I still remember when Glen Beck told viewers of his (then) daily FOXNews show something to the effect of: if the pastor of your church talks about the importance of social justice, then you need to find a new church. That was years ago, and I’ve heard it said time and time again by conservative commentators. The phrase social justice has functioned in much the same way the word “woke” now functions. It’s just a way to label and dismiss... Read more
The 2023 Asbury revival will likely become the release valve that dissipates the energies of change created by Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements, as well as the tensions arising from white evangelicalism’s brazen embrace of Trumpism and Christian Nationalism. The last major Asbury revival was in 1970. At the time, the Civil Rights movement and Sexual Revolution had created so much tension and pressure that white evangelicalism seemed poised to heed its own prophetic arm and embrace real... Read more
Football is in my blood. My dad was a high-school football coach. My childhood hero was Terry Bradshaw. Not to brag, but I was an elementary school flag football prodigy (I peaked athletically in the 6th grade). As a lifelong fan of Kansas State and Chiefs football, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t sincerely love the game. Yet, I’m always a bit troubled by how much I love football, and by the fact that football shapes us in... Read more
Rebounding from a low of 37%, President Biden’s approval rating is somewhere around 42-43% today, and both left and right wing pundits love to discuss. Why so low? What will this mean for the midterms? These hand-wringers should come to the youth group at my church and ask the students for an approval rating on their parents. Better yet, go to any high school and tally the approval rating of the administrator charged with discipline. I can tell you the... Read more
April Fools’ Day bothers me for several reasons. First, is there an apostrophe or no apostrophe? Is it acceptable to write “April Fools Day,” sans apostrophe? And if we are to go with an apostrophe, where do you put it? “April Fool’s Day” or “April Fools’ Day”? I’m pretty sure it is the latter, which means there is no way to write it without looking like a grammatical elitist, which is clearly not what this day is about. And how... Read more
I don’t know how many pundits I’ve heard as they attempt to climb inside Putin’s head to find some rationale for his murderous attack on Ukraine, but the number is high. In every case I end up talking back to them, trying to convince them that history, ambition, and personal grievance barely scratch the surface of Putin’s true motivation, which is, in my opinion, much simpler, much more basic than any of the experts surmise. Putin’s motivation has to do... Read more
It was a “Farewell Rob Bell” moment for the neo-Reformed harbingers of orthodoxy. I have always like Matt Chandler, but his recent assertion (in a clipped video posted to TikTok) that those who deconstruct their Christian faith just want to be in on the sexy thing, and that one cannot deconstruct an authentic experience of Christ (so your faith must not be authentic), has only amplified the deconstruction phenomenon. For awhile now, the hawkers have been cranking out books on... Read more
… There’s a big Critical Race Theory kerfuffle happening right now around an op-ed in the Washington Post by Marc A. Thiessen, with an assist from Danielle Pletko (both from the American Enterprise Institute), and from Allen Guelzo (Princeton) whose field is not philosophy, but history. Let me say up front that I don’t use Critical Theory, nor do I think it’s helpful at the end of the day. It’s too easy to use it to justify almost any position.... Read more
“And the moon is a sliver of silver, like a shaving that fell on the floor of a Carpenter’s shop; and every house must have it’s builder; and I awoke in the house of God.” – Rich Mullins This has to be one of the near perfect opening lines to a song I’ve ever heard. He was right about the moon, and about the fact that we all just woke up here one day, in the house of God, in... Read more
Regardless of the lens you adopt through which to think about culture, consensus seems to be that the way we’ve organized our society — even our most basic forms of relating and working together — are dysfunctional at best. My take on why this is happening is that most of us operate through conscious and unconscious purity codes. What is a Purity Code? A purity code stems from the generalized assumption that it is possible to identify and eliminate the... Read more
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