Articles & Essays

In a little over a week, my new book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation will find its way into the world. When I started the project, I couldn’t have imagined the world it…

How should we talk about white evangelicals during the coronavirus pandemic? On the one hand, there’s been no shortage of critical editorials highlighting the relatively small number of evangelical churches that have refused to comply with public health recommendations and…

The Washington Post. "Some Evangelicals deny the Coronavirus Threat. It’s because they Love Tough Guys." Perspective. April 2, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/02/conservative-evangelicals-coronavirus-tough-guys/ Excerpts: To be a man was to take risks, to eschew political correctness, to be, according to author and chaplain John McDougall,…

It’s been a rough couple of weeks to be a feminist. First, there was Elizabeth Warren’s heartbreaking exit from the race, leaving Democrats with two elderly white men standing. Then, there was the release of the Hulu documentary “Hillary.” This…

This year’s Super Bowl halftime show sparked outrage among a contingent of American Christians. Although the halftime show is rarely considered a purveyor of American moral values, this year’s performance by Shakira and Jennifer Lopez provoked new levels of opposition.…

Published in Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, January 23, 2020. Summary: On any given Sunday, many evangelical pastors find themselves preaching to polarized congregations. There are many reasons a pastor might choose this path of least resistance.…

Last week, journalist Sarah McClure published an investigative report in Cosmopolitan—yes, Cosmopolitan—on the prevalence of sexual abuse among the Amish. Based on a year-long investigation, the report contains disturbing details that are difficult to stomach; I’d call it shocking if we didn’t already have…

The frenzied commentary around Mark Galli’s Christianity Today editorial has not only revealed widely diverging opinions within the evangelical community about the Trump presidency, but also about about what, if anything, an anti-Trump editorial in the pages of CT portends. Is this merely…

This is a post about the history of evangelicalism. But as with many things these days, it starts with the election of Donald Trump. Or, more precisely, with the night before the election of Donald Trump. ‘Twas the evening of…

The tricky thing about cultures, though—cultural systems, cultural values, however you want to put it—is that they’re largely invisible to us when we’re inside those cultures. When you’re comfortably ensconced within a culture, it’s really hard to see your culture…