Brendan J. J. Payne is Assistant Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at North Greenville University. This interview is based on his new book, Gin, Jesus, and Jim Crow: Prohibition and the Transformation of Racial and...
churches
Does your church have a racist past?
Check out Mark Wingfield’s piece at Baptist World Global titled “What to do if you unearth a history of slavery in your church, college, or institution?” Here’s a taste: With increasing attention to the roots of American slavery in religious...
The majority of Americans are not members of a church
Here is Gallup: Americans’ membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup’s eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down...
Historian Jon Meacham joins the National Cathedral
Meacham will serve as the cathedral’s “canon historian” and is the first appointment in the church’s College of Faith & Culture. Here is Jack Jenkins at Religion News Service: Jon Meacham, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and adviser to President Joe...
Megachurch pastor Andy Stanley: “I’m embarrassed as a Christian”
Stanley is the pastor of Atlanta’s North Point Community Church, one of the largest churches in the country. North Point has been closed since the outbreak of COVID-19. In a November 2020 interview with The Atlantic, Stanley said that evangelical...
Some churches are hiring professional moderators to hold their congregations together in the post-Trump era
Pastors live busy and hectic lives. Most of them do their best to serve the spiritual needs of their congregations, but it is hard to shape the minds and hearts of the people God has trusted to their care when...
Rick Warren: “We’re not being discriminated against. This is a safety issue”
Cameron Strang of Relevant magazine recently interviewed Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren about the events of 2020. Read it here. While other California megachurch pastors like John MacArthur and Jack Hibbs yell and scream about their religious liberties, Warren takes...
Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health calls churches to go back to remote services
The courts may be on the side opening churches, but Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian and director of the National Institutes of Health, does not think it is a good idea. Here is NPR: With COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths at […]
An important and overlooked part of John Piper’s election post
In the midst of the all the political back and forth, Piper’s message to pastors may be the most important part of his anti-Trump post. Here is what he wrote: May I suggest to pastors that in the quietness of...
Los Angeles Superior Court: John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church can’t hold indoor worship services
Here is Religion News Service: A Los Angeles Superior Court judge granted a preliminary injunction against Grace Community Church, prohibiting Pastor John MacArthur from holding indoor worship services. The County of Los Angeles has sought to stop the megachurch from...
This interview tells us a lot about John MacArthur and the movement he represents
Chris Hutchison, the pastor of Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Blacksburg, VA, brought this to my attention today via Twitter. Watch John MacArthur speaking to Ryan Helfenbein of the Liberty University Falkirk Center about his battle with the state...
The REAL story about church life in this pandemic
Churches opening in violation of state regulations get a lot of attention, but it seems like the real story of church life during the COVID-19 pandemic is all the people who are not going back to church. Here is Mark Wingfield...
The Falkirk Center on the John MacArthur controversy. Or how culture warriors write.
Some of you have been following the situation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. For the past two Sundays, pastor John MacArthur has held religious services in defiance of California’s COVID-19 regulations. MacArthur said: “We will obey...
Evangelical pastor John MacArthur suggests churches that remain closed during COVID-19 are not “true” churches
Who is John MacArthur and what is this all about? Get up to speed here. Kate Shellnut and Nicole Sparks report on MacArthur’s sermon Sunday at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. Here is a taste of their piece...
What is going on with John MacArthur and Romans 13?
I could say a lot of things here about John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, but until yesterday I always thought he took a pretty consistent stand on passages like Romans 13 that require Christians...
When Evangelicals open churches early
Evangelicals like to think of themselves as people of faith. Faith is often irrational, but there is a fine line between faith and stupidity. As the title character of John Irving’s novel A Prayer for Owen Meany reminds us, “I...
Saturday night court evangelical roundup
What have Trump’s evangelicals been saying since our last update? Samuel Rodriguez is upset about the prohibition on singing in California churches. You cannot permit tens of thousands to march in protest without masks and demand that 100 worshipers refrain from singing. That my...
Post COVID-19: religious revival or religious recession?
Last month, when I was writing my series “Three Sundays in April,” I commented on how court evangelical preachers Greg Laurie, Robert Jeffress, and Jack Graham were predicting a great spiritual revival as soon as Americans came out of quarantine...
Wednesday Night Court Evangelical Roundup
Since my last update, a few things have changed in court evangelical land. Neil Gorsuch, one of two Donald Trump Supreme Court nominees, has defended LGBTQ rights and has proven he may not be the best court evangelical ally when...
Churches and the memory of the Confederacy
Last night I ran across this article from The Spokesman-Review about a Boise, Idaho church that will remove a stained-glass window featuring Robert E. Lee. Here is a taste: BOISE, Idaho – One of Boise’s largest churches is removing a controversial...