Oct. 31 marks a holiday where many religious homes clash over how to view the relationship between material and spiritual reality. As a young child in a church affiliated with the General Association of Regular Baptists, I experienced Oct. 31…
Our obsession with true crime dramas and what ‘Dahmer’ teaches us about heaven and hell
One of the biggest trends in entertainment today is true crime dramas about serial killers. Forbes reported in 2020 that it was a “great year for fictional serial killers.” And now, two years later, our fascination with mass murder is continuing, but…
How Trump’s latest comments on Israel align with evangelical Zionism
Donald Trump is in the news again making negative statements about American Jews while flattering his evangelical fanbase. In my piece last week, I wrote about how the dispensationalist obsession with the end times led evangelicals to embrace the Christian Zionist…
How Michael W. Smith, George W. Bush and one popular worship song expose the problem of Calvinist theology and politics
There is a reason why one of the most influential worship songs of the past quarter century expresses a truth that could turn evangelicalism upside down and yet has been repeatedly rejected and banned by conservative evangelical complementarian Calvinists. Growing…
What does complementarianism have to do with Domestic Violence Awareness Month?
“Please don’t tell my husband I said anything. These men think they can bully women into submission.” I hear statements like this from Christian women in complementarian marriages quite often. But while many of these women are aware of the…
Our journey from private school to homeschool to public school
The Baptist youth group I grew up in was made up of three main categories of students — the Christian school students, the homeschool students, and the public school students. Every fall, as we gathered on Wednesday evenings just a few…
The biblical view from the Tower of Babel
Few stories in the Bible highlight the complexities of deconstruction and the way it divides us into speaking very different theological languages like the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. “What did Babel’s builders do wrong? Why did God punish…
Schools and spanking: Isn’t it time we stopped using religion to justify violence?
“Make education violent again” seems to be the slogan for a public school district in Missouri. The Cassville School District decided on June 16, 2022, to bring back spanking after parents requested for the schools to spank their kids. In…
Desiring God is denying reality
Last week, it was the almost humorous riff on beards as signs of God’s favor on manly men. This week, it’s a not-at-all funny critique of Critical Race Theory and intersectionality — by a white man who is the father…