Are You a Christian Nationalist?
By Rhett Burns Are you a Christian Nationalist? This seems to be the talk soup of the day on Twitter, thanks to threads like this,…
Category: Articles | Fight
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…
A Ladder, a Bible, and a Preacher: Fighting to End Abortion in South Carolina
By Rhett Burns I went to minister at our local abortion clinic for the first time like a safe and respectable Christian: I showed up…
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…
Christian Defense of Nationalism
Guest Article by Darrell Dow The last decade has seen the global emergence of nationalism and populism. From Japan to the Indian subcontinent, from the…
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,…
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…
Cynical Theories: A Christian Review
By Levi Secord In Cynical Theories, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay issue a stinging rebuke of critical theory, and its various twisted children, by exposing…
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…
In Diversity We Trust?
By Levi Secord Recently, I saw a man with “In diversity we trust” emblazoned on his shirt. Replacing “In God we trust” with this mantra…
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. …
Singing and the Sons of God: On the Recovery of Maximalism
Congregational singing is in the crosshairs of Covid-19 as public health recommendations and orders from civil magistrates in some areas of the country seek to…
Proud to be an American? A Christian Reflection on being American
By Levi Secord In the fallout of the George Floyd fiasco, much has been said about what is wrong with America, both her past and…
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…
Author Interview: It’s Good to be a Boy!
CrossPolitic: Thank you for doing this interview, Joseph. Your book It’s Good to be a Boy! recently came out. Why did you write this book?…
Rebellion to Tyrants: The Principles behind the Just War for Independence
By Jesse Sumpter In celebrating Independence Day, it is important to take time and set forth the political and historical principles behind the American Revolution.…
#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…
Will someone love Aimee Byrd?
By Joseph Spurgeon Titus 1:10-11 For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because…
A Response to Matt Chandler
By Levi Secord I like Matt Chandler. I’ve benefited from both his books and preaching. On many central and secondary doctrines, we are closely aligned.…
Beating Off the Wolves
By Levi Secord There is a reckoning coming for the American church, and it’s not what most people think. In the aftermath of the unjust…
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…
The Refreshing Reality of Hell
By Jesse Sumpter In dark times like these, one of our great hopes is the reality of Hell. It might seem odd to say that,…
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…
Constitutional Law & The Cult of Experts
Guest Post By Brian Sauvé As our forefather John Adams said, “If ye would know a people, know their Facebook memes.” I mean, he probably…
Loving Your Neighbor: COVID-19 Edition
By Levi Secord If there is a chief faux-virtue today, it is love. No one wants to be against love, especially Christians. After all, God…
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…
Seductive Statism: David Bahnsen, Robert Sirico, and Big Government
By Jesse Sumpter Thursday, April 9, Acton Institute hosted a live conversation on Zoom between David Bahnsen and Fr. Robert Sirico about the current Covid-19…
Coronaing Out of Control
By Levi Secord At this point, frustration, bewilderment, and despair rule over much of our world. As a pastor, I’m tasked with shepherding my flock…
Stimulus Checks are Bad for the Economy
By Jesse Sumpter President Trump is seeking $850 billion to $1 trillion in stimulus measures for the economy. As part of this proposal, the President…
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…
Did America Have A Christian Founding? Interview with Mark David Hall
Jesse Sumpter: Thank you for doing this interview, Mark. Your book Did America Have A Christian Founding is a wonderful resource for those interested in…
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…
Trump and Sanders Vs. the Elites
By Jesse Sumpter On Tuesday, the Washington Post released an opinion piece titled, “It’s time to give the elites a bigger say in choosing the…
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…
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…
Do Not Leave Your Friends in Battle: Chick-Fil-A and the Culture Wars
By Rhett Burns Chick-Fil-A announced this week it is restructuring the company’s charitable giving. Instead of donating to more than 300 organizations, the company will…
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…
The Tribalism of the NeverTrump Evangelical Elite, Pt. 1
By Stephen Wolfe When Donald Trump won the election in 2016, many evangelicals pondered the fate of their NeverTrump evangelical leaders. After months of pleading…
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…
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.…
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…
Losing Our Virtue: Relativism, Social Justice, & Intersectionality
By Levi Secord Meaninglessness. This is the legacy of relativism in society. It pervades just about every area of life—especially morality. In Losing Our Virtue,…
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…
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…
The Moment Death Begins
By Matt Williams Most of my listeners have heard that my wife and I have just gone through a miscarriage. It is painful, surreal, sobering,…
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…
Fighting for life
Op/Ed by Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin At least now we have clarity on the issue. Now that the hard left has dropped the pretense of…
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…
Reformational Abolition or Cautions for the Abolitionists
By Toby Sumpter I have a great deal of respect for the men and women on the front lines of the abortion ministry. My respect…
A Brief Primer on God’s Ordained Spheres of Authority
By Toby Sumpter Introduction We live in a world obsessed with power and power disparities. On the one hand, the modern world professes not to…
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…
Idaho Conservative Voting Guide Nov. 2018
Managing Editor: This voter guide was created by Daniel Foucachon. Here is his website. CrossPolitic’s interview with Bill Goesling can be found here. They also…
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…
Transcript of CP Show with Jonathan Merritt Part 1: What is Lostness?
Managing Editor: This is the text of an interview CrossPolitic did with Jonathan Merritt about his book Learning to Speak God from Scratch. The video…
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…
Just or Unjust: Reviewing the Syrian Missile Strike
Last week, I posted my article on just war and the ascendance of foreign policy hawks in the White House on the same morning President…
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…
Hitching Their Wagons: Evangelicals and the Politics of Respectability
Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, published a takedown of Trump-supporting evangelicals in the latest issue of The Atlantic. Gerson attempts…
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…
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…
Keller’s Baal Problem
Look, I know it’s easy to criticize prominent men. I know it’s easy to point fingers, to blame, to accuse, to read the worst into…
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…
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…
The Perils of President Pence?
Vice President Mike Pence is one heartbeat, or resignation, away from the top job. But with Trump’s robust health and seeming immunity to the effects…
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…
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…
On Multiple Strategies in the Abortion Fight
Last week I posted an interview with my friend Emily Buchanan of the Susan B. Anthony List, a political organization based in Washington, D.C. We…
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…
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…
Made in Our Own Image
A profound shift in scientific philosophy has occurred in the last 100 years. Significant scientific breakthroughs are manipulated into a grasp for control. The theory of…
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…
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…
A Sense of Purpose, but no Sense of Place: The Media Will Always Get the 2016 Election Wrong
During the last election cycle, even up through the first half of election night, every major media outlet predicted a comfortable victory for Hillary Clinton.…
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…