Many American Christians feel their way of life is being threatened. It doesn't matter whether this perspective has a factual basis or not. The feeling is real. What's important to recognize, at least initially, is there's a palpable insecurity driving their opposition to a slew of contrary worldviews: the Far Left, secular humanism, socialism, feminism, globalism, relativism, … [Read more...] about Beatnik Christianity Chooses Love Over Fear
Jesus
Beatnik Christianity Reprioritizes Friendship As One of the Most Important Things in Life
My appreciation for the atheist contrarian Christopher Hitchens was cemented by a Vanity Fair article entitled "Unspoken Truths" that was written shortly before his death. The piece chronicled his experience losing the ability to speak as the cancer attacked his vocal chords. In it Hitchens expressed a core value that had been subconscious all my life: "For me, to remember … [Read more...] about Beatnik Christianity Reprioritizes Friendship As One of the Most Important Things in Life
Beatnik Christianity Prefers Unforced Rhythms of Grace to Spiritual Disciplines
One reason many sincere Jesus followers spiritually peter out is that their lives resemble Sisyphus fighting gravity to roll the boulder up the hill. The Christian life, as it's been taught to them, is an unsustainable exercise of exhausting willpower. Is that The Way of Jesus, though? What if Jesus followers were instead mostly taught to put up their sails and channel the … [Read more...] about Beatnik Christianity Prefers Unforced Rhythms of Grace to Spiritual Disciplines
Beatnik Christianity Ain’t Afraid of Influence from Other World Religions
Alan Race first articulated the exclusivist-inclusivist-pluralist trichotomy model in 1982. This framework proposes three broad outlooks for how Jesus followers perceive other world religions. Each model contains nuanced permutations, but in the streamlined sense Exclusivism maintains there's no salvation possible in other religions, Inclusivism holds open the possibility that … [Read more...] about Beatnik Christianity Ain’t Afraid of Influence from Other World Religions
Beatnik Christianity Reimagines and Recycles the Word Heretic
Right belief (orthodoxy) is to heresy as right conduct (orthopraxy) is to... what? The very fact that Christianity doesn't have an obvious correlative term tells you all you need to know. Instead of coining a new term, however, a more subversive path forward may be to sync belief and conduct by broadening out heretic to include any professing Jesus follower who severely … [Read more...] about Beatnik Christianity Reimagines and Recycles the Word Heretic
