What is also important to note is that Riley and the WFCA members were heavily influenced by Darby's premil-disp ideas and were expecting persecution of the church as an impending eschatological reality. Riley saw... ... liberalism, Darwinism and communism forming a "world system" that had end times implications. Reading the newspaper through a premil-disp lens gave the culture war Riley was fighting cosmic, existential scale. This wasn't just a battle over ideas, it was THE battle...

It's hard to understand the current conflicts within evangelicalism and within the SBC itself without understanding the distinctions between American Fundamentalism and Neo-Evangelicalism.

The Neo-Evangelical movement of Harold Ockenga, Carl Henry and Billy Graham was ... partly a response to Fundamentalist tendencies to engage the culture in a pugilistic manner, painting the world starkly as "us vs. them." WB Riley's World Christian Fundamentals Association (WCFA) took the theological fundamentalist movement in a culture war direction ...

This is a very curious article from Newsweek for a couple of reasons:

newsweek.com/black-man-sout… 1. The premise. "Liberal Christians" (Christians with progressive political values?) should support this conservative candidate - because he is Black. Never mind his policies, he is Black and so they should support him.

We’ve got to get rid of the “us vs. them” mentality that pervades so much of evangelicalism. How can we love “them” if we’re so focused on how “them” is against “us?” I’ve been listening to stories of people who have left the Church or left their faith entirely, and so often it comes down to a point where they just wanted to be loved, but we couldn’t love them because...

If table-flipping Jesus is our favorite Jesus, we’ve lost the plot. If Pharisee-insulting Jesus is our favorite Jesus, we’ve lost the plot.

Well, it’s happened. My old friend @ericmetaxas blocked me on Twitter. My feeble effort to keep him from sliding further down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole has failed. @roddreher - have you been blocked yet? @JohnFea1? I met Eric in 1998 when we premiered “LB & the Rumor Weed” at a convention. He was writing kids books at the time, and talked about wanting to be the next Dick Cavett. We hired him for a year to try writing for VT, but had to cut him when budgets got tight.

I have a theory. Follow along with me here:

The Scofield Bible (1909) popularized Dispensationalism.
Dispensationalism taught generations of American Christians to "read the newspapers" for "signs of the end times."
This focus on "signs" led to The Late Great Planet Earth... ... and the Left Behind books, which had Christians looking for the antichrist and the new "world gov't" in every major news story. Primed by eschatological fervor, we started connecting dots that weren't there. A lot. Israel... Russia... Soros... Hilary Clinton...

Interesting response from Ken Ham to our Evangelical History video!

https://twitter.com/aigkenham/status/1339183711334649857

It’s a little odd that a man who has spent his life persuading Christians to reject mainstream science is complaining that I said he rejects mainstream science. 🤷‍♂️

I appreciate the sentiment, but we Christians may need to suggest solutions to injustice that don’t involve every American suddenly following Jesus.

Praying for revival and working for reform are not mutually exclusive. Christian heroes of the past... William Wilberforce in England, Pandita Ramabai in India, Rosa Parks and MLK in America... prayed for revival and worked for reform. And didn’t see a conflict in that.

1/14 If you’re tired of thinking about CT, evangelicals, fundamentalists, etc., read no further. But if you’re interested, it’s fascinating to look at the Christianity Today / Christian Post conflict in evangelical/fundamentalist terms. As we mentioned pre-Christmas... 2/14 … the Christian Post (CP) “declared war” on Christianity Today (CT), labeling CT “elitist” for its call for Trump’s removal.  The piece in the CP was written by Richard Land, CP’s founder.  If you’re not familiar with that name Richard Land was, for many years,

Overheard at the 2nd Coming -

JFjr: Jesus! Welcome back!
JC: Thanks Jerry! I’m here to be king!
JFjr: Yeah, about that. Some of us are concerned you don’t have the temperament for public leadership.
JC: Say what?
JFjr: It’s your commitment to Christian values. We’re...

https://twitter.com/JerryFalwellJr/status/1045853333007798272

...We’re afraid you’ll be kind to our enemies.
JC: You mean Satan?
JFjr: No, Canada. And Mexico. And, the European Union. Have you considered a smaller role? Say, a deacon at a local church? Or a greeter?
JC: (blank stare)
JFjr: I told my students to bring guns to school, so...