NEW FLF Course for Screen writers
Christian Screenplays shouldn’t suck Starts January 11 Meets Tues & Thurs, 5pm Pacific time Register Today! Christian Screenplays shouldn’t suck. Unfortunately, they have gained just…
Category: Culture
NEW FLF Course by CR Wiley on Tom Bombadil
In the House of Tom Bombadil Starts January 12 Every Wednesday 5pm-7pm Pacific time, for 7 weeks Register today! Who is the mysterious and apparently…
Rittenhouse, the Right, and Our Evangelistic Opportunity
By Rhett Burns I now rise to offer three cheers and a toast to King Kyle of Kenosha. May you live free and full of…
Being Tossed To and Fro By Critical Race Theory
By Levi Secord Preface In October, a group of concerned pastors and I met with our denomination’s leadership, the North American Baptist Conference (NAB). We…
Book Review: Strong and Courageous
By Rhett Burns Strong and Courageous: Following Jesus Amid the Rise of America’s New Religion by Tom Ascol and Jared Longshore (Founders Press, January 15,…
What Skills Make a Man Valuable?
By Jesse Sumpter Discussions about the nature of men and women often focus on identity and being. You will hear people ask kids: “What do…
The Grinch and His Heart Problem
By Jesse Sumpter Hollywood does not understand the Grinch’s heart problem. The famous song has it correct: Mr. Grinch’s heart is an empty hole. But…
Author Interview: It’s GOOD to be a Girl!
CrossPolitic: Thanks for doing this interview, Joseph. It is great to see your newest book is out: It’s GOOD to be a Girl! Joseph Spurgeon:…
Fire in the Chest: The Imminent Sexual Reckoning
By Rhett Burns Your house is on fire, but you don’t realize it yet. It’s an electrical fire, tearing through the walls, ready to engulf…
The America to Come
By Rhett Burns Is it accurate to say that American society has been careening toward a cliff for some time now, and the events of…
Donald Trump, Fat Tony, and Elite Evangelical Discourse
By Rhett Burns Donald Trump is an exclamation point, a bolded font, an underscore, an orange highlighter, drawing attention to the fecklessness of conservative leaders. …
The Courage to Stand
By Rhett Burns Standing Tall In early June, many lauded Peter Hitchens as a portrait of courage after being photographed as the only man standing…
#StillPostmil
By Rhett Burns This year has been a doozy. Australia caught fire for weeks. United States forces killed Iran’s top general, Qasem Soleimani, stoking tensions…
Insider Movement: Evangelicals and America’s New Civic Religion
The Insider Movement in Missions In Christian missions an Insider Movement refers to a group of followers of Jesus who remain socially, culturally, and, to…
What Christian Witness?
By Levi Secord One tired argument aimed at rowdy Baptists (and Presbyterians) is the need to protect our witness. As the reasoning goes, Christians should…
Ok Dude: Zuby’s Truth-Telling New Single
Rap succeeds best as a transgressive genre—hard men saying hard truths against the spirit of the age. Zuby’s new single Ok Dude hits the mark…
The Wrath of the Educrats
By Rhett Burns The Educrats are angry. And it seems they are lashing out in fear, having been threatened by the terrible vision of ten-year-olds…
World Baptized: the Riot and the Dance
By Jesse Sumpter I find the deep ocean to be rather intimidating. It is enormous. It is dark. You don’t know what is below the…
Book Review: The Book that Made your World by Vishal Mangalwadi
By Jesse Sumpter Vishal Mangalwadi, a Christian from India, has written a number of books. One of his recent ones is The Book that Made…
On How We Speak of Sin
Guest Post by Aaron O’Kelley In a 2013 essay, Thabiti Anyabwile wrote regarding same-sex marriage, “Turns out that being civil about indecency actually hurts the traditional…
Raise a Corporate Family
By Jesse Sumpter In December, I was part of a Local Summit. Actually, it was just a group of men having a casual conversation. But…
Opting Out: Farage, Freedom, and Cheerful Defiance
By Rhett Burns At 11:00 p.m. local time January 31, Great Britain left the European Union. A few days prior, Nigel Farage, leader of the…
Absolutely True: the Hospitality of Francis Schaeffer
