I’ve occasionally been described by people slightly familiar with my work as an “evangelical apologist.” Depending on who assigns that sort of a label, this could bring any number of assumptions and connotations along with it in the mind of the giver. In my case, a good number of them are probably going to be incorrect. As a cradle Continuing Anglican, I’ve always been on the outside looking in at evangelical church culture, despite my deep appreciation for some of… Read more
May 25, 2019
Jordan Peterson and the Unbearable Task
May 25, 2019 By Esther O’Reilly
43 Comments
It’s not every day that a man confesses his sins on Twitter, but I saw it happen the other day. “If we are going to be damned for eternity for all of the terrible things we’ve done, here is my proactive list,” wrote Chad Felix Greene. Then he launched into his litany. Confession #1: Lying to his grandfather about using his credit card for a porn site. Confession #2: Being a sex worker, including sex with multiple married men that… Read more
May 17, 2019
Towards a Balanced View of Christian Womanhood
May 17, 2019 By Esther O’Reilly
34 Comments
Christian social media has been buzzing of late with a fierce renewal of the long-standing debate over the role of women in the Church. It was catalyzed by this blog post from my friend and Patheos colleague Owen Strachan, which strongly censured female preaching in any context. By itself, the assertion that women should not be ordained as pastors isn’t controversial in conservative evangelical circles. But Strachan goes farther. Apropos of the announcement that popular speaker Beth Moore was going… Read more
April 21, 2019
Jordan Peterson and the Case of the Empty Tomb
April 21, 2019 By Esther O’Reilly
19 Comments
Originally published at Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable The future Bishop of Edinburgh was having a crisis. Easter Sunday was coming, and he had to prepare a sermon. It was not his first Easter sermon. Far from it. He knew the Easter sermon rhythm well. Year after year, he had climbed into little pulpits of little churches, ready to feed simple people hungry for the greatest story ever told. He knew how to preach about the resurrection all right. But this… Read more
April 19, 2019
Remember the Broken Things
April 19, 2019 By Esther O’Reilly
0 Comments
The near-loss of Notre Dame prepared my mind for Good Friday this week. Many prayers would be answered as we gradually learned what had been saved: the Pieta, the rose windows, the cross and the altar. But while the flames raged, consuming roof and toppling spire, all I could think of was destruction and irrevocable loss. We tend to celebrate Good Friday with one eye on the Sunday that is coming. We know how it will go: from the cross… Read more
March 29, 2019
Jordan Peterson at Liberty and A Cry For Help
March 29, 2019 By Esther O’Reilly
49 Comments
I’m not sure what people were expecting from Dr. Jordan Peterson’s recent appearance at Liberty University, but nobody could have predicted what happened about halfway through. At roughly the 21-minute mark in the convocation (link here), as Peterson is answering a question, there’s a commotion offstage. A young man rushes up and grabs a microphone, on the verge of tears: “My name is David [full name redacted], and I need help! I need help! I just wanted to meet you…. Read more
March 26, 2019
The Christian and the Atheist Should Be Friends
March 26, 2019 By Esther O’Reilly
60 Comments
A couple weeks ago, a Christian friend and I did something some other Christians might find unusual: We spent an hour and a half mostly agreeing with an atheist. My friend was Neil Shenvi, the atheist was James Lindsay, the context was Justin Brierley’s show Unbelievable? and the topic was the religious character of critical theory and identity politics. Some readers might recognize James’s name from the Sokal-squared sting he executed in collaboration with Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose, exposing the academic… Read more
March 19, 2019
Book Review: The Right Side of History, by Ben Shapiro
March 19, 2019 By Esther O’Reilly
13 Comments
[Note: I received a free review copy of this book. A positive review was not required.] It is 2019, and Western Civilization is having a crisis. Specifically, it is having a crisis of meaning. Suicide rates are rising, even among the wealthy and successful. Young children are questioning their gender. Young men are questioning existence itself. Killers are writing nihilistic manifestos and livestreaming their own crimes. We seem to be a ship unmoored, drifting on a sea of hopelessness… Read more
March 13, 2019
Saving Cinderella: A Conversation With Faith Moore
March 13, 2019 By Esther O’Reilly
6 Comments
If you’re like me, you’re a sucker for old Disney movies, by which I mean actually old Disney movies (read: not 90s Disney movies). And if you’re a sucker for old Disney movies, you’re probably wondering what happened to the Disney princess movie. It turns out that I am not alone in asking this question. Faith Moore, daughter of crime author and conservative pundit Andrew Klavan, has written a new book that attempts to answer it in style. It’s called Saving… Read more
March 2, 2019
Has Christian Apologetics Failed?
March 2, 2019 By Esther O’Reilly
129 Comments
In the past year, I have been writing extensively about the Jordan Peterson phenomenon and what the Church can take away from it. As I and friends of mine have observed, Peterson’s rise has been sparking a surprising and heartening renewal of interest in spiritual things generally and Christianity specifically. Pastors all around the world have reported that people, young men in particular, are literally wandering into their churches for the first time at a shockingly accelerated rate. By any… Read more
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