Friendship, opposition, and Chick-Fil-A
Ethical consumption doesn’t entail these sorts of symbolic actions, and while it might be right to support the restaurant there’s also something to not letting the right hand know about the left when we’re doing what we ought.
The new Puritanism: Chick-fil-A and boycotts
It be folly to think that companies have ever escaped having values. Yet those values seem to have been, well, tied to their products. Industry. Thrift. Quality construction. Chick-Fil-A’s decision to close on Sunday’s is a decent example of this.
The trouble with talking about our “identity in Christ”
The positive content of our “identity in Christ” rarely gets filled in. Instead, we are left with a void, an empty hole that can neither guide nor instruct us in how we should live in the world.
Young evangelicals still at war? A review of “A Faith of Our Own”
Jonathan Merritt seeks a non-partisan faith, but leaving behind the left-right culture clashes is harder than it seems.
Culture wars and the future of the Evangelical political witness
The only way through the culture wars is not to shout about our need to go beyond them, but to set about ignoring them altogether and get on with the work that is given to each generation: providing the positive vision for society that has been informed by our Christian commitments.
The end of courage and the surrender of Evangelical sexual ethics
Should evangelicals encourage and advocate for the use of contraception, or even present information in our churches that signal (tacitly or otherwise) approval and exhoration?
A hill to die on: Evangelicals, contraception, and the integrity of our witness
Advocating for contraception for unmarried Christians would represent a new low for the evangelical churches understanding of human sexuality.
Why churches shouldn’t push contraceptives to their singles
Reducing abortion is a noble and urgent goal. This is the wrong way to do it.
Let’s change hearts and minds (and laws, too)
To advocate culture over politics, without revisiting the grounds of both, will simply perpetuate the sort of cultural nihilism that currently plagues us.
Sin and health
Evangelicals sit in a somewhat paradoxical relationship with these cultural narratives about homosexuality and weight. Ministries are tasked not only with fulfilling their institutional vocation of helping those with same-sex desires live faithfully but also with defending their legitimacy and distancing themselves from their problematic methods of the past (think shock therapy).
The politics of breast cancer
The eruption of controversy around the Komen Foundation’s decision to not renew its funding of Planned Parenthood and their stunning reversal (or was it?) has reinforced two truths: the culture war is a long way from over, and it is hardly a one-sided affair.
We are all witnesses: singleness and the kingdom
Regardless of our status, the form of our lives is to point beyond ourselves, to remind each other of the reality of the revelation which we have heard, to be a people among whom the Word of God is living and active. Otherwise, the married and the single risk saying to each other, “Go your way, for I have no need of you.”
Real Marriage: A review (Pt. 2)
*Real Marriage* buries the mystery along with Ephesians 5. There’s nothing left of it, both in the book’s candid descriptions of sexuality and in its transparent confessions about the Driscoll’s struggles. And the prose inevitably follows: it is clear, but rarely sings and only infrequently stirs.
The trouble with Ed Young’s rooftop sexperiment
Yes, the church needs to talk more about sex. But pastors may need to talk about it less.
Real Marriage: A review (Pt. 1)
At the heart of *Real Marriage* is a commendation of “friendship.” But this is, in its own way, dissatisfying.
How to think about social networking in churches
What do we do with virtual fellowship?
Mohler and Wallis debate justice and the church
While both sides recognized that evangelicals have failed in their social witness, the question is whether that failure constitutes a defeater for those who want to more narrowly define the gospel around atonement.
The christian consumer
Even ethical consumption stands in danger of being co-opted by the logic of brand identity and consumerism, and having its power muted as a result. Yet that does not excuse us as Christians from deliberating carefully about how to faithfully consume in a consumerist world.