Let’s call this controversy Wrap-Coat-Gate. Trustees and administrators at Bob Jones University recently grew so alarmed over a wrap coat designed by a student for a class project that they publicly called the student’s work sacrilegious, blasphemous, dishonoring to Jesus,…
John MacArthur rallies pastors to preach against government bans on conversion therapy Jan. 16
Government bans on the discredited practice of conversion therapy amount to persecution of evangelical Christians and an “attack on the word of God,” according to influential California pastor John MacArthur. The pastor who famously defied county and state authorities to…
Atheism and agnosticism: The last closet
In 1996, John Updike released his 17th novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies, a story about a Presbyterian minister, Clarence Wilmot, who loses his faith, leaves the ministry and becomes an encyclopedia salesman. In a strange case of art…
In a world of haves and have-nots, America’s churches should capitalize on their strengths, religion researcher says
Small and medium-size churches can navigate the challenges of postmodern culture and the COVID-19 pandemic by capitalizing on inherent strengths, embracing the neighborhoods that surround them and by adopting scaled-down practices from megachurches, one of the nation’s leading religion researchers…
‘Bad theology’ on LGBTQ discrimination ‘destroys lives,’ panelists say
Faith leaders and their communities have a crucial role to play in ending the discrimination and persecution of LGBTQ people around the world, a panel of international activists and clergy said ahead of President Joe Biden’s Dec. 9 Summit for…
Grace and peace to you — at the tip of a sword
For weeks now, I’ve been teaching verse by verse through the book of 1 Thessalonians on Sunday mornings. Last week and this week, we hit the hinge between the last verse of 1 Thessalonians and the opening lines of 2…
Will the Coronavirus Omicron variant delay United Methodists’ split for a third time?
Prospects for The United Methodist Church’s twice-delayed General Conference — the only body that can make binding decisions for the entire 12-million-member worldwide denomination — dimmed considerably with the announcement of a new, more infectious variant of coronavirus now labeled…
Conservative Baptist Network launches attack on James Merritt for saying something nice about his son
One of the groups aiming to take the Southern Baptist Convention in a more conservative direction continues to sound the alarm about liberalism in the nation’s largest non-Catholic Christian denomination and now has attacked one of the icons of the…
Texas Baptists ‘affirm’ women while making gender an article of faith
The Baptist General Convention of Texas has “affirmed” women as contributors to God’s work while also adopting a new faith statement that — mixed in with core historic Baptist beliefs — says “gender is a gift from God who creates…