A Texas Baptist pastor on the risk and resilience of America’s smallest congregations. By any measure, Sunday’s mass shooting at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, breaks records we’d rather not see broken. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott characterized it as the worst mass shooting in the history of our state and among the …
When your religion is something you choose, not to choose is not an option. For most evangelicals in America, conversion is a central part of one’s religious experience. They are accustomed to hearing testimonies at church, on television, or in print. They would not be surprised, then, by historian Lincoln A. Mullen’s identification of conversion …
The professor, scholar, and 2017 Templeton Prize winner reflects on over 50 years of defending the reasonableness of theism. If today’s academic philosophers see Christian belief as intellectually viable, it may very well be because Alvin Plantinga showed them it was. For the last five decades, Plantinga has made a career of demonstrating that philosophy …
The Coen brothers’ flawed film is effective at exposing the sins of contemporary racism. The film Suburbicon begins with a shot of an opening storybook, a convention used at the start of classic fairytale films like Snow White and Cinderella. The kings of these castles, however, are mid-20th century, middle-aged white guys, and their kingdom …
The second season of Netflix’s groundbreaking series explores the dire consequences of ignoring suffering. This article contains spoilers for Stranger Things 2. Leading up to its highly anticipated release last Friday, Stranger Things 2 faced a familiar challenge for surprise breakout hits: How would it recapture the magic of the original while offering something surprising …
What old wisdom brings to the smartphone era. The first time I heard a pastor say, “Take out your Bible or phone or iPad and turn to …” was in 2016. It seems like a fairly harmless statement, but given recent evidence that screen time is changing the way we think, perhaps not. Approximately 2 …
Why “prison Pentecostalism” is flourishing among criminals, gang members, and others on society’s margins. Whatever doctrine might be preached, when there is Christian worship within the walls of prisons—among the world’s damned—an ancient theology of hell is being recovered, incarnated on earth. It is Christ’s descent to the dead, his triumphant ekklesia conquering the gates …
Here are our favorite stories about the Reformation from 2017. On October 31, 2017, we celebrate the 500th birthday of the Protestant Reformation. While historians debate whether Martin Luther really did nail his 95 Theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg on this date 500 years ago, we have records that he sent that …
A new book demonstrates the movement has been “a perennial and recurring feature of Christian history.” About 20 years ago, theologian D. H. Williams wrote a book called Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants. He focused on a certain sector of evangelicalism—the free church tradition, including many Baptists, independent Bible …
The Houston team’s Spanish-speaking minister reflects on faith in the World Series. Christians across Houston, the megachurch capital of America, are saying their prayers for the Houston Astros as they play the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. As a baseball chaplain, Juan Jesus Alaniz happens to be praying right alongside the players who …