“States’ rights” is back in vogue among American conservatives — including conservative evangelicals — as the cure to enact their preferred restrictive social policies. But few of those advocates are likely to be pleased with the results of a new…
How The Jetsons and Westworld help us think about robots, personhood and faith
The internet droned on last week about the future of artificial intelligence and the human race when people began to compute that George Jetson was born on July 31, 2022. The Jetsons premiered in 1962 with a storyline that was set in 2062…
Where are the women on the SBC’s first and second sexual abuse task forces?
The newest task force appointed to address sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention shares one key thing in common with the first Sexual Abuse Task Force that wrapped up its work this summer: Only two women are represented on…
Al Mohler derides a dead man, and the dead man’s friends aren’t happy
Al Mohler has not come to praise Ron Sider but to bury him — with posthumous damnation, no less. Sider, an early leader of the modern progressive left within Christianity, died July 27. His most influential book was Rich Christians…
A risky experiment: Justice, freedom and compassion in America
Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit…
As church staff roles evolve, the SBC is forced to define the word ‘pastor’
Sixty years ago, Baptists would have had little reason to debate the meaning of the word “pastor.” In those simpler days, “the pastor” was the primary staff leader of a congregation — the person who preached most Sundays and provided…
New data show America’s challenge is not because ‘both sides are wrong’
There is a popular trend among some evangelicals to criticize both sides of political and religious debates equally while proposing a third way that appears to be above the fray. They might say, “While the right says this and the…
The fantastical world of the New (evangelical) Zealots
Evangelicals are the New Zealots, and that spells danger for democracy and for the planet. The danger lies in the fantastical world created by evangelicals. The danger becomes personal in the symbol of guns and precarious in their climate denial….
White evangelicals want to control you so their kids can live forever
Imagine a world where the “land of the free and the home of the brave” operates like a fundamentalist Christian school. What kind of freedom would be possible? As difficult as it may seem to imagine Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s…