Over the last decade, advances in social justice have been rolled back by a renewed sense of evangelical pride. Donovan O. Schaefer in Whiteness and Civilization: Shame, Race, and the Rhetoric of Donald Trump, argues: “The success of Trump’s rhetoric…
Evangelicals Confront a Revolutionary Age
The 1960s brought tumultuous cultural change in America. For evangelicals, the decade began with concerns about what would happen if the American people elected a Roman Catholic president.
Do Evangelical Political Errors Rise to the Level of Heresy?
Tim Perry sets out to identify the modern twists on ancient heretical teachings in a new book, When Politics Becomes Heresy: The Idol of Power and the Gospel of Christ. The term heresy originates with an ancient Greek word meaning “choice” or “the…
Trump boasts of ‘Top 100 Victories for People of Faith’
President Donald Trump recently celebrated his role as “the most pro-faith and pro-religious liberty president in American history” by issuing a little-noticed list of his “Top 100 Victories for People of Faith,” many of them gifts to the evangelicals who…
A culture living on Christian leftovers
What happens when a culture loses the concept of anything transcendent above? Truth, goodness and beauty become ends in themselves; they don’t lead anywhere, and they never make you look up. Truth, goodness, and beauty become hevel. Sure, they might…
What they’ve gained
Every time we report on another atrocity committed by President Donald Trump and his administration, people ask why evangelicals continue to support the cruelty and criminality of Trump’s dictates. As our Maina Mwaura wrote today, Trump clearly is not a…
Keep federal budget cuts coming, say 100 Christian and conservative leaders
Elon Musk has left Washington, D.C., but a who’s who of secular and Christian conservative leaders says the Trump administration should continue making chainsaw-style cuts to federal departments and programs Congress previously approved. “Conservatives are united behind the efforts of…
‘We don’t hate, but they do,’ conservative Christian activists claim
When conservative Christian activist groups are called hateful or placed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate map, they claim innocence and reverse the charge: “The real haters are those people who say we’re hateful.” “You are not hateful or…
Can mainline liberals get their story back?
In my most recent column I drew attention to the certainty gap between American evangelicals and mainline Protestants. While 85% of evangelicals and 82% of Black Protestants believe in God without a shadow of a doubt, the same can only…
Where seldom is heard a Christian word: A reflection on the Beatitudes
Early in my ministry in South Louisiana, I was pastor of the only Baptist church in a town of about 6,000 people. This was Jimmy Swaggert territory, and many Pentecostals and charismatic/nondenominational churches dotted the area. You were most likely…
Republicans are more likely to identify as evangelical Protestants than are Democrats
Republicans are significantly more likely to identify as Christians than Democrats, and they have a distinct preference for evangelical Protestant denominations. Pew Research Center’s recent Religious Landscape Survey looked at the correlation between political party (Republican and Democrat) and political…
Evangelical certainty and the God gap
“There are a lot of angry homosexuals out here today,” the man holding the megaphone barked. He had come to Fort Worth’s Trinity Pride Day to speak for God. Much to my wife’s chagrin, I couldn’t let his crude comment…