Every Christmas, we tell the story of the virgin birth. The real story of Mary's origin is far more shocking than any pageant you will see ..read more

With every politician claiming that Jesus is on their side, I thought we should take a moment to discern who Jesus would really support ..read more

Why do people with power often lose their moral compass? We explore a unique theory connecting presidents, priests and P. Diddy ..read more

A year ago, my article Departure: Why I Left the Church went viral. A year later, I reflect on how that moment changed my life ..read more

During a recent interview, a former Evangelical talked about the trauma Purity Culture. We unpack the history behind this movement ..read more

I’m currently in the middle of cutting together Season 4 of the Restorative Faith Podcast. If you have listened to previous seasons of the podcast, you are aware that each season revolves around a theme. This particular season focuses on the conflict between science and the church. The opening episode of the podcast deals with how the theory of evolution set the stage for the conflict with the church that would persist throughout most of the 20th century. For my human-interest story, I interviewed two sisters, Hannah and Leah, who grew up in a fundamentalist sect of Christianity known as ..read more

This is the first in a series of articles I plan to do over the coming years where I talk about various theories I have been mulling called What If... I normally keep these ideas to myself because I feel they are too underdeveloped or overly complex. However, since we’ve experienced growth within the Restorative Faith community, I feel it’s worth taking a chance and stretching you all with some conceptually difficult material. For this What If… I want to take you on a journey that may seem odd at first, but if you follow the trail I’m laying before you, the result might be an entirely new way ..read more

In the spirit of  Easter, I want to tell you about a movie that was recently released in theaters—Christspiracy. A friend of mine had been following the filmmakers on social media and was looking forward to its release. Normally, this is not the type of movie I would intentionally watch, but, because she invited me, I figured why not? I had no idea what the movie was about other than what I had seen in the trailer. It was a Da Vinci Code type documentary where the filmmakers were claiming they had uncovered a massive conspiracy within the church. Indeed, the trailer intimated that t ..read more

Recently, I was conducting an interview for Season 4 of the Restorative Faith Podcast with Dr. Ryan Juskus, a post-doc at Princeton University who studies the intersection of religion, politics and science. I contacted Dr. Juskus because I wanted to speak with him about why certain types of Christians reject the science around topics like climate change or the efficacy of vaccinations. His initial response to my e-mail was that this is not a black and white issue where you can easily identify a group of Christians and say, “This group of Christians rejects science, and this group does not. It ..read more

With the Superbowl a little more than a week away, it sparked a memory from when I was a student in seminary. My wife and I had become friendly with another couple. The wife was in seminary, training to become a pastor, and her husband was along for the ride. One night, he and I were talking about sports and I confessed that I’ve never been a huge fan of team sports. The sports that tend to draw my attention are swimming (which I only get to enjoy every four years at the Olympics) and professional tennis. Football, baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer held little interest for me. He, on th ..read more