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Good Friday reminds us of the ephemerality of human power.Nearly 15 years ago, I had the chance to ask Christopher Hitchens, one of the world’s most prominent critics of religion, a simple question: “What do you think is the greatest contribution of Christianity, either writ large in terms of society or writ small in terms of individual lives?”To which Hitchens, an atheist who grew up as a nominal Christian, replied, […]

The Christian reaction to Trump’s Bible endorsement goes deeper than you think  CNNsource

I curled into a fetal position and sobbed. All my partner had asked for was to reschedule our plans so they could have some alone time. What was wrong with me? Why did such an innocuous request send me to the floor, the night ruined, too anxious and wrecked to enjoy the alone time I also needed?I didn’t understand it in the moment, but later I realized what was behind […]

Help keep Salon independentEarlier this week, Donald Trump unveiled his newest grift to squeeze money out of his cult followers: Trump-branded Bibles. Claiming the book contains the "King James version" and "also includes the Founding Father [sic] documents," Trump promised "you have to have it for your heart, for your soul." The screenshots of the video are funny by themselves, but I highly recommend watching the ad Trump cut for […]

Debate has raged in recent weeks about pastor and author Alistair Begg’s advice that a grandmother attend her grandchild’s wedding to a transgender person. Now that the dust is somewhat settled, it’s worth asking what we can learn from the whole episode.I’ve explained elsewhere why I disagree with Begg’s advice, but here I want to reflect on how we navigate our differences about such matters within the body of Christ. […]

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.Over the past several weeks, I was away with a Christianity Today group, teaching through Exodus up and down the Nile River in Egypt. Along the way, I found myself in lots of temples and tombs—many of them filled with the embalmed corpses of ancient Egyptian kings and queens.As I was there, though, I couldn’t help but think about the American […]

More weeks than not, I think about skipping church.“We could just take this one week off, I tell myself. We’ll be back next week. It’s cold out, anyway.”The author of the book of Hebrews wasn’t dealing with Minnesota winters when he exhorted his readers to keep “assembling together.” If he had to face sub-zero temperatures, he’d totally get why staying home sounds so good.And anyway, I’m an introvert.Church can feel […]

|If Christians are called to live differently, love generously, and speak boldly, should they ever get comfortable with their surrounding culture? Nijay K. Gupta opens his new book Strange Religion: How the First Christians Were Weird, Dangerous, and Compelling by asking this kind of question.Gupta, a New Testament scholar and popular author, bemoans how “pop Christianity in the Western world often reflects a ‘chemically altered’ version of the Jesus movement […]

On July 16, 1054, Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Cerularius was excommunicated, starting the “Great Schism” that created the two largest denominations in Christianity—the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox faiths.6 - 12ReligionOn July 16, 1054, Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Cerularius was excommunicated from the Christian church based in Rome, Italy. Cerularius’s excommunication was a breaking point in long-rising tensions between the Roman church based in Rome and the Byzantine church based in Constantinople […]