Many people appear baffled about the hard-right turn in U.S. conservative religion. It’s not just a turn to politics, or to hard-right politics, that is problematic. It is the apparent amorality, the cruelty, bigotry and snarling spirit that is so impossible to reconcile with the Spirit of Christ. It’s the nasty cast of characters who are […]
When Christianity Becomes Toxic ‘Christianism’
Having abandoned the denomination in which I was converted over forty years ago, I am not a part of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), whose moral credibility has just been torn to shreds by the devastating Guidepost Solutions report on twenty years of SBC Executive Committee (EC) mishandling of sexual abuse allegations in SBC churches. But I
Southern Baptists, Sex Abuse, and Systemic Evil
I learned this week that sales of my 2014 book Changing Our Mind are just about to cross 25,000, apparently very rare in the book business. This becomes the occasion for my column this week. Long-time readers of Baptist News Global will remember that this book originated as a series of posts on this site beginning in the summer of 2014.
Changing Our Mind, 25,000 Sales Later
We are witnessing at this moment the intellectual deconstruction of a religious group that has been called “evangelicalism.” Illusions about this community are being destroyed left and right. Of course, those illusions first eroded in practice, through the contradictions and failures of U.S. white evangelicalism itself. Today, however, the intellectual underpinnings of evangelicalism are being deconstructed
The Deconstruction of American Evangelicalism
My last column for BNG, “Covid Wars,” offered a lament over our divided nation. It did not propose solutions, only sorrow and grief. Of course, we must do better than that. We must try to understand how we got here and figure out what we can do about it, if anything. After my piece posted, I
Why the U.S. Is Uniquely Divided: Engaging a Scholar from New Zealand
The hysteria over Critical Race Theory right now means many things. Most immediately, it means that the relationship between skilled right-wing demagogues and their audience in the U.S. these days is positively Pavlovian. Stimulus-response, stimulus-response, rinse and repeat. If Tucker Carlson says over several nights on Fox News that Critical Race Theory is a huge threat
White hysteria, Critical Race Theory, and eyes that dare not see
Religion News Service reporter Bob Smietana broke the story this week that famous Bible study leader Beth Moore is leaving the Southern Baptist Convention and ending the mutually lucrative publishing relationship with their Lifeway group. She claimed t…
Beth Moore and a lost Southern Baptist Convention
(August 26, 2020, RNS) — To attack Jerry Falwell Jr. right now is all too easy. There’s no need to pile on. But still, there are some things that must be said. On Tuesday (Aug. 25), finally, Falwell managed to disgrace himself badly enough to lose control of his birthright, the university founded by his
Jerry Falwell Jr.’s come-to-Jesus moment