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 cause.” His point was that polite discourse about abominable behavior plays a role in normalizing such behavior. It is not difficult to see why that would be the case. Polite […]
Sabbath Harder: Eric Liddell and Complete Surrender
By Jesse Sumpter Christians should know how to keep Sabbath. I am not saying this the way that some in our culture would say it. Some people say we need more rest because we are too busy, living crazy, distracted lives. These people suggest we need to do some yoga and find our inner guru […]
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 as we were talking I realized that it was basically a Local Summit. Each man worked in a different field: one was a weed scientist, another was a wood floor […]
The Glory of Inefficiency
By Rhett Burns My eight-year-old son asked for a Truist Park cake for his recent birthday, and my wife, always up for a baking challenge, set herself to replicating the home stadium of our beloved Atlanta Braves. As you can see in the below photo, she hit a home run. It took several hours of […]
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 president.” There was an uproar on Twitter and the Post changed the title to “It’s time to switch to preference primaries.” The piece makes the case for preference voting at […]
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 known for his intellectual work, but hospitality was the heart of his ministry. He practiced hospitality in various ways, but primarily at L’Abri, the home that he and his wife […]
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 good portion of his shows this year toward helping people succeed in their new ventures. The goal—to start a business that brings in $250 of revenue per month—is purposefully small, […]
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 key aspects of the work at CrossPolitic. Enjoy the review of 2019! 10. The Future is Familial. This article traces the cultural trends toward being unmarried and how the family […]
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 now you need to decide which order to read them in. Here is a recommended order to do that. As you look at this list, you will see that some […]
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 an intense meeting with the superintendent of the local school district? That’s a good question that requires a long answer. A couple of months ago, our neighbor who served on […]
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 in his ERLC report is useful for exposing the tribalism of the evangelical elite. The report bizarrely prescribes distrust in order to remedy distrust—committing a sort of performative contradiction. At […]
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 with and morally denouncing evangelical support for Trump—often in the opinion pages of national newspapers—their fellow evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Trump. In the end, these “influencers” had little influence; these […]
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 hero. In many ways, almost all stories are origin stories: these stories explain who the character is and how he got to be the person that he is. We like […]
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 blockbuster mega-movie Avengers: Endgame. This they did. The reason they like being subversive is because they are ordained ministers of Postmodernism. The story they tell springs from the fallow soil […]
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 margins of public legitimacy and respectability. This marginalization however is principally and firstly not from physical coercion. Evangelicals are not rounded up by official authorities and sent to the […]
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 in four decades in a non-recession year. The cost of living, particularly housing, has priced families out of the city. In their absence, American cities have become “entertainment machines” for […]
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. Gresham Machen (born July 28, 1881). His battle with Liberalism a hundred years ago offers important lessons for those who are fighting today’s Liberalism. Here are three key lessons to […]
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 we aim to take the planet for King Jesus. We also have organs, guitars, drums, pianos, cellos, and those two ligaments in the larynx responsible for producing the human voice. […]
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 Partners: The Value of Women in God’s Mission. The discussion was standard narrow complementarian fare, neither very helpful nor harmful. It would have been unremarkable if not for one glaring […]
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 gun duel in our streets. The article gesticulates wildly at the militia-like appearance of some of the protesters––open-carrying their AR-15s––as evidence of the fact that if tensions rise, someone might […]