Category: Faith and Life
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#3: Under the Christian Nationalist Tent (or, Finding Empathy)
You’d be forgiven for thinking that if this kid was what a soldier in the Lord’s army looked like, you didn’t love our chances. Nonetheless, we all thought we were doing the Lord’s work.
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Bad Ideas: A Curse is Upon You!
by Adam and Renée Benner For each of his years at Hogwarts, Harry Potter had a different Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. There was the conniving Quirrell, the haughty Gilderoy Lockhart, the sinister Barty Crouch (disguised as Mad-Eye Moody), the poisonous Delores Umbridge, even Professor Snape. But the one I always felt sorry for…
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Good Ideas: Holy Lit, Not Holy Writ
There might be a better way to read the Bible than as a set of useful memory and life verses.
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The ‘Deconstruction’ Thing vs. ‘Assurance’
There was a kind of calculus in operation in the evangelical churches in which I grew up. The equations had been balanced, the variables accounted for, the formulas distilled. Questions and problems of theology had been answered and resolved, then slotted neatly into clockwork systems, with every ‘t’ crossed and every ‘i’ dotted.
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The ‘Deconstruction’ Thing: Maybe it’s God’s Work
Are there in evangelicalism enough question marks, enough bad habits, enough dubious practices, enough blind spots, enough patches and shortcuts and hacks and rotting beams and decaying joists, that deconstruction is necessary? And if that’s the case, then could deconstruction be God’s work?
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Enslaved to Civic Freedom
‘Freedom’ is a common and hackneyed word on the lips of so-called ‘Christian nationalists‘.1 It echoes from pulpits. It simmers on social media. It entitles a rock-star worship leader like Sean Feucht to wander the United States like a patriot missionary, preaching the good news of civic freedom to his groupies, and singing a few…
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‘Christian Nationalism’ Isn’t Christian
When Rocky Balboa defeated the juiced Russian monster, Ivan Drago, on his home turf, my young heart was stirred. Vengeance for Apollo! And when he drew a standing ovation from the entire Politburo with his “everybody can change” speech, I shed tears. Red, white and blue tears. Take that, Soviets! Now, years later, it turns…
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Submission to All, Allegiance to None
Submission can be painful and humbling. When Steve What’s-His-Name kicked my ass back in the fifth grade, pulling my jacket over my head hockey-style and twisting my arm behind my back until I submitted, I won’t lie and say it didn’t sting my pride. Likewise, when writers like Peter and Paul entreat their audiences to…
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The Biggest Relativists of All
Be on your guard, they warned me. A new danger was rising, they warned me. Christianity itself was about to face its greatest existential threat, they warned me. With imprecations like these, some of my evangelical leaders warned me about insidious villains emerging from the dark realm to destroy the very fabric of faith. These…
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We’re Not the Heroes
Scripture so often champions the poor, powerless and oppressed. But we’re not the poor and we’re not the oppressed; we’re the privileged and affluential.