Fans and friends are mourning the sudden death of Mandisa Hundley, an American Idol alum who went on to have a successful contemporary Christian music career. Police are currently investigating cause of death. Her publicist hasn’t released any details except that she was “found dead in her home” in Nashville. She was only 47 years old. These kinds of deaths are always deeply sad, but the fact that Mandisa was a Christian artist makes her case even more wrenching. She... Read more
“Today in my Harry Potter class @Baylor, we had a hard and necessary conversation about J. K. Rowling and her hatred of trans-people.” You could be forgiven for thinking this was a parody tweet, but it is, alas, quite real. Professor Greg Garrett doesn’t just teach literature at Baylor, he’s the Hanks Endowed Professor of Lit and Culture, an Hon Canon Theologian no less, with assorted fiction and non-fiction books to his name. From his Amazon author page, I learn... Read more
This just in: Sovereign Grace music is gay now. Thus declares Pastor Armen Thomassian, who I’d never heard of until everyone started dunking on a tweet where he complained about the “weird effeminate vibe” during worship at the recent Shepherds Conference. Yes, the Shepherds Conference. The one hosted at John MacArthur’s church, featuring keynote addresses from guys like Phil Johnson and Steve Lawson. Really. Worship leader Bob Kauflin was the chief culprit here, according to Thomassian, though he went on... Read more
It’s been a number of months since I updated this blog. The reason for that is simple: I was doing better writing and making more money elsewhere, in contexts where I can offer a better reader experience. But Patheos, quite reasonably, expects me to pull my weight if I’m going to take up their Internet real estate around here. Accordingly, I recently got the dreaded “your column is in jeopardy” email, with instructions to write a couple of new posts... Read more
I try as a rule to avoid protracted debates on Twitter (sorry, I just refuse to call it X). But recently, I broke my own rule. The context was this long tweet by Jared Moore, a Southern Baptist pastor who’s recently released a new book expanding his dissertation on lust and the doctrine of sin. It’s called The Lust of the Flesh, and it’s not available wherever books are sold, but anyone interested can buy it directly from the publisher... Read more
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
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
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
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
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
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