Rachel Held Evans

Book Club Discussion: Big Important Questions

Today we continue our discussion about Phyllis Tickle’s fascinating book, The Great Emergence. As we learned last week, Tickle’s premise is that the Church experiences a great paradigm shift every 500 years, and we are in the midst of one presently. According to Tickle, each time of re- Read more...

Survey Says: Don't Read Into It

As you may have heard, a recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life found that the majority of those affiliated with a religion do not believe their religion is the only way to salvation. This includes 57 percent of evangelicals who say that many religions can Read more...

Gays, Buddhists, and Scientists: Will Evangelicals Change Their Minds?

In the 16th century, John Calvin argued on theological grounds that anyone who believed that the earth moved in space was “motivated by a spirit of bitterness, contradiction, and faultfinding; possessed by the devil.” *  In the 17th century, both Catholics and Protestants systematic Read more...

When a theology just doesn't feel right...

This week’s posts challenge the fundamentalists position of exclusivism-the theology that salvation is available only to those who explicitly confess faith in Jesus Christ, leaving out the billions of people throughout history who either never heard of Jesus or who were raised in religious tra Read more...

Some thoughts on those who "haven't heard"

Despite my hesitancy to use selective passages of Scripture to “make a point” and my general aversion to bullet-points, I felt it necessary to include a more detailed presentation of a biblical alternative to exclusivism for the benefit of those readers who are themselves searching for o Read more...

Book Club Discussion: Is Jesus a Christian?

In Chapter 12 of William P. Young’s The Shack, Jesus talks with the book’s protagonist, Mackenzie, about the inadequacy of institutions in bringing people closer to God. Jesus says, “Institutions, systems, ideologies, and all the vain, futile efforts of humanity that go with them a Read more...