Let’s consider the Evangelical leader — Afew years back I lived in North Carolina. Recently, on social media, I was catching up with a friend who has long made his home near Asheville. He asked what I’d been writing about lately, and I mentioned I’d been researching the sex life of Billy Graham. I’d been puzzling…

As he speaks of being sexually abused by a pastor, let’s look at the movie star’s religion — Armie Hammer grew up Evangelical Christian. In a new interview, he says he was sexually abused by a youth pastor — leading to his interest in ‘BDSM’, i.e. S&M. I’m going over his life, trying understand this difficult Evangelical story. He was born in 1986 in Santa Monica. His father’s side are ethnically Jewish, but his father, Michael Hammer, had gotten together with an Evangelical woman from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Christianity conceals facts about a hero — He is a Christian hero to millions, known for praises of “orthodoxy,” and Catholicism as the true faith. Was G.K. Chesterton also a fall-down alcoholic? A startling charge had been made, I noticed, when doing research into his sexuality. It’d been denied—but there were clues. His drinking came up in 2013. There was a movement at the time to suggest Chesterton for canonization as a Catholic saint. …

A Christian writer had some ‘gender trouble’ — He was a famous defender of Christianity. The subject of G.K. Chesterton’s sexuality wouldn’t often come up. Wasn’t he straight—with no sex problems? His Christian fans seem to think so. Chesterton is often quoted affirming traditional sexual values, and is particularly valued as an anti-gay speaker. There’s a little more to it. Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in London in 1874.

An Evangelical idea is a hit of pure white supremacy — The world is ending—soon! Jesus will appear in the sky to take his favorites to Heaven! Evangelical America says: You better convert, so you’ll be “Raptured.” As a kid in church I certainly heard it all the time: the Rapture will be happening…soon. Later I learned that the Rapture isn’t taught in any other Christianity. I wondered: where did it come from?

Why is a pastor taking on his own religion? — A well-known pastor was trending on Twitter for several days this week. In horror, his religion watched a viral video in which he tore into them. This isn’t Andy Stanley’s first time being controversial. Back in 2018 he came to wide notice for saying that Evangelicals should “unhitch” from the Old Testament. But that was nothing compared to him talking about “gay Christians” — a concept the religion doesn’t even recognize.

An Evangelical hero in a censored scene — To grow up Evangelical Christian, you know about Jim Elliot. He’s the religious hero who was the most virtuous of all—deeply driven to obey God! That was the story the religion told, but look at the details? Here’s a scene never discussed before: that time Jim worked with syphilis patients in a Maryland psychiatric hospital. It was shocking when I first saw it.

Remembering an era-defining Bible scholar — In 2015, a startling book claimed Christianity had badly misread the Bible. Vast subplots about “gods” and spirits had somehow been overlooked? By now, Michael S. Heiser’s The Unseen Realm is a phenomenon and even a Pop Culture reference. He announces his cancer is terminal and he’s in his last days. I stop and reflect on his momentous life. He isn’t one for autobiography.

A follow-up on Liz Hunter, fake “cult survivor” — In June 2022, I saw a tabloid story about a woman who talked of growing up in a “cult.” The details puzzled me. She seemed to have been brought up Baptist. I wondered if I’d grown up in a “cult” too — since that was my family’s religious identification. Liz Hunter had been a subject of many tabloid profiles, it turned out, and was a star on social media, especially TikTok.