The Unintended Reformation: Chapter 4–“Subjectivizing Morality” (Part 7)

We now continue with our walk through of The Unintended Reformation by Brad Gregory. In this post, I’m going to take a look at chapter 4, “Subjectivizing Morality.” If chapter 2 was about truth claims, and chapter 3 was about political control, chapter 4 is now about morality itself. The first thing to realize is…

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Answers in Genesis Reviews “God’s Not Dead 2”–Welcome to Bizarro World (Spoiler Alert: AiG Doesn’t Think We Should Emphasize the Historical Jesus)

Today I’m taking a break from my summary/analysis of  The Unintended Reformation by Brad Gregory, in order to share the movie review of “God’s Not Dead 2” by the folks at Answers in Genesis. To get straight to the point, the 4,300 word review, written by Roger Patterson, struck me as quite bizarre. Now, as…

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The Unintended Reformation (Part 6): The Government Wants to Control Religion! (Well, not really, but we seem to really want it to…)

In my last post, I commented on chapter three of The Unintended Reformation by Brad Gregory, in which he traced the historical development of Church/State relations. I left off with the Founding Fathers and the first amendment. That is where I will pick things up… So, the Founding Fathers stated in the first amendment to…

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The Unintended Reformation (Part 5): Chapter 3–Controlling the Churches: From Luther to Jefferson in Five Easy Steps

In my last post, I covered chapter 2 of Brad Gregory’s book, The Unintended Reformation, in which he traced a historical line from the Reformation to the 19th century that showed how the Reformer’s rejection of the entirety of Church Tradition, and their adherence to “Sola Scriptura,” actually had the unintended consequence of leading to…

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The Unintended Reformation (Part 4): How We Got From Luther to Marx in Seven Steps–Appeals to Reason Gone Wild

In this post I am going to crystalize Brad Gregory’s historical overview from the time of the Reformation to today in seven simple steps. For this is what he does in “Relativizing Doctrines,” in chapter 2 of his book The Unintended Reformation. So hang on tight…there’s a lot of ground to cover, and we’re going to…

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God’s Not Dead 2, Pat Boone, and the Fall Out from SNL’s Parody Skit, “God’s A Boob Man”

Last weekend on Saturday Night Live, there was a skit that was a parody of the movie God’s Not Dead 2. What was shown was a mock “trailer” of a fictional movie called, God is a Boob Man, and the fictional storyline was that of a Christian baker being taken to court because she didn’t…

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The Unintended Reformation (Part 3): Church Tradition, the Reformation, Philosophical Naturalism, and the Quirky Thing About Science

In my last post, I discussed how Brad Gregory, in his book The Unintended Reformation, began to make the argument that our current secular society, complete with its assumption that “science and reason” deal with the real world and “religion and faith” deal with private feelings, is actually an outgrowth of the Reformation’s battle cry,…

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The Unintended Reformation (Part 2): How Did We Get So Secular, and Why Is Luther to Blame?

So how did the Protestant Reformation lead to our current secularized culture? How did Luther’s famous “Sola Scriptura” lead to legal battles over Christmas crèches and prayer in public schools, the creation/evolution controversy, Bill Maher, Bill Nye, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Ken Ham? Well, in reality, Luther’s “Sola Scriptura” didn’t directly lead us to…

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Adventures in Young Earth Creationist Logic…Ken Ham and “impossibility” of evolution (but let’s not consider his own claims!)

Today, Ken Ham posted a short article on his blog, entitled “It’s Confirmed: A Snake is a Snake!” The gist of the article is simple: scientists have studied the fossilized remains of a supposedly 10 million year old snake. After 10 million years, a snake is still a snake, therefore evolution isn’t true…because a snake…

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The Unintended Reformation (i.e. Why Luther and Calvin should be blamed for the ACLU) (Part 1)

For the next week or so, I am going to provide you with a bit of a history lesson that, trust me, you’ll be glad you learned. If you are like me, and find yourself looking in bewilderment at so many things in our society, from the insanity of the current presidential election, the growing secularism…

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