Unfundamentalist Christians
Kevin Kruse’s new book, "One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America," engagingly traces the rise of the Christian Right as a political force in America. Read more
Kevin Kruse’s new book, "One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America," engagingly traces the rise of the Christian Right as a political force in America. Read more
Conservatives everywhere seem to think active-state liberalism is analogous to an intergalactic weakening of the representational monarchies of the Old Republic. Read more
Today is Good Friday, the day on which Christians mark the occasion of Jesus’ crucifixion. The precise day and time varies depending on which Gospel you read, but according to the historical methodologies accepted by scholars of the ancient world, there is perhaps no event that more certainly occurred in antiquity. Read more
If you’d asked what I was doing inside a megachurch that sunny Sunday morning, I wouldn’t have had a clue. I’d left my children with their dad, intending to go home and work, maybe take a walk. But after few minutes alone in the car a familiar ache returned, the one that took over whenever busyness yielded to the backdrop of my impending divorce. Read more
I love the Lord’s Prayer. The translation of it now universally recited in the English-speaking world holds a poetic, lilting quality that makes its recitation a cathartic ritual even if one holds sincere doubts about its specific words. But what exactly are those words? Many Christians, if not most, have experienced the embarrassment of rehearsing aloud – and it always feels super loud, right? – the wrong choice of “debts” or “trespasses” when the service at a new church turns... Read more
What really happened at the dawn of human existence? Were Adam and Eve real people? Was there really a Garden of Eden? Did sin really enter the world through a piece of fruit? Do Christians really have to believe all this stuff, even when science seems to point in a different direction? Read more
“Apologetics itself has become a problem. It has become a problem in both its content and its spirit.” So says the late Dallas Willard in a new book about apologetics, The Allure of Gentleness: Defending the Faith in the Manner of Jesus, (HarperOne, $26.99). In a series of talks that were compiled and edited by Willard’s daughter Rebecca Willard Heatley, Willard argues for an approach to Christian apologetics that isn’t solely based on argument, evidence and reason, but also is... Read more
This young woman was denied a birth certificate and Social Security Number by her fundamentalist, home-schooling parents, and now can't prove she exists. Read more
Spanked throughout my own childhood, I wasn't taught anything about non-violent parenting until, curious about what other options might be available to me, I researched the matter myself. Read more
Last week evangelical blogger Samuel James wrote a post in which he compared the anti-vaccine movement’s rejection of medical authority and expertise with progressive Christianity’s rejection of church authority and theological expertise. I’m sympathetic with James’ warnings against anti-intellectualism and rejection of authority, but I’m disturbed that he only identifies those tendencies in groups he disagrees with. Such characteristics cut across cultural and theological boundaries, and while the progressive Christian movement has shortcomings that merit examination, the intellectual problems of... Read more
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