I just finished viewing Matt Walsh’s wry and powerful documentary What Is a Woman? This is one of the most timely and compelling films that I have ever seen. The premise is simple. Transgender ideology has swept over the Western world. Given that it is becoming more and more common to see some men identity as women and some women identify as men, surely people who hold to this ideology can tell us what a woman is. It turns out that they can’t. In calm even tones, Walsh put the question to person after person, expert after expert, and activist after activist. And yet none of them can explain what…
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How To Correct False Teaching
?? I’ve been preaching through 2 Corinthians at our church and recently delivered a message on 2 Corinthians 10:1-6 titled “How To Correct False Teaching.” There is an excerpt printed below. To hear the rest of the message, you can download it here or press play to listen above. Last week, the Biden administration released two documents making policy recommendations concerning the care of children who are experiencing feelings of gender confusion. Perhaps you can guess what the recommendations are. They recommend putting minor children on puberty blockers to keep their bodies from maturing and becoming fully developed. They allow infusion of opposite sex hormones in minor children. They even…
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Gay Is Okay at Baylor after All
On Tuesday, an announcement appeared on Twitter about the formation of a new LGBTQ+ student group at Baylor University: IT’S OFFICIAL!!! PRISM is Baylor University’s first chartered LGBTQ student organization! Thank you to all the alumni, friends, administrators, and supporters who helped get us to this historic day. #care #community #connection – #PRISMatBaylor #Baylor #LGBTQ pic.twitter.com/RVW5kbafv2 — PRISM at Baylor (@PRISMatBaylor) April 20, 2022 This announcement was no surprise. Students had been lobbying for the University to sanction such a group for years but had been rejected time and again by the board of regents. A year ago, the board finally relented and signaled that change was coming. The Texas…
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Who will speak up for the “transgender” kid?
Ross Douthat has written one of the most pointed, prophetic paragraphs that I have ever read in a newspaper. He writes: I will make a prediction: Within not too short a span of time, not only conservatives but most liberals will recognize that we have been running an experiment on trans-identifying youth without good or certain evidence, inspired by ideological motives rather than scientific rigor, in a way that future generations will regard as a grave medical-political scandal. Which means that if you are a liberal who believes as much already, but you don’t feel comfortable saying it, your silence will eventually become your regret. There is no question that…
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Do you know what a woman is? Ketanji Brown Jackson Doesn’t.
The video at the bottom of this post is queued up to an extraordinary exchange that occurred at yesterday’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Senator Marsha Blackburn asks Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson if she can define what a woman is. Here’s a transcript of what they said, and you’re not going to believe it. Blackburn: Do you agree with Justice Ginsburg that there are physical differences between men and women that are enduring? Jackson: Um, Senator. Respectfully, I’m not familiar with that particular quote or case, so it’s hard for me to comment as to whether… Blackburn: Okay… Do you interpret Justice Ginsburg’s meaning of “men” and “women” as…
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The Transgender, Deconstructing, Exvangelical Endorser of “Jesus and John Wayne”
Yesterday, someone brought to my attention that one of the lead endorsers of Jesus and John Wayne is Chrissy Stroop—a transgender exvangelical who is deconstructing his faith and whose endorsement appears on the cover of the book. Stroop describes himself this way on his website: I am an ex-evangelical–aka exvangelical or exvie–and in that capacity I seek to help build community for those harmed by and alienated from conservative religious groups. Much of my blogging here is dedicated to this end, and this site also hosts an annotated list of resources for those deconstructing and deconstructed from toxic religion. I am convinced of the need to create more spaces for exvies and…
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Advocating and Not Merely Adhering
Last week, Dr. Jason Allen delivered an extraordinary lecture on leadership on the campus of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (see video here). In that lecture, he called Southern Baptist leaders to be advocates of their doctrinal commitments rather than mere adherents. He applied that first and foremost to the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, but also to other “clarifying” standards that some SBC institutions use (like the Chicago, Danvers, and Nashville statements). This week, Mike Bird criticized Dr. Allen’s lecture on social media. I think that criticism merits a response. I do not speak for Dr. Allen but only for myself. Having said that, I’m confident that Dr. Allen…
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What happened at the ETS?
Well, another annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) is now in the books. I returned home late Thursday night from Fort Worth, TX, where this year’s gathering was held. For those of you who don’t know, the ETS is a society of theologians and biblical scholars who are dedicated to biblical inerrancy and a belief in the Trinity. At the annual meeting, members come together to present academic papers, meet with publishers, and catch up with old friends. Keep in mind that I only experienced a narrow slice of things, but here are my reflections on what I saw nonetheless. 1. Fort Worth and Nostalgia I confess that…
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Elite Evangelicalism’s Allergy to Complementarianism
Former editor of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, wrote a jaw-dropping column last week. Galli’s essay discusses where the next generation of evangelical leadership is going to emerge from. Will it be from among “elite evangelicalism” (e.g., Fuller Seminary, CT, Intervarsity Press, World Vision, etc.), or will it be from among the constellation of “reactionary Reformed conservatives” (e.g., Doug Wilson)? Galli then goes on to talk about his tenure at Christianity Today and what it revealed to him about the priorities of “elite evangelicalism.” He writes, Elite evangelicalism (represented by CT, IVPress, World Vision, Fuller Seminary, and a host of other establishment organizations) is too often “a form of cultural accommodation…
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Biden’s Promise to Pass “The Equality Act” in His First 100 Days as President
President Biden promised last year to work on passing The Equality Act during the first 100 days of his presidency. If you are not familiar with “The Equality Act,” you need to be. Until the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision, sexual orientation and gender identity were not protected classes in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But through a tortured reading of the statute, the Court decided to read those protections into the statute. It is a terrible decision that ignores what the authors of the statute meant when they wrote it. Some have argued that the passage of The Equality Act would be a moot point in light of Bostock. They…
