Dr Paul Allen

The entire world has seen how powerful the LGBT movement is. They’ve managed to insert their victim status into every aspect of life and turn it into a glittery display of “diversity and inclusion.” In a parade of French historical moments of liberation, the finale of the Paris Olympics tableaux made one thunderous political statement: “They’re here. They’re queer. And we’re supposed to cheer.” Billions of people didn’t feel that way. The Olympics are supposed to be uniting, but this year’s host country decided to divide, dismiss and denigrate. It started with men dressed up as caricatures of women being given the Olympic torch. It continued with its dismissal of heterosexual love as it frolicked through scenes with a (more than suggested) bisexual threesome, to which the official Olympic X account said: “The freedom to love is no less sacred than the freedom to think.” What if someone’s thinking about paedophilia? What if someone’s thinking about incest? Not everyone’s version of “lov

In a secular age, when the transcendent and eternal have drifted out of centre view, immanent things like human cultures take on central, hallowed significance.  Preserving the tangible customs and traditions of indigenous cultures in this life, therefore, becomes a far greater good than evangelizing indigenous people to preserve their souls for an intangible afterlife.  Indeed, the latter is seen as a threat to the former.  For sceptics prone to seeing the Christian mission in a “more harm than good” way, it was confirmed when I read two PhDs (Alice Springs Library) regarding ministry in the Outback that confirm this bias.

Everybody’s been talking about Aaron Renn’s “Three Worlds of Evangelicalism” thesis as well as the various uses to which it’s been put by folks like James Wood and others.  The nutshell is that in the pre-1994 U.S., we lived in a “positive world” where being a Christian was a net social positive; post-94-2015ish, it was a “neutral world” where it was, well, a social status neutral. Now, post-2015, we live in a “negative world” where, again, obviously, it’s a social negative. I won’t rehash everything because if you’re reading this, I’m going to assume you’re up on things. In a perhaps predictable “third way” fashion, I’ve been of a both/and, or “this side has a point, but also so do they over here” mindset about it. For someone who has had the opportunity to revisit his own progressive university 16 years after having left it as a student to minister to its students as a pastor, it’s obvious that something has changed.  Whether that is simply the furtherance of a trajectory long set be

In the Cultural Marxist account of history that has been growing in popularity and influence since the 1960s, Christianity is the villain. This is actually a new phenomenon, and because it is an anti-establishment narrative that has arisen from within the academic establishment, people have yet to come to terms with just how radical it is.  It is a product of the Sexual Revolution and the moral transvaluation of all values in the sexual realm. To be sure, Christianity has had its critics within the West for generations.  Enlightenment historian Edward Gibbon argued that because Christianity was intolerant of paganism, believed in miracles, saw earthly improvement in terms of virtue rather than in material goods, and, above all, comforted itself in a belief in a better life after death, it was the bygone relic of another era and belonged on the ash heap of history. In more recent days, the New Atheists have argued similarly.    Christians irrationally believe in the supernatural; they i

It’s Debunking Season. Every year, twice a year, in the weeks before Christmas and Easter, someone comes along telling Christians it’s time to pack it in. “Jesus is a myth, He’s always been a myth, and unless you want to keep on believing in fairy tales, you need to give up pretending He’s real.” The ABC in Australia promotes Ramadan and other Muslim events, ANZAC Day but posts NOTHING about Easter even Christmas. When they do, they are so lazy they grab a Getty picture and say people went to church. As far as the ABC is concerned Jesus has been debunked, is irrelevant, and is of no interest to anybody. None of these debunkings ever work, but they do raise a fair question: What would it take to disprove Jesus’ resurrection? What kind of evidence would do the job? Here’s one answer I hear Christians give : “If someone brings me the bones of Jesus, that’s when I’ll believe He didn’t rise from the dead.”  It’s a fair answer in theory, but I’m afraid I don’t think much of it. Everyone know

