Randal Rauser

Home of progressively evangelical, generously orthodox, rigorously analytic, revolutionary Christian thinking (that's what I'm aiming for anyway)

evangelicalism

No, the “Mainstream Media” is Not Trying to “Gaslight” You

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One of my Twitter followers, Matthew, directed me to a new article posted yesterday by Christian apologist Natasha Crain titled “How Mainstream Media Gaslights Christians (and Everyone Else Who Disagrees with Them).” In the article, Crain points out that the “mainstream media” is biased. While that is true as far as it goes, Crain doesn’t […]

Progressive Christians Don’t Care About Doctrine? Rebutting Evangelical Misinformation

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There is arguably no religious community that talks more about “truth” and “defending truth” than evangelical Christians. And yet, from Trump’s big lie and QAnon to the ubiquity of urban legends, evangelicals have shown themselves to be fatuous and often culpably complicit in spreading harmful misinformation. Alas, the falsehoods they spread about progressive Christians are […]

Are Progressive Christians Another Religion? A Discussion with George Yancey

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In the 2021 book One Faith No Longer: The Transformation of Christianity in Red and Blue America, sociologists George Yancey and Ashlee Quosigk argue that progressive and evangelical Christianity should be viewed as different religions. In this video, I interview Professor Yancey on this provocative thesis. ?

“Put Your Damn Bible Down”? How Sean McDowell spreads Misinformation About Progressive Christians

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Evangelical Christians like Sean McDowell claim that progressive Christians undermine truth. And yet, McDowell’s own interaction with progressive Christianity is characterized by strawmanning, hasty generalization, cherry-picking, and other tools of misinformation. You can’t serve truth by promoting falsehood. ?

Another Gospel? The Irony of Alisa Childers

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Alisa Childers has become very popular in the last few years promoting some scary thing she calls “progressive Christianity”. Sadly, Cameron of Capturing Christianity continues to boost Childers. If you want a capsule summary of how offensive Childers is, take a look at this Frank Turek tweet in which he promotes Childers’ “course” that explains […]

Are Evangelicals Pluralists? Evangelical Ministries and the Problem of Dubious Scare Surveys

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Back in August 2021, The Christian Post published an article with the dramatic title “60% of adults under 40 say Jesus isn’t only way to salvation; equal to Buddha, Muhammad.” The article includes the ominous subtitle: “Survey shows pluralistic worldview expanding rapidly among American Christians.” This is a classic example of what I call a […]

The Incredibly Dark World of Fundagelical Christianity

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I grew up in a fundagelical church. We were Pentecostal and thus charismatic with a heady dose of dispensationalism and culture war conservatism. As I reflect back, it strikes me that the worldview I was given was incredibly dark and pessimistic. For example, we were raised to believe the following (either through explicit teaching or […]

The Fallacies of Conservative Christian Apologetics

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When I was growing up, the Christian apologists I read often claimed that biblical scholars and archaeologists who arrived at results at odds with conservative evangelical orthodoxy were driven by “naturalistic assumptions”. While there was a kernel of truth in the warning, for the most part, it was false. Often, these scholars were devout Christian […]

Looking to Disagree: The Problem of Pugilistic Evangelicals

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The other day, I posted the following tweet criticizing a t-shirt being marketed by evangelical apologist Frank Turek: “Frank Turek is selling a shirt that replaces the “Coexist” logo with one that says “Contradict” as if belief in the truth of Xianity entails that all the claims of other religions are false. That is wrong. […]