Don Denkinger, the umpire who blew a call at first base in game six of the 1985 World Series, died on May 12, 2023. Watch: Here is Cardinals fan Will Leitch at The Washington Post: The reason the Cardinals lost...
Charles Stanley died last week. He was the senior pastor of Atlanta Baptist Church for nearly half a century, a television preacher, and a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Over at Get Religion, veteran religion journalist Terry Mattingly...
The Gazette of Cedar Rapids (IA), January 18, 1980....
If you want to get a feel for what is going on in the pro-Trump wing of charismatic Christianity, check out Steve Strang‘s recent appearance on the Jim Bakker Show. Strang, the editor of Charisma magazine, has a new book...
Watch: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-NOZU2iPA8&w=560&h=315] My twenty-two-year-old daughter can’t get her head around the suggestion that anyone would perform this song, in this way, unless it were some kind of parody or joke. She sees this video as some kind of Saturday...
Earlier this week I saw Blinded by the Light, the feel-good movie about a Pakistani teenager named Javed Kahn living in Luton, England during the Thatcher years. Javed’s depressing life is transformed after he is exposed to the the music...
Here is an excerpt from University of Missouri historian John Wigger’s book PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire (Oxford University Press, 2017): …on March 19, 1987, Jim Bakker resigned in disgrace from PTL after...
Fillmore, Pierce, and Johnson were sitting presidents seeking reelection who failed to win the nomination of their political party. And it almost happened in 1980 as Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter for the Democratic Party nomination. Could it happen in...
Anyone who attended a Christian college or was part of an evangelical youth group in the 1980s knows this song.  Love it or hate it, Michael W. Smith‘s “Friends” is a Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) classic. Yesterday I learned that...
I am happy to contribute to this video posted today at The New York Times. Retro Report spent over an hour interviewing me at Messiah College back in August. I was apparently not as engaging as Cal Thomas, Jerry Falwell Jr....
Andrew DeYoung has written a very interesting piece at The Stake suggesting that the message of Bruce Springsteen’s songs resonates with the concerns of people who are supporting Donald Trump for President of the United States. Â It is a nuanced...
With the death of Glen Frey last week I felt a sort of obligation to watch the CNN documentary movie about his band, the Eagles. Â I know it’s cliche to say this, but its true: the Eagles have really provided...
Some of you may recall my piece on Rick Perry’s use of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” at a rally last month. Â You can read it here. Â It is entitled “Why Rick Perry Should Think Twice Before He Makes...
Most of you know the story of PTL (Praise the Lord) ministries, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker‘s television ministry that collapsed under a sex scandal and subsequent revelations of accounting fraud. Jim ended up in jail. Â He and Tammy Faye...
Springsteen’s Born in the USA turns thirty today. Â I was a teenager when this album appeared and it has been with me ever since. Â I bought the cassette through Columbia House as part of those membership drives in which you...
Last week while I was in Ocean City, New Jersey, my family and I attended a concert by the Christian group GLAD. Evangelicals of a certain age will remember GLAD. They began in the 1970s as a progressive Christian rock...
I became an evangelical Christian in the mid-1980s and this was the kind of stuff I used to listen to back then. Classic! [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPstiMRlB-k] Believe it or not, I saw this group–GLAD (that’s their name–it is not an acronym)–in […]