By Jesse Sumpter The best way to summarize Francis Schaeffer’s ministry is one of hospitality. That might seem a strange way to describe a figure…
Man as Maker: Why Entrepreneurship Excites
Over at the How to Build a Tent podcast, Matt Williams is encouraging listeners to start businesses in 2020, and he plans to dedicate a…
Review 2019: Top 10 Blogazine Articles
Here are the ten most popular articles from the CrossPolitic Blogazine in 2019. These articles garnered a lot of attention this year and they highlight…
Doug Wilson Books: Best Reading Order
By Jesse Sumpter Sadly, No Quarter November is starting to wind down. On the other hand, you have all those great Doug Wilson books and…
Pastor vs Superintendent: Transgenderism in the Local School
By Levi Secord How does a pastor who gave up on public education a long time ago, and who homeschools his children, end up in…
True Believers, Marketers, and Evangelists
When I was a child, our church would gather late every summer with dozens of area churches for a large tent revival on the campus…
The Tribalism of the NeverTrump Evangelical Elite, Pt. 2
By Stephen Wolfe This is the second of a two part series. The first part is found here. Trust Paul Miller’s presentation of civic trust…
Why Origin Stories Matter
By Jesse Sumpter Everyone loves a good origin story. That is why we have so many movies about the origin of a particular character or…
The Endgame of Postmodernism
By Ben Zornes The Failed Plot of Subversivism Quote, “We like to be subversive,” unquote. The Russo Brothers stated this in an interview about their…
How Toxic Social Media Affects Young Adults
By Emma Perley Social media affects everyone, either directly, like through your smartphone or computer, or indirectly, like how live news affects a nation. In…
Can the Church Replace the Natural Family?
A few weeks ago, I wrote the following in this space: We should also stop conflating the church and the natural family as if the…
The Evangelical Reconcilers: How Evangelicalism Reconciles Itself with Modern Liberalism
Guest Post By Stephen Wolfe Evangelical Christianity is incompatible with the prevailing ideology of Western society—modern liberalism. This is why evangelicals are increasingly pushed to…
The Future is Familial
By Rhett Burns The Atlantic recently published an essay chronicling the childless American city, noting that New York City has shrunk for the first time…
Machen and Lessons for Today’s Liberalism
By Jesse Sumpter In the midst of the theological and cultural battles in our time–Revoice, Woke theology, Feminism–a wonderful resource to draw from is J.…
Singing is Slaying
By Rhett Burns Several weeks ago, I wrote here that feasting is fighting. But bread and wine and forks are not our only weapons as…
Juggernaut Fury – A Poem
Their juggernaut fury bore then, breakneck, on. Iliad, bk 16, ln 702 A horde of chub, toddling out of time, marching in and out of…
Motherhood in the Mission of God
By Rhett Burns At the most recent annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (my denomination), president J.D. Greear hosted a panel discussion entitled, Indispensable…
Jitters About Triggers
By Ben Zornes Politico once published an article––feverish with worry––that the clashes between white supremacists and antifa might soon escalate into a full-fledged wild west…
Our Inner Marxist Hates the 10th Commandment
By Ben Zornes We are all born with an inner Marxist. This is as much to say, we are born in sin. We are born…
Feasting is Fighting
In the war for the world, that ancient, yet active campaign to extend the rule of King Jesus to the four corners of the globe…
It Is So Passe To Come Out As A Gay Pastor, Unless You Are In The PCA
By Gabriel Rench I grew up in the PCA. I spent about 19 years of my life in that denomination. I was a member at…
Justice Redefined: How Social Justice Undermines the Gospel
Guest Post By Levi J. Secord The Q&A at this year’s Shepherds’ Conference revealed how deep the divide is within evangelicalism over social justice. In…
Jung, Occultism, and Weird Science
By George Grant Watkins’ Bookshop in Cecil Court, just off Charing Cross between Leicester Square and Covent Garden in London, was established in 1891 by…
