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 […]
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 Brexit Party and member of the European Parliament, gave a short, but glorious farewell speech ahead of the parliament’s Brexit withdrawal agreement vote. I am not British and have no […]
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, […]
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 give to three partners focusing on three specific issues: education, homelessness, and hunger. Among those organizations no longer receiving funds from Chick-Fil-A is the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of […]
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 of the local Baptist college. In the sweltering August heat, we’d sing southern gospel hymns, listen to hellfire and brimstone preaching, and laugh at the corny puppet show put on […]
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 former may be substituted for the latter. While there is some overlap, and family works as a metaphor to describe the church, these are two separate spheres that God has […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 so that the glory of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the seas, food is not neutral. Nor is it utilitarian, a simple means of physical sustenance […]
Hunger For God: Nearly 1000 Soldiers Come to Faith
When I was a young boy I met someone who seemed like a giant to me. At six-foot-seven-inches Jose Rondon was the tallest person I had ever seen in person. He was also incredibly kind, a good baseball pitcher, and loved Jesus. Originally from Venezuela, Jose lived briefly with my grandparents before staying long-term with […]
Hair Flapping in the Wind: On the SBC and Women
My denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, held its annual meeting last week. In response to current cultural trends, namely the #MeToo movement and the Paige Patterson fiasco, leaders and messengers spent a significant amount of time addressing women’s issues. The convention passed resolutions on the dignity of women and on abuse. But a lot of […]
Facebook, Evangelism, and the Control of Information
Adam Ford has sold the Christian satire news site, The Babylon Bee. Launched in 2016, the Bee employs The Onion-style satire to spoof American evangelicalism—its popular pastors, authors, and fads—while taking occasional jabs at our larger secular culture. It has been mostly funny and wildly successful. So why did Ford sell? He gave several reasons […]
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 with bombs and human shields. Major media outlets portrayed Hamas in their usual manner, which means referring to them as “protestors,” ignoring the bombs and the children sent into a […]
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 doctors extubated him and abandoned all treatment, except palliative care. A judge denied Alfie’s parents the right to transport him to another hospital to extend treatment and life-support, even though […]
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 Trump tweeted this: Two days later, President Trump, along with his British and French counterparts, ordered a limited missile strike against the Assad regime in response to its alleged use […]
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 Gerson, a senior policy advisor to President Bush and a member of The White House Iraq Group, was lecturing evangelicals about Trump’s rhetoric when his own administration’s war caused such […]
Cited: Christian Musician Found in Violation of Diversity Codes
A few weeks ago, I reviewed Andrew Peterson’s beautiful new EP, Resurrection Letters: Prologue. His new full-length album will release on Good Friday, and in advance of that, The Gospel Coalition premiered the video for Peterson’s Revelation 5-inspired song, “Is He Worthy?” Soon thereafter, Peterson found himself treading the stormy waters of woke Christianity. His […]
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 to answer the question of how a once confident and influential cultural movement became an anxious minority seeking protection from a very un-Christian president. He is at his best when […]
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 up time with people yelling for or against gun control. The week after Parkland has been no different. Yet, the narrative heats up after each successive shooting, and pressure is […]