that doesn’t make it biblically normative. To those I... Read more

Why Is Moorohler Nervous? Because Evangelicals Are Embracing Gay Marriage

February 26, 2014 By Tony Jones

The evangelical intelligentsia is very, very nervous. That’s because opposition to same sex marriage is crumbling among the generations that will be running evangelicalism in coming years. Yesterday, we saw Moorholer attacking a couple younger evangelicals who had the gall to question Arizona’s anti-gay, pro-discrimination legislation. But as the new survey out this week from PRRI shows conclusively, evangelical opinions about gay marriage are shifting very quickly among those under 40. Here are some other findings of the survey: (more…) Read more

Can You Be Pro-Gay and Stay Evangelical? Yes…and No

February 25, 2014 By Tony Jones

My friend Jonathan Merritt and Kirsten Powers co-penned a piece on the Daily Beast titled, “Conservative Christians Selectively Apply Biblical Teachings in the Same-Sex Marriage Debate.” Their essay, written in opposition to the Arizona legislation allowing companies to refuse service to same-sex couples on religious grounds, is fair and even-handed. In fact, if anything, it’s too safe. They simply make the point that if a wedding photographer or cake-baker refuses to supply a same-sex wedding because it is “unbiblical,” they should... Read more

Evangelicals and their (Bad) Movies

February 18, 2014 By Tony Jones

I had thought we were past this. Honestly. Movies that are blatantly written and produced for evangelical audiences suck. Think Left Behind or Fireproof or The Christmas Candle. Mainstream movies that are successfully marketed to evangelicals also tend to suck. Think Evan Almighty. The Passion of the Christ is an obvious exception, and it unfortunately convinced Hollywood marketers that evangelicals can make a movie a blockbuster. But, in general, evangelicals cannot make a movie a hit. Now it’s happening again.... Read more

God Is Not Eternal

February 12, 2014 By Tony Jones

Writing a book on the atonement is like peeling the layers of an onion. Everything theological dilemma you solve only brings up two more dilemmas. So it was that I needed to write a section in the book on God’s relationship to time, because it seemed to make no sense to talk about God’s relationship to Jesus’ crucifixion unless I could explain God’s relationship to time. So a couple weeks back, I write a post arguing that God is not... Read more

See You in the Big Apple

February 7, 2014 By Tony Jones

I’ll be in NYC this weekend for three events with Phyllis Tickle, Jon Sweeney, and many other friends. You can find more info here. If you’re in the area, I’d love to see you. Read more

Bye-Bye Millennials

February 6, 2014 By Tony Jones

Here, in living color, we see the church’s failure to engage an entire generation: The graphic comes from the Public Religion Research Institute. You’ll notice that it also undermines the evangelical claim that they’re doing better with younger generations than progressive Christians. You’ll see that’s not true. In fact, the evangelical drop is more precipitous than the mainline drop — they’ve also got further to fall. And, the survey shows, as Whites lose majority in the US, they (we?) tend... Read more