If only because it means that I can do more than talk about Charles Lindbergh, I’m happy to announce that I’ll be teaching a four-week adult class on an even more contentious topic: the meaning of the word “evangelical.” Even better, it’s being taught at the church I attended for fifteen years: Salem Covenant in … More My Upcoming Adult Class on Evangelicalism
This week I tried to excite incoming Christian college students about academics, announced my participation in an ecumenical conversation about Jesus (more on that here next week), launched a launch team for my next book (two or three spots still open!), recorded a podcast about the politics of the Olympics, and asked whether it’s possible … More That Was The Week That Was
I was out of town over the weekend at one of my daughter’s softball tournaments, so I didn’t get a chance to curate my usual set of interesting links. If I had, I’m sure several of them would have collected around a surprising finding from the Public Research Religion Institute. Its 2020 Census of American … More Is Mainline Protestantism Actually Growing?
I know this title sounds absurd. It certainly did to many people in my feed when Union Seminary tweeted this on Tuesday: Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too … More Should Christians Confess Sins to Plants?
This week I wrote about the religious history of lumberjacks, nominated the best years in sports history, and suggested seven questions that Christian colleges should ask potential presidents. Elsewhere: • It was an impressively eclectic week at The Anxious Bench. In David Swartz’s post on the faith(s) of a popular game show host and John Turner’s review … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • If you’ve been waiting six years for me to blog about Wonder Woman… well, this was your lucky week. • In addition to my own piece for Christianity Today, I shared a few links to other reflections on Memorial Day. • And I wrote a sequel to last week’s Mike Pence post, this one … More That Was The Week That Was
“Can liberal Christianity be saved?“, asked New York Times columnist Ross Douthat a few days ago. He was virtually certain that the answer was No, based on what he saw as the fifty-year decline of denominations like The Episcopal Church (TEC). The conservative Catholic Douthat’s thesis was echoed by at least two commentators with connections to Episcopalianism: … More “The ones that should go”: One Liberal Protestant Explanation for Mainline Decline