Are the origins of Easter pagan?  If so, why do Christians celebrate this day while others don’t? The Word Easter The Old English word Easter originates from the word “Ēastrun” and also “Ēastru” which comes from a pagan image called “Eastre” who is the mythological goddess of spring celebrated by Northern European Saxons. This celebration was to honor her and was always held during the spring equinox.  Some of the associated symbols used today are steeped in paganism.  The bunny represents fertility while the eggs picture a period of new birth.   Today, Easter is completely commercialized over much of the world by celebrating with painted Easter eggs and the Easter bunny, neither of which has any connection with Christianity.   In some Christian circles, this celebration is often called Pascha and is connected to the Hebrew “Pesach” and is related to the word Passover which commemorates the Exodus of Israel and the Passover feast.  The timing of the Passover Lamb being sacrificed at th

What is a deity? Now, that’s a good question. But it’s not one with a simple answer. In fact, there are several answers that we can give. POLYTHEISTIC DEITIES If your educational background is anything like mine, then at some point in your schooling you learned the basics of Greek mythology. The colorful stories of Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Poseidon, and the other gods worshiped in ancient Greece were some of my favorite things to read about.  And while the Greeks eventually learned that no divine beings lived on Mount Olympus, the stories of the Greek gods became a core element of Western culture. This continues today, with movies, television shows, and even comic books retelling, adapting, and using these stories in various ways. Though the Greek gods themselves are fictional, they fall under one of the definitions of the term deity. As Merriam-Webster tells us, one meaning of the word deity is “a god or goddess,” that is, a being who is worshiped—or in the case of the Greek gods, was w

  Love is the heartbeat of Christianity: “For God so loved the world . . .” (John 3:16). “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us” (1 John 4:10). From eternity God set His love on His people. In time and space, the Father sent His Son as the great display of that love. On the cross Christ secured our salvation out of love for us. Not one of Christ’s blood-bought people will be lost, because He loves every one of them. The gift of the Holy Spirit is a further outpouring of divine love. Truly the heartbeat of biblical religion is the love of God. God has loved us so much and blessed us so abundantly in Christ that the only appropriate response is to love Him in return. We do not need to be reminded of Christ’s incisive summation of the law as “love God and love your neighbor” (Matt. 22:34–40). We read our Bibles, hear inspiring sermons, and wholeheartedly agree that Christians should love their Savior because He first loved them. Yet, the reality for many is that this

Please note: the author of this article is an evangelical-Arminian academic who examined the occult and the borders or boundaries of Christianity.  ............................................................................................................. For much of my life, I have been intensely interested in certain aspects of occultism (very broadly defined as hidden or secret spiritual powers and realities related especially to divination and/or magick—the manipulation of hidden spiritual powers to create or alter reality). When I was a child, growing up in the “thick” of American conservative Christianity, I was often warned away from things like ouija boards, fortune-tellers, psychic and paranormal phenomena, practices, etc. I was taught that these things were all “doorways” into Satan’s territory and, when dabbled in, could open oneself up to demonic possession. Once, when I was about eight years old, just beginning to think for myself and act on my own, I wandered into a fo

When Asim Hamza was growing up in communist Albania in the 1980s, it was the third poorest country in the world. The farm technology   hadn’t been updated   since the 1920s. Lines for milk stretched   80 people long   before dawn. Pharmacies carried nothing but aspirin. Electricity didn’t reliably turn or stay on. Religion was outlawed—making the   sign of the cross   could land you in jail for three years, owning a Bible was five years. Hamza had no idea anything was wrong. The government-controlled television, during the two or three hours it was on each day, showed images of children starving in sub-Saharan Africa. “We were told that was happening everywhere,” Hamza said. “They said, ‘You are the happiest kids in the world.’ And we believed it. We were so thankful to the Communist party leader.” Asim and Betilda Hamza and their children / Courtesy of Asim Hamza’s Facebook page Back then, “Albania was one of the three most closed countries in the world, along with North Korea and  Mo