Dred Scott, Abortion, and American Legal History
By Jesse Sumpter Today is the anniversary of the infamous Supreme Court case, Dred Scott v. Sanford, which was decided on March 6, 1857, ruling…
The Church is Plan A
By George Grant The Church is Plan A. And there is no Plan B. The Church is the means by which the Lord has purposed…
New York, Be Not Proud
New York, Be Not Proud by Jesse Sumpter “The #ReproductiveHealthAct is now law in New York State. We lit the spire pink to celebrate.” –Gov.…
Endurance: From Beginning to End
By George Grant The race really does go to the tortoise and not the hare. It is perseverance that ultimately will win the prize, not…
Top 10 Blogazine Articles in 2018
Here are the ten most popular articles from the CrossPolitic Blogazine in 2018. These articles garnered a lot of attention this year and they highlight…
When the State Came for My Niece
Note from Managing Editor: Given the sensitive nature of this material, the author of this piece asked to remain anonymous. The author hopes this story…
Social Justice, Biblical Justice, and Our Discipleship Problem
By Gabriel Rench Justice Needs the Bible There has been a lot of chatter back and forth the last couple years around social justice and…
The Gods are Falling before Him
Guest Post by Joost Nixon Last year on a rainy day near Kathmandu, a Nepali friend and I were on an evening errand for milk.…
Choosing to Not Choose is Still Choosing
We knew it would only be a matter of time before this sort of thing becomes more common. A couple of women who identify as…
Forward Toward the Philistines
Guest Post by Jared Longshore Secularism is all in a tizzy. She is hot and pouty. She’s fired up and making her demands. She’s defying…
69 year old, Christians, and Pedophilia
By Jesse Sumpter You can’t make this stuff up. A 69 year old Dutch man, named Emile Ratelband, has decided he wants to identify as…
The Antifragile Pastor
Guest Post By C.R. Wiley, First Posted November 15, 2018 A lot of ink has been spilled on the subject of fragility, particularly when it…
God, Kavanaugh, and the Twitter Storm
By Jesse Sumpter A lot of people turned off Twitter and Facebook when the Kavanaugh hearings were going last Thursday. It was just too much…
What Happens if Roe Vs. Wade is Overturned?
Here is my concern about the overturning of Roe vs. Wade: what happens when the law comes? Sin revives and we die. To undo Roe is to choose the death …
Cake Bakers, Crossfit, and The French Revolution
I was recently sitting in on a lecture from a local university professor on the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Whitworth University’s Dr.…
Nouveau Pelagianism
In his Confessions, Augustine (354-430) describes mankind’s universal sinful bent as “concupiscence.” The Greek word epithumia (ἐπιθυμία) occurs 38 times in the New Testament. It…
Education and Hope
Haarlem is a beautiful little Dutch town on the River Spaarne, fifteen minutes by train from Amsterdam. Founded sometime in the 10th century, in 1245…
Islam, End Times, and the Imago Dei
Last week was crazy. The United States moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Hamas greeted the move in their usual manner, which means…
Alfie Evans and the Post-Familial World
By now the tragic story of Alfie Evans is well known. The English toddler with an undiagnosed neurodegenerative disorder died last week, five days after…
Hawks Ascend in White House: Just War or *Just* War?
Three weeks ago, I wrote a response to Michael Gerson’s essay in The Atlantic about evangelical support of President Trump. I found it hypocritical that…
Neologisms
Every year new words and phrases find their way into our vocabulary. Sometimes these neologisms are the result of political turns of events, like Brexit,…
Abortion, the Death Penalty, and Our Nation’s Hypocrisy
Idaho Senator Bob Nonini has come under fire recently for nodding his head in agreement with the view that those who murder a baby in…
Chef: A Review
Every once in a while you hit a movie that is just plain beautiful. I mean, real life beautiful. The story is wonderful, the characters…
A Christian Case for Gun Rights?
