A Few Clarifying Words

March 21, 2023 By Esther O’Reilly

On his Substack, former Spiritual Friendship contributor Chris Damian has added his own commentary on my recent writing around gay Christianity/Spiritual Friendship/”Side B”/etc. It’s a long Stack, so I don’t really have time to hit every point, but one point in particular needs to be addressed upfront, and that’s an accusation Chris makes around my recent very brief mention of the Catholic writer Daniel Mattson. Mattson was an early Catholic critic of Side B work, and I mentioned his name... Read more

A Little Romance

March 18, 2023 By Esther O’Reilly

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Eve Tushnet has written a response to my new First Things piece on all things “gay Christianity” at her Patheos blog. Is it too corny to say, “Ah, Tushnet, we meet at last”? Anyway, we meet at last. As I’ve said, I actually like Eve’s clarity in this area, which means I don’t have to sift through layers of muddle to get to her point—which, more often than not, I find dangerously false, but at least it’s clearly dangerously false! I... Read more

Side B Christianity: A Post-Mortem

March 17, 2023 By Esther O’Reilly

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At First Things this week, I published what I’d like to think is a fairly significant article, concerning the tangled web known as “Side B Christianity” — which, if you’re reading this at all, you probably don’t need me to gloss for you, but just in case, it names a particular kind of approach to addressing the whole cornucopia of “LGBT issues” in the Church, Protestant and Catholic. The piece is really the culmination of most of a decade’s worth... Read more

He Gets Us, But Who Will Get Him?

February 10, 2023 By Esther O’Reilly

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This is a nice short Substack by Aaron Renn on the He Gets Us campaign. The billion-dollar advertising gamble has generated lots of critical buzz. You can watch all the 30-second spots produced so far at the official channel here. All of them have been released twice with English and Spanish voiceovers. The view counts for each short ad average in the tens of millions. So, from a marketing perspective, clearly something is working. The ads are surprisingly simple in... Read more

How to Gain a TGC Audience and Lose Your Soul

December 14, 2022 By Esther O’Reilly

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I have once again found myself in the embarrassing position of wasting time on an online controversy around the holidays. And, once again, I’ve decided that if I’m going to waste all this time, I might as well blog about it. Here’s the short version: Patrick Miller is a pastor, cultural critic, author, and podcast host who regularly contributes to The Gospel Coalition. His podcast and co-authored book are both called Truth Over Tribe, which could fairly be described as... Read more

The Thomas Achord Affair (and What it Taught Us)

December 3, 2022 By Esther O’Reilly

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I had a lovely Thanksgiving at home with my family. Sadly, while I was doing my best to unplug and count my blessings, Twitter was roiling with a deeply troubling, ugly clash over the secret online life of a classical Christian school headmaster. The whole sorry little scandal erupted in such a small pond, relatively speaking, that my agnostic writer friend Ben Sixsmith joked he had no idea what we were all arguing about, but it looked like Christian Twitter... Read more

Decentering Ethics Decenters Jesus

October 4, 2022 By Esther O’Reilly

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A couple weeks ago, Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway Research jointly released their 2022 survey of the state of American theology. This survey is conducted every two years and is designed to “take the temperature” of American popular opinion on 30-some statements about Christian theology and ethics. With the nifty “data explorer,” this year’s results can be further broken down and analyzed across all kinds of demographic lines, including denominational affiliation. In my corner of things, the buzz was focused on... Read more

Elizabeth, Daughter of Eve

September 19, 2022 By Esther O’Reilly

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A heart-warming story has been going around about the late Queen Elizabeth. The story goes that her chaplain had been preaching on the Second Coming of Christ. Later, she exclaimed earnestly that she wished Christ would come again in her lifetime. When she was asked why, she became emotional and said, “I should so love to lay my crown at his feet.” Unfortunately, the story isn’t true—about Elizabeth. In fact, it’s about Queen Victoria, and it appears to have a... Read more

The Tragic Vision of Christian Singleness

August 28, 2022 By Esther O’Reilly

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Is it the done thing now to congratulate online friends when their tweet goes viral? I’m not sure, but in any case, my congrats to online friend Shane Morris for well and truly blowing up Twitter this week with a spicy tweet on millennials, children, and singleness. Shane observes, “Millennials who are very cavalier about not having children are in for a shock when they enter their 40s & realize life is only half over. What do you do at... Read more

The Gospel Coalition’s Titanic Problem

August 7, 2022 By Esther O’Reilly

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By now, it’s become something of a cliché in certain Twitter spaces to dunk on The Gospel Coalition. Over time, an enterprise that began with good intentions and strong convictions has increasingly come to be seen as synonymous with “squishy” centrist compromise. If it’s not Christianity Today yet, people have complained that it’s listing in that direction. There are a number of factors motivating this evaluation. Speaking as someone who remembers the outlet’s earlier years, I think concern is warranted.... Read more