I had a phone call last week in response to one of the Snarky Apologist YouTube videos about Jehovah’s Witnesses. The caller started, “You are really mean in your presentation. Can’t you focus on issues without attacking others?” I listened and didn’t point out the obvious, that they were emotional and attacking me. After a few minutes I responded with a stock statement I have been using for years now, “You may be right. I may be mean. I may even be short and fat but the real issue is, where are we wrong?” The caller hesitated for a moment, not sure what to do with the response. I then pointed out that the video did address actual issues and even though they became emotionally worked up over the material that doesn’t mean that we resorted to an emotional attack devoid of facts. We ended up talking for nearly an hour and they are in the process of verifying a number of issues we covered.

A few days later I had a call from someone that has been reading our book on Bill Gothard. The caller said they really had wanted to drop by the office to talk because they wanted to tell me face to face that our writings are mean-spirited and even though they disagree with Bill Gothard that does not mean we should be so mean-spirited in the way we write. After listening for a while I responded with Continue reading …

I’m of two minds about the elf on the shelf. My first mind says “There is something wrong with manipulating children into being good for roughly 25 days by giving them an imaginary elf who tattle-tales on them to another imaginary elf and the amount of “gifts” they receive is contingent on an arbitrary evaluation of their behavior.” (That particular mind is long-winded.)

My other mind says, “Lighten up. Its a cute holiday tradition. Don’t over analyze it. Just have fun watching your kids. Besides Curmudgeonly McCurmudgeonson over there (points to first mind) will just get you in hot water with a lot of stay-at-home moms who need all the help they can get keeping their children from bringing the house down around their ears. An imaginary elf who makes the kiddies act just a bit nicer during the silly season is not a bad thing.” Continue reading …

Ah, spring is in full swing. Flowers are in bloom, the trees have leaves, lawns are in full growth and, the dreaded mosquito is on the scene. Even as I thought about this last week, Joy and I were listening to an audio book while on our route to and from California. The book, A Rule Against Murder: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny . It is a well done murder mystery set in Canada, at a large log built resort building in the woods by a lake with no internet. What does that have to do with mosquitoes? Well, everything. With the wonderful setting also comes Continue reading …

I became a Christian in the 1970s. This was a challenging and exciting time for me. I hadn’t grown up in the church and was by example (my father) and choice, an atheist prior to being persuaded of the validity and truth of the claims of Christianity. When I became a believer the Jesus movement was in full swing and the era of church trends seems to have been coming into its own. Being a new believer I was vaguely aware of some of the controversies and concerns but only vaguely. I didn’t know enough to know what I didn’t know.

One the one hand, the Jesus Movement was challenging tradition in their evangelism and worship. Long hair, sandals and more contemporary music Continue reading …

It seems that Sociology has finally started taking an interest in that amorphous moniker: “Evangelicalism.” I once had a sociologist friend describe sociology as the “Study of all things obvious.” Evangelicals have been around for a long time, but as Timothy Beal writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

. . . [A]cademic studies of American evangelicalism and related movements have been fairly few and far between compared with those of other religious subjects—such as early American religious history and religion and politics—and their authors have written primarily for audiences of their disciplinary peers. More recently, however, there appears to be a growing intellectual interest in the subject among nonevangelical readers and outside academe.

Noteworthy are first hand accounts of outsiders venturing like anthropologists into the Continue reading …

Last week I have a response to the blog we had done in October of 2007, My Yoga is Easy: Hinduization of Christianity. The initial comment, (dated January 16, 2011) wondered why we, if we have Christ, we would be so afraid. I was able to respond *the following response) that fear had nothing to do with it but safety warnings are important. While this was transpiring I received the news that Rick Warren had started a new program, the Daniel Plan, with Swedenborgian Dr. Oz, Dr. Daniel Amen and others. According to Continue reading …

This past week a couple of things again demonstrated the need to ask the question as to how the church got to where it is today. The first was the falderal over The Manhattan Declaration. The number of signers is increasing daly and is nearly at 200,000. FOX News is discussing it but as I pointed out in last week’s Crux E-Letter, this is little more than an updated version of the 1984 Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission and subsequent attempts, this being the latest incarnation with many of the same signers. William Webster wrote a fairly well done treatment on the previous attempts titled, “The ECT Accords: A Betrayal of the Gospel in the Name of Unity.” Some of the lay people who have contacted us to defend their signing have tried to suggest that this is not a religious statement but a declaration of conservatism and as such all who agree with its values can sign on. Focus on the Family’s email of November 25, 2009 addresses this head on as Jim Daly, President and CEO writes:

It is important, first off, to note that the The Manhattan Declaration is not a partisan or political statement–I shared the podium last Friday at the National Press Club with Republicans and Democrats alike. Instead, it addresses and elevates four specific areas of universal consensus. Some have referred to these as “threshold issues,” meaning they represent the foundation of our faith and the pivot point from which everything else flows. This is the bedrock. If we can’t agree on these areas of doctrine, everything else will be of reduced value. These four areas are:

The sanctity of human life.
The sanctity of marriage
The protection of religious liberty
The rejection of unjust laws

Notice, he is clear it “is not a partisan or political statement.” It is not political in nature. Instead Continue reading …