The news cycle following a mass shooting is predictable. Thoughts and prayers are offered, outrage and demands are expressed, and the cable news stations fill…
Black History Month’s Startling Omission
I love basketball. In particular, I love the NBA. I watch a game multiple times a week. And every February they do a passably good…
Statist Prayers for Parkland USA
As you have no doubt heard, there’s been another school shooting, and seventeen people are dead. An evil man took lives he had no right…
Review: Andrew Peterson’s Resurrection Letters: Prologue
The best music is imaginative in the Chestertonian sense. It does not attempt to create a new world. Rather, it seeks to uncover and reveal…
Inevitable Controversy
All leaders are controversial. They invariably risk the ire of others. Because they stand for certain things, they necessarily stand against certain things. This causes…
Meaning It, Believing It, and Living It
It is one of the great ironies of our day that Christians can pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven,”…
Nursing A Goose Egg: Why Trump’s S***hole Comments Caused a Stir
It has been two weeks since President Donald Trump allegedly referred to Haiti and some African nations as “s***hole countries” in a meeting with congressional…
Milton’s Political Uselessness
In 1652 John Milton went completely blind. His eyes had been waning, the world fading, for some time. The darkening was complete the same year…
Jung, Occultism, and Weird Science
Watkins’ Bookshop in Cecil Court, just off Charing Cross between Leicester Square and Covent Garden in London, was established in 1891 by John Watkins, and…
True and Lasting Regime Change: Hope for Iran (and all of us)
Iran is once again embroiled in national protest. The demonstrations started a week ago as an economic protest, but have taken on an increasingly anti-government…
Reluctant Revolutionaries of the American Republic
“In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the…
Dance with Us – Dance and the Christian Life
Team Farley has a number of Family Rules that are beyond discussion. Rule #1: When Billy Idol comes on the radio no one may leave…
Humbug
Humbug is an old word of indeterminate etymology meaning “spectacle” or “hoax” or “jest,” often referring to some unjustified reputation or publicity. Of course, the…
A Person’s a Person, No Matter How Rich
The estate tax (or death tax, or silver spoon tax, depending on who you ask) is the state’s attempt to redistribute the money of the…
Mob Justice in SEC Country: Tennessee Football and the Alabama Senate Race
After another dismal football season, the University of Tennessee has now fumbled its coaching search. Last week, the Volunteers had reached an agreement to hire…
Psalms With a Southern Accent – My Soul Among Lions
In my first church job the Pastor gave me a bit of advice that stuck. Children learn most of their theology from the songs that…
Gun Laws and Heroism after Las Vegas
Like a sniper in a war zone, Stephen Paddock found a defensible position 400 yards from his target, and set to waging his little war…
No Floor to Stand On: Hollywood Faces Sexual Assault Scandal
Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was outed as a sexual predator last week in a New York Times story. Or, more accurately, he was outed nationally…
Kill You to Call – Nicki Bluhm and The Blues as Connection
The Blues are sad songs. No one wants that. And yet The Blues persist. There is little reason to believe that The Blues is going…
It’s Edited: Don’t be Duped by the Newsertainment
Editing is an art form. My son Cedric was coming in the front door a few days ago when his sister asked, “Did you…
Medical Abortions and the Contradictions of the Pro-Choice Crowd
Abortion pill reversal has been a point of serious contention lately, with some states even mandating that abortion providers inform their patients that the effects…
Guest Post by Pastor Doug Wilson: Christian Disobedience
Guest Post by Douglas Wilson In the light of various Supreme Court decisions—Roe, Obergefell, and other mutants—where they have sought to sanctify things that God…
A Manifesto on Art and the Church
The Christian Church is in exile. Not that we are living in tents (though many church buildings may qualify as temporary). Instead, there is a…
Marxism is Boring: The Hyper-Politicization of Public Art
Everyone has to have an overarching story. A mythos that holds what they see and hear together. When I lived in California, I did evangelism on…
The Tree of Life
Well, it’s summer. It’s time for the beach towels, sunblock, the nearest pool, and, yes, good movies. Who doesn’t love a late night movie…
Courage & Blood Money: A Proposal toward the Abolition of Abortion
“The sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light” (Lk. 16:8). Modern conservative Christians…
Bill Maher and the Impotence of the Tiny Heart-Obama
I make my children practice telling jokes at dinner. If I can help it, none of my progeny will have bad comedic timing. The girl…
Identity Politics and the Widening American Divide
Why can’t Americans reach across the aisle like they used to? This question becomes more and more relevant every day, as we see the American…
Reaping Calamity: Venezuela and Socialism
Venezuela is continuing its slide into disorder and mayhem. Protests against President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government have continued for almost eight weeks, and they are growing…
Is Our Galaxy Worth Guarding? (A Sort-Of-Not-Really Movie Review)
It is true that nobody makes a new earth without first making a new heaven. – G. K. Chesterton (Ffinch 1986, 278) I have recently been wondering, if…
Amazon and the Church of Secularism
As Millennials reject organized religion and leave the church to never return, many bluster about the implications of such trends. Some secularists take this as a signal of…
Nobody Ever Said You Were A Pre-Existing Condition
At the America’s World Voices Festival in New York last Thursday, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards set off a media frenzy, saying, “Being a woman…
Packaging the Tribe: Selling More than Music
Netflix’ new documentary Hip Hop Evolution is a history of the development and rise of Hip Hop and Rap. In one of the interviews, Ice T, a primeval …
Stepping Off the Tram: Turkey, America, and Presidential Power
Back when he was mayor of Istanbul, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan, once famously quipped that democracy is like a tram. You ride it until…