I grew up goddy. To be sure, I never reached such august heights as co-hosting an episode of the 700 Club, that’s an impossible act to follow. But I grew up deeply steeped in American Evangelical Christianity. Vacation Bible School? Check. Being on the vanguard of the home-school movement complete with science curriculum that thought Young Earth Creationism was the result of proper Bible interpretation and scientific observation? Check. Not being in the Boy Scouts but the far more obscure Christian Service Brigade? Check. Doing a post high-school Youth With a Mission “Discipleship Training School”? Check. Moving to California at age 20 and joining a safe non-denominational church out of habit? Check. Spending several years being a junior high youth group leader, in part driven by my own poor experiences in such groups? Well, now we’re heading off the checklist. We’ll also leave out the part about starting to volunteer in said role, way back when, to try and get to know a cute girl, as that transcends both religion and culture (and it also never works).

A few years back, when I had long since abandoned political conservatism but still considered myself a Christian, one of my persistent frustrations was the profoundly flawed ideological litmus tests the Christian right applied to political figures. Having married themselves to the Republican party in exchange for token gestures on pro-life issues, the Christian right accepted the assumption that Democrats (with a few exceptions) were agnostics, atheists, and anti-religious. Conservative Republicans, on the other hand, supported "family values" and were considered good Christians.

It's a bit of an understatement to say that the blog has been silent. I don't like that -- there are certainly things I'd like to talk and write about -- but I've been a little uncertain since explaining that I no longer consider myself a Christian. I began this blog as an "insider" from Christian culture, relatively speaking at least. Although it's been a long time since I fit the mold of a conservative protestant youth, I considered myself part of the larger body of Christians united by relatively orthodox belief. I hoped that I could reach in both directions with this blog, touring through the often-baffling world of Christian Culture for the outsiders while giving those still inside the culture a glimpse of what things were like outside. I didn't want to bash Christianity: rather, I wanted to dissect the parts of the culture that had little or nothing to do with the "heart" of the faith.

I've always had a soft spot for The Barna Group, an organization founded by researcher George Barna to gather accurate information about American religious beliefs and practices. Barna has been a somewhat controversial figure in the church for some decades, mostly because the data he gathers ruffles feathers. His research, for example, indicates that behavioral differences between Christians and non-Christians are essentially nonexistent.

Last week, I was traveling for work. While it's never fun being away from my wife and the comforts of home, I do enjoy my co-workers a lot, and I love the work that I do. We do technical training workshops, and sped a lot of time explaining relatively arcane geekery and making it accessible to newcomers.

Around 7:00 in the evening, after the training sessions for the day were over, I was standing in the hotel lobby, talking shop with one of the attendees. I was halfway through a nice imported lager when a fresh-faced, apple-cheeked youth walked up to us wearing a spiky haircut and holding a pad of paper.

"I don't mean to interrupt, but would you mind answering a few questions for a survey about spiritual beliefs I'm doing?"

This gets read by a different circle of people who normally see my thoughts, although I'm going to clue a couple of them in that this is out there to read. I'm after unbiased takes and feedback, instead of "Pearson there there you're so awesome things will get better" and crap like that.

Jeff's soul-searching post caught me a bit off-guard, but not much. If I said that some of his chief concerns - especially when it comes to the inerrancy of Scripture - weren't bugging the tar out of me, I'd be lying. I would dearly love to have one set of answers for the big questions about scripture, but those answers simply won't come when you read about the conquest of Israel, or prophets of Baal being slaughtered. Honestly, they won't even come when you read about Jesus having come not to bring peace, but a sword.

At the end of the day, though, the key thing that forms the center of the faith is the person of Jesus Christ. I believe that Christ was exactly who he said he was, and that the resurrection did in fact happen. The moment I buy into that, there is a host of other stuff that dwindles in importance, and life becomes a question of how to live knowing that this great teacher who lived two thousand years ago and revolutionized how an entire culture looked at religion is still alive and, we expect, is going to make his impact on this world made again.

It takes a whole load of those other questions and makes them very, very tiny, in my eyes. And it takes a whole 'nother set of questions and makes them absolutely critical. Questions of the "how then shall we live?" variety.

I'll be writing a more detailed review later, but for the time being, just go to Amazon, get a copy of this book, read it, and imagine that I've written a long series of posts nodding vigorously along with just about everything between the front and back covers.

Discussions in other forums spawned by my previous post seem to have boiled down to an essential question.

How do we establish the trustworthiness of Christianity's claims about Scripture in a way that multiple, contradictory claims by other faiths are not all rated as equally trustworthy?

So far, the person who started the conversation with me keeps appealing to presuppositional dodges: "If we first accept that Scripture is true..." isn't a very reassuring start to a discussion of why Scripture is trustworthy. I wouldn't normally press this particular point, but the original question was his and I'm hoping that I can salvage something out of it.

Anyone out there who has something to offer, please chime in. It's not an attempt at a sucker-punch; I'm just trying to suss out how reasonable this expectation even is.

It's been quite a while since I posted anything here, and I'm afraid that the reasons are a bit complex. There are a number of pieces I find myself wanting to put together, some of which even fit with the mission I scribbled down for the site when I started it. (A review of Franky Schaeffer's book, 'Crazy for God,' and an article exploring Francis Schaeffer's role in the birth and growth of the Christian Right are both on the table. For now I've just got a link to the MeFi thread I started on the topic...)

Most of the things that are occupying my thoughts, however, are a bit more vague and not entirely pleasant. For quite some time I've seen myself as fundamentally Christian -- someone who accepts the essential exclusive-truth-claims of Scripture. I hammer away at many aspects of Christian culture that I perceive as damaging and destructive, but I always explained this as trying to protect the essential core of Christianity.

More and more, though, I've come to the conclusion that this essential core I have been defending is not, in fact, Christianity. It's not the chewy nougat center of orthodox doctrine: it's basic human decency, a bedrock of moral and ethical care for others that I believe any decent human being needs to hold onto. One of the fundamental difficulties faced by Christians is that Scripture, when read on its own terms, contradicts many of these basic, fundamental principles.

It probably comes as no shock that I collect Christian Kitsch Fiction. During the years I wrote my zine, I secured review copies of hundreds of books and chewed through them at an earnest, prodigious rate. While quite a few genres had their cliches (Historical Romances Featuring Heroines Of Faith! New Age Murder Mysteries! Teen Dramas About Almost Kissing!) there's no competition for King Of The Wacky. Rapture fiction -- apocalyptic novels that revolve around Biblical prophecy and literal interpretation of the book of Revelation -- will always reign supreme.

Most people have only heard of the wildly popular Left Behind and its many, many sequels. But there's more -- so much more -- waiting in the bargain bins and Half.com accounts of the world. The mid 90s were especially good to the genre, and dozens of variations on the theme were printed by the Christian publishing houses that dominated at the time. I, naturally, have piles of them.

Seal Of Gaia is pretty representative of the worst of the genre. The plot -- I use the word generously -- involves a freaky glowing New Age Messiah, a selfish television producer named Steve, a giant missile called the TR6, and more We Told You So predictions than you can shake a stick at.

And, adjectives. Oh, the adjectives.