Donald Trump’s victory suggests that the influence of white conservative Christians extends far beyond the borders of evangelical culture. Not everybody outside the white evangelical camp is bashing that tribe. Especially in the South and Midwest, white evangelicals are valued as custodians of traditional sexual ethics by white folks who attend Mainline Protestant or Roman Catholic churches.
Rick Warren’s conundrum: What’s the nature and extent of salvation?
What if more of us believed in and trusted in a more loving, gracious, inclusive God? What if more of us focused on this life rather than the afterlife and understood salvation in terms of healing, wholeness, reconciliation and liberation from the life diminishing forces that possess us and oppress us, so that we are free to truly love God and love others?
Dear Church, don’t give up on justice yet
Justice is a tool for working out God’s care and showing that God is “with us” as a way of entering into the real, physical circumstances of those who hurt, not just a concept abused by the culture wars.
2017’s top religion stories are a doozy
The year 2017 may not have been the biggest ever for religion news in the U.S. or the world, but it has to be close.
People of faith contribute to ongoing ‘season of booze’
Americans may disagree on politics and religion, but many of them are in step when it comes to booze. As in, they like it. And that embrace of alcohol is on obvious display leading in to the New Year.
Angry that the religious right has hijacked the word ‘evangelical’? Let it go, experts say
Thinking of ditching the term “evangelical” to identify yourself as Christian? Get in line. Clergy, scholars, congregational coaches and innumerable laypeople are expressing increasing anger and disgust that the once respected term no longer describes their commitment to Christ and church.
The death of Christianity in the U.S.
You might wonder if my condemnation is too harsh. It is not, for the Spirit of the Lord has convicted me to shout from the mountaintop how God’s precious children are being devoured by the hatred and bigotry of those who have positioned themselves as the voice of God in America.
Longer church commutes OK with Christians wary of ‘evangelical gimmicks’
Most churchgoers — almost 70 percent, according to new research — drive 15 minutes or less to get to Sunday worship. That does not describe Todd and Marcia Putney of Macclenny, a rural community located along Interstate-10 in Northeast Florida. The Putneys —…
Experts warn that the church has lost its way — and its influence
Some Christian leaders wonder if the American church retains any meaningful influence in a society when it has been so strongly dominated by other cultural forces. In the book The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, theologian Ron Sider laments that…