Defections from evangelical churches and parachurch organizations continue apace. Where it used to be mainline churches hemorrhaging worshippers, as discouraged congregants went in search of a faithful gospel ministry, now it is evangelicals facing the numbers crunch. "Doom, Boom, and Gloom" is the name of a popular financial report, but it could just as easily […]
People grow weary of evangelicalism all the time, and in what follows we give ear to several ex-evangelicals as they tell their stories and give their reasons. Listening is an important aspect of apologetics. It’s important not to rush into a defense of the faith without knowing first what issues are at stake—not if we […]
There are all sorts of absurdities in every church, in every tradition. In Roman Catholicism, for example, one still finds the sale of indulgences. It wasn't just Tetzel five hundred years ago; in 2008 to 2009 Pope Benedict XVI issued indulgences again. In fact, it's interesting to note that he did so for the "Year […]
Father Peter Gilquist is chair of the Department of Missions and Evangelism for the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese, a branch of the worldwide Orthodox Church. He also publishes Again magazine, a periodical for Orthodox concern, and has written an interesting book entitled Becoming Orthodox. He also was involved with the production of the Orthodox Study […]
I grew up in a fundamentalist "Bible church" that loved God and had a clear desire to serve him, but I questioned why my church was so isolated from other Christians. By the time I graduated from high school I found something in the more historical faith of Reformed Presbyterianism, but I still wondered what […]
Years ago, as I was teaching Question 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism to my Sunday school class of first- through third-grade students, I wished for a book written specifically for their age about the rich history behind this important document, imparting the passion and urgency with which it was originally composed. That's why I was […]
Do you know if your name is written in the book of life? Unless your parents named you after a Bible hero like David, Sarah, Mary, or Abraham, how can you really know for sure? This is the so-called problem of assurance that most serious-minded Christians wrestle with at some point in their lives. There […]
When religion is shuttled off to its little island of irrational subjectivity, the leap of faith, when evangelism bases its appeal on personal experience and moral usefulness with the slogan "deeds, not creeds," when "I feel" edges out "we believe," and when churches target niche markets for spiritual consumers, we should hardly be surprised when […]
There are a lot of reasons why people exit evangelical, Lutheran, and Reformed churches for other Christian traditions or other religions or no religion at all. It doesn't help to speculate or psychologize about the motives and reasons. That's a dead giveaway of resentment to which we're prone whenever we see someone in our number […]
When trying to understand something, knowing its context is critical. This is true of the Bible. It is also true for leaders. Thus, as a person connected to the phenomenon of the emerging church, I would like to tell a little bit of my story and make some observations from it as a way of […]
I came out of fundamentalism and am now a very liberal Episcopalian, but am also still interested in Emergent evangelicalism. What personally intrigues me about Emergents is their ability to question, and the open communities of people who can authentically struggle in a way that we couldn't in my fundamentalist church. I had questions about […]
I wasn't raised in a religious home at all; my folks were what you would call a-religious. In the early 1970s when I was in high school, the whole born-again Jesus movement was going, and I got swept up into that. I was hardcore. I went to Bible study classes, I led Bible study classes, […]
