Written by 
OCTOBER 28, 2020 BY CAPTAIN CASSIDY Hi and welcome back! Yesterday, we began our discussion about QAnon, that series of overwrought conspiracy theories that many evangelicals have embraced. After a couple of years of ignoring the whole thing, evangelical leaders have finally noticed just how many of their flocks have begun chasing after QAnon. And of course […]
OCTOBER 28, 2020 BY RUTH JACKSON With less than a week until the US election, Christian radio host and author Eric Metaxas and Christian commentator David French share their thoughts on which way to vote. Their comments are taken from a debate hosted by John Brown University’s Center for Faith and Flourishing. You can hear more […]
OCTOBER 29, 2020 BY VANCEMORGAN One Sunday, toward the end of a particularly lively and deep seminar with my “Living Stones” adult Christian education group after the morning service, I asked the group “so what makes us think that we are anything special, that Episcopalians have a better angle on God than anyone else? What makes […]
OCTOBER 28, 2020 BY GUEST CONTRIBUTOR by guest writer Andrew Reising Growing up, There was one issue that dominated politics in my house: abortion. Like in so many pro-life households, when one candidate had a platform that said “pro-life” and the other candidate “supported a woman’s right to choose,” nothing else about the candidates mattered. It […]
OCTOBER 29, 2020 BY KRISTIN DU MEZ We welcome Peter Choi back to the Anxious Bench today. Choi is Dean of Newbigin House, Associate Professor of American Christianity, and a member of the Consortial Faculty at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and author of George Whitefield: Evangelist for God and Empire. To read some pundits, American evangelicals have […]
OCTOBER 19, 2020 BY LIBBY ANNE There is so much news right now and so much going on that it is sometimes hard to pick one single thing to write about. So today, instead of picking one thing, I’m going to try to distill some of the issues at hand. First, of course, is COVID-19, which seems […]
BY HEMANT MEHTA OCTOBER 20, 2020 In news that will surprise absolutely nobody, televangelist Pat Robertson said on The 700 Club today that Donald Trump would definitely win the election… but if that bothers you, don’t worry! Because the world’s coming to an end very soon. Robertson said that “without question, Trump is going to win the election,” but it will result in widespread civil […]
OCTOBER 17, 2020 BY MICHAEL STONE Religion Poisons Everything: Samuel Paty, a middle school teacher in France, was beheaded by an Islamic extremist after showing his class political cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed during a classroom discussion on free speech. The Guardian reports: A history teacher decapitated outside his secondary school in a Paris suburb on Friday after he […]
OCTOBER 19, 2020 BY MICHAEL STONE The Anti-Science President: Speaking at a campaign rally in Nevada on Sunday, President Trump warned supporters that if elected Joe Biden would “listen to scientists.” Yahoo News reports: President Donald Trump sought to insult former Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday by saying that his Democratic opponent would listen to scientists […]
OCTOBER 19, 2020 BY MICHAEL STONE Theocracy Alert: Religious extremist and GOP Senator James Lankford argues God wants Christian men to serve in government. Lankford, speaking on a conservative Christian podcast, made his argument for why he believes God wants “Godly men” to serve in the government. The U.S. senator representing Oklahoma argued that “the key to […]
OCTOBER 17, 2020 BY CAPTAIN CASSIDY Hi and welcome back! I just saw this essay on Baptist News and had a good chuckle over it. See, Richard T. Hughes thinks he has finally nailed exactly what went wrong with white evangelicals. Yes! He knows exactly how they became the control-lusting tribe of racists and tyrants they are today. And […]
BY HEMANT MEHTA OCTOBER 17, 2020 Joseph Ernst and Jan van Bruggen, designers at Sideline Collective, just released a special edition of the Bible which takes every single word in the King James Bible… and organizes them alphabetically. That’s it. That’s the book. It’s officially called Bible The. You can be the judge of whether the revelations are fascinating […]
BY HEMANT MEHTA OCTOBER 17, 2020 Why is this the painting the people at the Shreveport Police Department in Louisiana decided to hang up in the same hallway where members of the public “wait to be interviewed by police officers”? It’s not just a religious image; the story of Jesus, at least in theory, is about a […]
OCTOBER 13, 2020 BY SUSAN WRIGHT I have sounded this alarm before, and it is time to sound it again: The American church is fast proving to be the lukewarm church, and without major revival and a change of heart, I fear many will find themselves destitute and castaways, in the soon coming days of heavy […]
OCTOBER 16, 2020 BY ANNE KENNEDY It is Friday, and I was about to think my way through Quick Takes, but instead of that, for those of you who pray and know all about that sort of thing, I would be really grateful if you could ask God for some mercy. My mom and dad–Bob and […]
OCTOBER 16, 2020 BY VANCEMORGAN Not long ago, I found myself involved behind the scenes in a squabble between the chair of my department and another department colleague. Their disagreement was about the proper interpretation of the Faculty Handbook on an issue related to my colleague’s upcoming promotion case. Both asked me, as a former department […]
OCTOBER 16, 2020 BY GRAYSON GILBERT Party. I have no qualms expressing such. I find it hard to believe that professing Christians could even find this topic worthy of debate. Per Scripture’s own stance on the evil of abortion and sexual licentiousness, these issues really are about as black and white as they can get. There […]
OCTOBER 15, 2020 BY BOB SEIDENSTICKER Alister McGrath, an Anglican priest and professor of theology at Oxford, contrasted atheism and Christianity in an interview on the conservative Christian site The Stream: “An Atheist’s Reasonable Journey to Faith: An Interview With Alister McGrath.” You may know McGrath from The Dawkins Delusion, his response to Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, which I read shortly […]
OCTOBER 15, 2020 BY BARRY DUKE CATHOLIC priest Gabriele Martinelli, above, accused of repeatedly raping a pupil at a pre-seminary, as well as being violent and threatening blackmail, made his first appearance at a trial that began yesterday (Wednesday) in the Vatican. Co-defendant in the trial is Fr Enrico Radice, 72, who is accused, among other things, […]
BY HEMANT MEHTA OCTOBER 15, 2020 I posted earlier this month about how a COVID outbreak in Shasta County, California had been linked to Bethel Church, which is home to the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, which is also known as “Christian Hogwarts,” and which is the home base for COVID-denying preacher/singer Sean Feucht. The school wouldn’t reveal how […]