The Unintended Reformation (Part 5): Chapter 3–Controlling the Churches: From Luther to Jefferson in Five Easy Steps

In my last post, I covered chapter 2 of Brad Gregory’s book, The Unintended Reformation, in which he traced a historical line from the Reformation to the 19th century that showed how the Reformer’s rejection of the entirety of Church Tradition, and their adherence to “Sola Scriptura,” actually had the unintended consequence of leading to…

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The Unintended Reformation (Part 4): How We Got From Luther to Marx in Seven Steps–Appeals to Reason Gone Wild

In this post I am going to crystalize Brad Gregory’s historical overview from the time of the Reformation to today in seven simple steps. For this is what he does in “Relativizing Doctrines,” in chapter 2 of his book The Unintended Reformation. So hang on tight…there’s a lot of ground to cover, and we’re going to…

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God’s Not Dead 2, Pat Boone, and the Fall Out from SNL’s Parody Skit, “God’s A Boob Man”

Last weekend on Saturday Night Live, there was a skit that was a parody of the movie God’s Not Dead 2. What was shown was a mock “trailer” of a fictional movie called, God is a Boob Man, and the fictional storyline was that of a Christian baker being taken to court because she didn’t…

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The Unintended Reformation (Part 3): Church Tradition, the Reformation, Philosophical Naturalism, and the Quirky Thing About Science

In my last post, I discussed how Brad Gregory, in his book The Unintended Reformation, began to make the argument that our current secular society, complete with its assumption that “science and reason” deal with the real world and “religion and faith” deal with private feelings, is actually an outgrowth of the Reformation’s battle cry,…

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The Unintended Reformation (Part 2): How Did We Get So Secular, and Why Is Luther to Blame?

So how did the Protestant Reformation lead to our current secularized culture? How did Luther’s famous “Sola Scriptura” lead to legal battles over Christmas crèches and prayer in public schools, the creation/evolution controversy, Bill Maher, Bill Nye, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Ken Ham? Well, in reality, Luther’s “Sola Scriptura” didn’t directly lead us to…

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Adventures in Young Earth Creationist Logic…Ken Ham and “impossibility” of evolution (but let’s not consider his own claims!)

Today, Ken Ham posted a short article on his blog, entitled “It’s Confirmed: A Snake is a Snake!” The gist of the article is simple: scientists have studied the fossilized remains of a supposedly 10 million year old snake. After 10 million years, a snake is still a snake, therefore evolution isn’t true…because a snake…

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The Unintended Reformation (i.e. Why Luther and Calvin should be blamed for the ACLU) (Part 1)

For the next week or so, I am going to provide you with a bit of a history lesson that, trust me, you’ll be glad you learned. If you are like me, and find yourself looking in bewilderment at so many things in our society, from the insanity of the current presidential election, the growing secularism…

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The Ham Wars…on Twitterfeed (and Josh Feuerstein to boot)

This week I wrote two posts regarding the movie God’s Not Dead 2. The first post was essentially a summary of the film, and the second was my analysis of it. The basic points I hoped that came across were these: The “persecution narrative” that is often promoted within many Evangelical circles simply is not…

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Movie Review: God’s Not Dead 2 (Part 2–You know you want to find out my opinion of it!)

Brief Note: My apologies for the length (3500 words). I was debating whether or not to split it up into two posts, but in this case, I think one large post is better. Enjoy… On April Fool’s Day this year, God’s Not Dead 2 hit the theaters. Reactions to the movie were as predictable as…

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