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
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
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
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
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
What are we talking about when we talk about “winsomeness?” There’s been a lot of Discourse around the term in evangelical spaces. But is it even a thing, or are objections to it purely performative in-group signaling? And to the extent that it is a thing, might it be a legitimate thing that arose in response to a legitimate rhetorical need? These are some of the questions raised in a recent Twitter thread by Matthew Lee Anderson. He writes: If... Read more
Today I’m doing something different and featuring a guest piece by my friend Grayson Quay. Grayson is a Spectator columnist, weekend editor at The Week, and pro-life trouble-maker. Grayson wrote this piece in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, but it didn’t find a home, so I’m giving it one. It complements Carl Trueman’s recent First Things article on the awkward radio silence of evangelical voices like Russell Moore. As Grayson rounds up below, other voices haven’t been radio silent, but their reactions were so... Read more
I’m writing this piece on June 24, heading into a weekend when it is all but guaranteed to get lost in the crush of takes on SCOTUS’s historic overturn of Roe vs. Wade. For those who would like my take on that momentous occasion, head on over to my Substack. And consider subscribing, if newsletters are your thing! My Patheos writing has dropped off in large part because I have shifted much of my commentary to the much cleaner, more... Read more
Today I continue my notes on Trevin Wax’s Gospel Coalition series about the “three-world model” of American church history. Yesterday, I discussed the suggestion that we entered a “negative world” earlier than Aaron Renn has proposed, depending on your perspective. If you were an adult convert, your perspective might look a little different from the perspective of a child in a deeply conservative family. Trevin recalls coming of age in the Clinton era. I came to full political awareness in... Read more
I will be in Chicago this week. If you are in the area, feel free to come along on Wednesday evening for a recorded conversation with Pastor Paul VanderKlay on the rise/fall/failure/future of Christian apologetics (Meetup link here). You can also drop in on Tuesday afternoon, when Paul and I will be guesting on the Aaron Renn show with a live audience. This will be a bit of a crossover event. Paul has been developing a YouTube evangelism project in... Read more
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