I grew up in southern California with a full quartet of grandparents, something Paul envies. My mom’s parents, Bernice and Judson Phillips, lived in Brea, near a park with a jungle gym shaped like a rocket ship. Grandpa Judd and I shared a birthday, and we celebrated together nearly everyContinue Reading
I happened to recently read this piece on CNN’s website, “When Christians become a ‘hated minority’” (even though the piece itself is from a month ago). It tries too hard to be even-handed, I think, and ends up feeling unreasonably flattering to the “your intolerance of my bigotry is theContinue Reading
Sometimes you have to wonder why the idea of hell caught on the way it did. Sure, it’s an interesting metaphor in art and fiction (Bosch… Milton… Dante… Gaiman…), but why do people believe in it with the sincerity and fervor with which they apparently do? It’s a pretty weirdContinue Reading
R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, reacts to the rapid progress on gay rights: From the Boy Scouts to the British Parliament: Left behind? Conservative Christians and the gay revolution The piece seemed interesting to me for its sad, resigned tone — the tone ofContinue Reading
If you met me when I was in college, I might have described myself as a Christian. (Or not. I was all over the place about that.) There were a few things I meant by this. One of them was, "Don’t try to convert me, I’m already as converted asContinue Reading
So, there I was, fifteen or so years old, and I had decided that the religion I had been raised with was clearly nonsense. It’s a fairly common teenage experience, I suspect. You see things from the other side, you know the adults have been lying to you about whatContinue Reading
At the age of thirteen, I also discovered rock and roll. (Busy year, I know.) I met a girl who was as obsessed with The Lord of the Rings as I was (we watched the Bakshi film over and over. That’s right. The Bakshi film.) She was also really intoContinue Reading
Another thing that happened when I was thirteen or fourteen, was that I became briefly worried that I might be gay. This was because I didn’t like any boys. I thought they were all stupid and irritating. I knew there was this thing that was supposed to happen during puberty,Continue Reading
I was thirteen or fourteen when I learned about abortion at religious summer camp. The camp was connected to Lake Sawyer and followed the same general Chickian doctrine, but in a lot of ways it was like every other summer camp. There were crafts and altar calls and junk foodContinue Reading
Here’s what happened to me during the year I was twelve: I started junior high. The other kids hated me. I hit puberty. We moved to a completely different part of the country. My family stayed with some friends of my parents for a couple of months. I went toContinue Reading
When I was twelve, we left Orange County, California and moved to King County, Washington. Where we lived was like this: go to Kent, and then start driving east. Go up the hill. Keep driving. Pass Lake Meridian. Keep driving. Pass a bunch of housing developments. Keep driving. Keep driving.Continue Reading
When you’re raised in the church, one of the things you pick up on is this idea that you are eventually going to be expected to “witness” to people. Some churches are bigger on this than others. I was done with the church by the time I was old enoughContinue Reading
Between the ages of 10 and 12, I was mentally committed to the church, to being a Christian, but there were still things that troubled me. I was worried about how you could know it was all true. How could I know God really existed? How could I know JesusContinue Reading