I first became aware of far-right Christians co-opting the Book of Esther for political ends when I heard the extremist group Moms for Liberty use Esther 4:14 as its slogan. Since then, the phrase “for such a time as this”…
The religious and political legacy of Hal Lindsey: False prophet of the apocalypse
Hal Lindsey moved prophecy belief from the fringe of evangelical Christianity to the center of American culture for almost two decades. The Late Great Planet Earth, a dispensationalist popularization of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, the rapture, the Antichrist…
Unsurprisingly, The Gospel Coalition loathes the Wicked movie
One of the most noteworthy theological trends in 21st-century pop Calvinism has been the rehabilitation of the patriarchy. From Josh Howerton to Mark Driscoll to John MacArthur and more, iconic pastors are now routinely given platforms and sympathetic backstories that attempt to complicate categories of good and…
A week later: Myers Park offers lessons for us all
Most all our readers seem to have an opinion about the news story I wrote last week about Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C., abruptly forcing the resignation of their pastor the Sunday before Thanksgiving and one week before…
The Baptist Bonhoeffer
Political party leaders around the globe, including Donald Trump, are openly flirting with fascism to consolidate power by exploiting economic and cultural conflicts. When considering how to respond to these troubling developments, many Christians rightly turn to the example of…
As long as MAGA evangelicals are in power, sexual ethics will be in exile, but that’s not the end of the story
During Thanksgiving week, I watched two movies: Wicked and Gladiator II. Both movies reminded me of evangelicals up to their television satellites and steeples in secular politics. I watched the citizens of Oz pour into the streets, singing, “The wicked…
Here’s why the new Texas school curriculum is so very, very bad
Last week I spent a day in Austin, Texas, to testify for the second time against the new (and newly named) “Bluebonnet Learning K-5 Reading Language Arts” curriculum. Despite significant opposition, the Bible-infused curriculum was approved, which should be unsurprising…
Meddling with Methodism and domesticating the Baptists
American religious historian Nathan Hatch famously argued that when you scratch beneath the surface of piety and polity that distinguishes them, Baptists and Methodists are actually more alike than they appear because the same cultural forces of democratic populism shaped…
Antioch Declaration exposes a rift among neo-Calvinists
Within the ranks of the far-far-right of American neo-Calvinism, a rift has appeared that some call generational and others see as a rebuke of the patriarchs of patriarchal theology. The latest evidence of this rift is production of a lengthy…