When the church rejects its own warnings
The greatest fear of American evangelicals in the 1970s was that some young person would join a cult. Despite their own cult-like obsession at the time over predicting the immediate …
We could say something, but…
When Native Americans were demeaned, driven from their homes and put on a death march by government officials — many professing white Christians could have come to the defense of …
The irrelevance of Jesus
Why is Jesus so irrelevant for so many who claim to be Christian? Does it matter that swarms of the most loudly proclaiming Christians in America — who have professed …
Reorienting our maps
Being spiritually “lost” was a common concern (or accusation) in the conservative faith tradition so familiar to many of us. Tragically now, it this very slice of white Americanized Christianity …
Shady, angry people
The Christian testimony that many Americanized Christians don’t want to hear is when someone tells of leaving their familiar fundamentalist/evangelical subculture in order to find Jesus. In the second season …
Failing Jesus 101
White Americanized Christians in large numbers keep failing Jesus 101 — even though it is an open-book test. The one thing Jesus so often called his followers not to do …
Duped, again
White Americanized Christians keep getting duped into believing something other than Jesus. And once “being Christian” is successfully redefined apart from being like Jesus, all kinds of hatred, discrimination and …
Who are these people we have long loved and thought we knew?
They are friends, neighbors and fellow church members. Classmates, colleagues and relatives. But who are these people we have longed loved but struggle now to understand? We have cared for …
In search of a right response
It is a troubling dilemma. They are friends, neighbors, fellow church members and family. Some we’ve known well — or thought we did — for decades. Now we face the …
Switching allegiances
Many of us have those spiritual punctuation marks in our lives that allow for remembering beyond mere recollection. They serve as points of return, refocus and reorientation. At least they …