- 05/12/2013
On Mother's Day, Remember the Infertile
Mother's Day is a particularly sensitive time in many congregations, and pastors and church leaders often don't even know it. This is true even in congregations that don't focus the entire service around the event as if it were a feast day on the church's liturgical calendar. Infertile women, and often their husbands, are still often grieving in the shadows.
21 comments - 05/08/2013
Do You Want to Be a Burden to Your Children?
I want to live long enough to be a burden to my children.
- 04/13/2013
Kermit Gosnell and the Gospel
Yesterday I was typing the name "Kermit Gosnell," and my phone auto-corrected the name to "gospel." I shuddered momentarily. After all, what could be more contradictory than the name of a notorious abortionist on trial for child murder, and the good news of the mercies of God in Christ. My smartphone, it turns out, was smarter than I was.
7 comments - 03/27/2013
Should Christians Boycott Starbucks?
A respected pro-family organization announced this week a boycott of Starbucks coffee. The group, which supports legal protection for traditional marriage, launched the "Dump Starbucks" campaign after a national board meeting in which the Seattle-based coffee company mentioned support for same-sex marriage as a core value of the company. Some Christians are wondering whether we ought to join in the boycott. I say no.
226 comments - 03/02/2013
Why the Afterlife Bores Us
I have long suspected that many Christians dread not just death but heaven. We won't admit that, of course. Our hymnody, of whatever era, is filled with songs about the joy of the afterlife, and "what a day of rejoicing that will be."
116 comments - 02/11/2013
An Evangelical Looks at Pope Benedict XVI
With Pope Benedict XVI's shocking resignation this morning, evangelical Christians might be tempted to see this the way a college football fan might view the departure of his rival team's head coach. But the global stakes are much, much higher. As Pope Benedict steps down, I think it's important for us to recognize the legacy of the last two bishops of Rome that we ought to honor and conserve: an emphasis on human dignity.
- 01/12/2013
Louie Giglio and the New State Church
As citizens, we ought to insist that the President stand up to his "base" and articulate a vision of a healthy pluralism in the public square. Notice that the problem is not that this evangelical wants to "impose his religion" on the rest of society. The problem is not that he wants to exclude homosexuals or others from the public square or of their civil rights. The problem is that he won't say that they can go to heaven without repentance. That's not a civil issue, but a religious test of orthodoxy.
35 comments - 01/08/2013
Is the Pro-Life Cause Winning?
TIME magazine's recent cover story announces that, forty years after Roe, the pro-life side is winning the abortion debate. I say, "Not so fast." Yes, it's a win just that the concept of "pro-life" is still alive. The abortion rights movement probably assumed that forty years after the Supreme Court legalized abortion that the issue would be as settled as school integration or women's suffrage.
101 comments - 01/04/2013
Premarital Sex?
Christians talk a lot about premarital sex. And I think that's a mistake. I don't think it's a mistake because the issue is unimportant but because the grammar is skewed. The word "fornication" is almost gone from contemporary Christian speech. It sounds creepy and antiquated. Instead, we talk about "abstinence" and "premarital sex."
494 comments - 12/20/2012
Let's Rethink Our Holly-Jolly Christmas Songs
I overheard a man explain why he hated Christmas music. "Christmas is boring because there's no narrative tension," he said. "It's like reading a book with no conflict." Some of the blame is on our sentimentalized Christmas of the American civil religion.
14 comments - 12/09/2012
Is the Culture at War With Christmas?
Every year about this time, there's a lot of hubbub about a so-called "war on Christmas." We ought not to get outraged by all that, as though we were some protected class of victims. We ought to instead see the ways that our culture is less and less connected with the roots of basic knowledge about Christianity.
44 comments - 11/07/2012
How Should Christians Respond to Obama's Re-Election?
The American people have decided that Barack Obama should have a second term. And, behind them, in the mystery of providence, God has decided that Barack Obama would be re-elected. So how should Christians respond to our once and future President?
976 comments - 10/31/2012
Halloween and Evangelical Identity
The words "evangelical" and "fundamentalist" have very little meaning. "Evangelical" includes, for some people, everyone from J.I. Packer to T.D. Jakes to Brian McLaren. I tried my hand at explaining the spectrum, with tongue in cheek. A conservative evangelical is a fundamentalist whose kids dress up for the church's "Fall Festival."
37 comments - 10/26/2012
Can I Be a Christian and a Divorce Lawyer?
I have a church member, a devoted Christian, who is an attorney specializing in divorce cases. Our church believes that divorce is (in almost every case) sin. If so, isn't he empowering sin? Should I counsel him to follow Christ by walking away from this job and to do something else?
8 comments - 10/12/2012
Farewell to the American Protestant Majority
According to a new study by the Pew Forum, Protestants are, for the first time in history, not a majority in the United States of America. I don't think that's anything for evangelical Protestants, or anyone else, to panic about. Frankly, we should be more concerned about the loss of a Christian majority in the Protestant churches than about the loss of a Protestant majority in the United States.
95 comments
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