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The Rename Game
This week, the Southern Baptist Convention announced it is launching yet another committee to examine changing its name. The goal is to better reflect the fact that, aside from...
Let Your Yes Be Yes
It’s the heyday of the hidden camera. Though it is by no means a new phenomenon (Richard Nixon gave us the audio, and Marion Barry was busted in black...
Ambiguity, Inception and Interpretation
In an interview with Wired about his movie Inception, director Christopher Nolan is questioned about an ambiguous scene in the film: So, there’s no one right answer. Oh no,...
Confessing one another’s sins
In a new twist on the “drag your wife out to your public confession of adultery” meme, televangelist Marcus Lamb has his wife confess his adultery for him: The...
On The Making of Lists (and checking them twice)
Whenever I’m sent by my wife to the store on “milk & bread” runs, there’s one rule I follow that keeps me from endlessly wandering the fluorescent freezer-aisled jungle:...
How to Name an Evangelical Church
So, you’ve started a church plant. You’ve gathered together a few faithful families and individuals from within a community, and you’re likely now meeting in homes, rented office space,...
You Could Win The Gospel (and Other Fabulous Prizes!)
To say that a Corpus Christi church’s Easter spectacle of giving away cars, flat screen TV’s, bicycles, and a cornucopia of other prizes is appalling would be a gross...
A People of the App?
This past Sunday, I did something generally considered verboten in conservative evangelical circles. I went to church without my Bible. No, I haven’t cast aside the primacy of the...
Eat Well This Christmas
When pondering the nativity, I’ve heard much made of the fact that the manger is a place of great humility for the King of Kings to be found, and...
Blood Gratitude
This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for blood. It’s one of the most powerful metaphors in any language, and it is the substance by which we measure our humanity. Blood can...
The Twitterfication of All Things?
Novelist Cormac McCarthy gives a fascinating interview to the Wall Street Journal in which he discusses, among other things, books, movies, God, cultural permanence, and ideas. At one point,...
The Twitterfication of All Things?
Novelist Cormac McCarthy gives a fascinating interview to the Wall Street Journal in which he discusses, among other things, books, movies, God, cultural permanence, and ideas. At one point,...
An Evangelical Without the Gospel?
The circus that is Haggard (Ted, not Merle) launched a new act this week —- he’s starting a new church at his home in Colorado. Just three years since...
Emerging adults in the church
Yesterday, at a Heritage Foundation-sponsored event here in Washington, D.C., I had the opportunity to hear researcher Christian Smith present findings from his latest batch of research involving his...
The Rosetta Stone of Evangelicalese Has Been Cracked
Ratted out by the Huffington Post, no less. In her exposé there, Valerie Tarico —- a self-described “former fundie” —- shows politicians the ropes on “speaking evangelicalese.” Tarico urges...